1.5M ratings
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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Anonymous asked:

What do you think of Christians adopting Jewish practices like Passover and Hanuka because they are seen as less pagan? Does this appropriation bother you?

Asking a non-religious Reconstructionist Jew about appropriating Hanukkah is kind of like asking Elizabeth Warren whether it’s okay to wear an Indian headdress.

There’s probably an official halakhic opinion about this, but if celebrating Hanukkah is appropriating Judaism, then having scrupulosity attacks about whether your celebration is wrong and searching for an official halakhic opinion about it is definitely appropriating Judaism, so maybe you shouldn’t check.

My own feeling is that if there’s ever some resurgence of anti-Semitism, I would rather Christians think of Jews as the friendly people with the beautiful rituals who drew them into their circle and invited them to share in their celebrations, than as the scary people who screamed “CULTURAL APPROPRIATION! ONLY WE ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT!” every time they tried to light a candle.

Also, there are a bunch of prophets who say things like “There shall come a day when all the nations of the world shall bend the knee together in glorious worship of the God of Israel”, and I imagine that upon the fulfillment of the prophecy, one of the Jews turns to all the nations of the world and gives them a lecture about cultural appropriation, and then God facepalms.

map.what3words.com is a source of endless kabbalistic insight.

For example, the four squares in the center of the Dome of the Rock atop the Temple Mount are:

– dampen.hilltop.prefer
– bunk.compound.restriction
– shoebox.repeated.struggle
– belonged.slowly.backs

Remove the first word from each triplet, and you get about as good a history of the Temple Mount as eight words permit.

Tonight an Armenian man was admitted to the psychiatric hospital on an emergency basis with some kind of really serious psychotic break, but we couldn’t figure out what was going on with him because he didn’t speak English.

So we called the hospital administration for an Armenian translator, which is apparently complicated at the best of times but practically impossible on Christmas Eve. Finally somebody agreed to come in from far away, but he seemed pretty confused and angry by the whole thing and didn’t actually speak English that well. My boss tried to explain the situation to him, but he wasn’t interested and might not have even really understood. He just demanded “Take me to man, I will translate.” So we did.

So the translator goes into the patient’s room, and the patient gets really excited and starts talking in Armenian in this very animated way. The translator gets more and more upset, and finally he takes my boss into the corridor outside the room and shouts,

“THIS MAN IS A FUCKING LUNATIC!”

tw mental health tw slurs work psychiatry nationality changed to protect confidentiality
contextlessputin

Anonymous asked:

You wake up on the morning on the 20th of January to find that you are now Donald Trump, on the day of your inauguration as president. (Investigation reveals there is another you still practising medicine in Michigan as normal fwiw.) As president, what do you do with the powers available to you? How do Congress, the media, and the public respond? How do you respond back?

slatestarscratchpad answered:

My cabinet/related picks:

Attorney General: Preet Bharara
Commerce: Peter Thiel
Defense: James Mattis
State: Tulsi Gabbard
Housing & Urban Development: Matt Yglesias
Homeland Security: Anonymous Mugwump
Health & Human Services: Julia Wise
Transportation/Energy: Elon Musk
Treasury: Satoshi Nakamoto
Education: Eva Moskowitz
Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus
Agriculture: Buck Shlegeris
Labor: Bernie Sanders

White House Chief Of Staff: Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg
Head of NIH: Stephen Hsu
Surgeon General: Dr. Chris Ballas
Head of FDA: Alex Tabarrok
Welfare Czar: Charles Murray
Chair of Federal Reserve: Scott Sumner
Budget Director: Holden Karnofsky
Head of CIA: Philip Tetlock

Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am, and so that I can accuse everyone else who hasn’t appointed as many randomly selected black women of being racist..

First order of business: in addition to being my Secretary of Labor, Bernie Sanders is now vice president. I don’t care what he does with the position, it’s just so that the Republican Congress knows that if they impeach me, they’re getting a pacifist Jewish socialist as the leader of the free-world.

Second order of business is to get Robin Hanson to set up a national prediction market to help me figure out all my other policies. All other orders of business conditional on approval from national prediction market and from new CIA head Philip Tetlock. Then:

- Legalize marijuana and hallucinogens, lessen penalties for other drugs. Replace prison sentences for nonviolent crimes with corporal punishment.

- Build Trump’s wall, because it’s a meaningless symbol that will change nothing, but it’ll make Republicans like me, and it will make Democrats focus all their energy on criticizing that instead of anything substantive I do.

- Tax the rich. Maybe a Georgist land tax?

- Get rid of most occupational licensing restrictions. I’m probably too chicken to get rid of medical licensing entirely, but make it way easier to become a nurse-practitioner, and vastly expand the amount of stuff nurse practitioners can do. Allow psychologists to prescribe most psychiatric medication.

- Declare War On College. Forgive all existing student loans, then refuse to give out any new ones. Prohibit the government from asking about college degree when hiring new employees, and put pressure on private industry to follow suit for any position less absolutely-requiring-of-specialized-knowledge than doctor or engineer. Increase government loans to boot camps, online courses, et cetera.

- If Tabarrok hasn’t already solved everything about prescription medication by this point, do it myself.

- If Yglesias hasn’t already solved everything about urban housing by this point, do it myself.

- Carbon tax, with the money going into massive investment into ways to sequester atmospheric carbon.

- Basic income guarantee if possible, otherwise just sneakily increase income tax credits and stuff so that nobody notices.

- Tell Russia that if they can defeat ISIS, they can have as much of Syria as they want, and if they can do it while getting rid of Assad we’ll let them have Alaska back too.

- Agree with Russia and Ukraine to partition Ukraine into Pro-Russia Ukraine and Pro-West Ukraine. This would also work with Moldova.

- Put various EA figures in charge of Africa policy. Also, recognize Somaliland.

- Tell Saudi Arabia that we’re sorry for sending mixed messages by allying with them, and actually they are total scum and we hate their guts. Ally with Iran, who are actually really great aside from the whole Islamic theocracy thing. Get Iran to grudgingly tolerate Israel the same way we got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc to grudgingly tolerate Israel, which I assume involves massive amounts of bribery. Form coalition for progress and moderation vs. extremist Sunni Islam throughout Middle East. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

- Tell China that their artificial islands in the South China Sea are stupid and if they don’t stop, then we’ll show them what real artificial islands look like. If they call our bluff, send Patri Friedman over with ten billion dollars in state funding to create seasteads in whichever spots are most inconvenient for China.

- Eliminate the penny.

- Probably other things, I would have to think.

contextlessputin:

napoleonchingon:

wirehead-wannabe:

the-grey-tribe:

Interesting. Not the first or second time somebody I follow wants to give Alaska to Russia. I bet the Alaskans would mind.

Yeah, why Alaska? That would just piss people off and make their lives significantly worse, ESPECIALLY if they’re lgbt. I’m trying to imagine how that would possibly be net positive.

Forget the net positive, what are even any positives? I assumed this was @slatestarscratchpad‘s sign that it’s a shitpost (which is the only way in which anything else in that list is defensible anyway), but if @the-grey-tribe says other people also suggest it, that seems unlikely.

This seems both in line with Scott’s prior statements. There are also some (well, a very few) clear positives- e.g. the carbon tax. But it’s still stunningly bad over all.

(Turns out that that rationalists say they would appoint the most qualified people and let them do stuff if they became President, they mean the most qualified people they personally know and/or people they’ve seen in them edia- i.e. the same type of appointments Trump would make.)

Saying ridiculous things on social media about what you would do as President -  then watching everyone else take it seriously and get angry - is really fun.

I can see why Trump likes it so much.

contextlessputin Source: slatestarscratchpad

Anonymous asked:

You wake up on the morning on the 20th of January to find that you are now Donald Trump, on the day of your inauguration as president. (Investigation reveals there is another you still practising medicine in Michigan as normal fwiw.) As president, what do you do with the powers available to you? How do Congress, the media, and the public respond? How do you respond back?

My cabinet/related picks:

Attorney General: Preet Bharara
Commerce: Peter Thiel
Defense: James Mattis
State: Tulsi Gabbard
Housing & Urban Development: Matt Yglesias
Homeland Security: Anonymous Mugwump
Health & Human Services: Julia Wise
Transportation/Energy: Elon Musk
Treasury: Satoshi Nakamoto
Education: Eva Moskowitz
Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus
Agriculture: Buck Shlegeris
Labor: Bernie Sanders

White House Chief Of Staff: Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg
Head of NIH: Stephen Hsu
Surgeon General: Dr. Chris Ballas
Head of FDA: Alex Tabarrok
Welfare Czar: Charles Murray
Chair of Federal Reserve: Scott Sumner
Budget Director: Holden Karnofsky
Head of CIA: Philip Tetlock

Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am.

First order of business: in addition to being my Secretary of Labor, Bernie Sanders is now vice president. I don’t care what he does with the position, it’s just so that the Republican Congress knows that if they impeach me, they’re getting a pacifist Jewish socialist as the leader of the free-world.

Second order of business is to get Robin Hanson to set up a national prediction market to help me figure out all my other policies. All other orders of business conditional on approval from national prediction market and from new CIA head Philip Tetlock. Then:

- Legalize marijuana and hallucinogens, lessen penalties for other drugs. Replace prison sentences for nonviolent crimes with corporal punishment.

- Build Trump’s wall, because it’s a meaningless symbol that will change nothing, but it’ll make Republicans like me, and it will make Democrats focus all their energy on criticizing that instead of anything substantive I do.

- Tax the rich. Maybe a Georgist land tax?

- Get rid of most occupational licensing restrictions. I’m probably too chicken to get rid of medical licensing entirely, but make it way easier to become a nurse-practitioner, and vastly expand the amount of stuff nurse practitioners can do. Allow psychologists to prescribe most psychiatric medication.

- Declare War On College. Forgive all existing student loans, then refuse to give out any new ones. Prohibit the government from asking about college degree when hiring new employees, and put pressure on private industry to follow suit for any position less absolutely-requiring-of-specialized-knowledge than doctor or engineer. Increase government loans to boot camps, online courses, et cetera.

- If Tabarrok hasn’t already solved everything about prescription medication by this point, do it myself.

- If Yglesias hasn’t already solved everything about urban housing by this point, do it myself.

- Carbon tax, with the money going into massive investment into ways to sequester atmospheric carbon.

- Basic income guarantee if possible, otherwise just sneakily increase income tax credits and stuff so that nobody notices.

- Tell Russia that if they can defeat ISIS, they can have as much of Syria as they want, and if they can do it while getting rid of Assad we’ll let them have Alaska back too.

- Agree with Russia and Ukraine to partition Ukraine into Pro-Russia Ukraine and Pro-West Ukraine. This would also work with Moldova.

- Recognize Somaliland.

- Tell Saudi Arabia that we’re sorry for sending mixed messages by allying with them, and actually they are total scum and we hate their guts. Ally with Iran, who are actually really great aside from the whole Islamic theocracy thing. Get Iran to grudgingly tolerate Israel the same way we got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc to grudgingly tolerate Israel, which I assume involves massive amounts of bribery. Form coalition for progress and moderation vs. extremist Sunni Islam throughout Middle East. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

- Tell China that their artificial islands in the South China Sea are stupid and if they don’t stop, then we’ll show them what real artificial islands look like. If they call our bluff, send Patri Friedman over with ten billion dollars in state funding to create seasteads in whichever spots are most inconvenient for China.

- Eliminate the penny.

- Probably other things, I would have to think.

Anonymous

Anonymous asked:

There's been a lot of commentary about an alleged rise of illiberalism or illiberal democracy in the past few years, often by commentators who see the support for Trump as part of this trend. Do you think there's any truth to any of that? And if so, does it shake the confidence you seemed to express in Parts VI-VIII of "In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization" that liberal norms are strongly positioned to spread and ultimately defeat illiberal ones? Is Cthulhu still swimming left?

“Liberal” is complicated. A lot of the “illiberalism” of Trump supporters is a different interpretation of liberal norms. For example, opposing PC in the name of free speech, or opposing affirmative action in the name of meritocracy.

I’m not sure to what degree open borders and free trade are inherently part of liberalism, or whether there’s a consistent vision of liberalism that doesn’t include them.

I think the version of liberalism I meant in that post involved the ability of people to come up with explicit contractarian norms that helped them cooperate. Abandoning free trade seems to blatantly contradict that principle; abandoning immigration may or may not contradict it; the idea of “walled gardens” was pretty prominent there.

I still think the current political climate is more of a war between different visions of liberalism than explicitly attacking liberalism on either side.

Anonymous

Anonymous asked:

The first song you linked in the list of songs you liked (Oak and Ash and Thorn) is a Kipling poem set to music. Did you know this, and if so, what do you think of Kipling as a poet / do you want recommendations for other Kipling poems set to music?

Yes. I know of a musical version of Hymn of Breaking Strain, but I’d be interested in others.

Anonymous