Life After Globalization & The One-Year Anniversary Of The George Floyd Riots (5-30-21)

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Luke Ford

01:00 ‘We Will Not Be Frightened’: Young Israel Of Century City Synagogue Vandalized, https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/05/28/we-will-not-be-frightened-young-israel-of-century-city-synagogue-vandalized/
11:00 ‘Mail-in Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139307
19:00 Life After Globalization (Peter Zeihan), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kch4Z1GpNOQ
24:00 NYT: Efforts to Advance Racial Equity Baked In Throughout Biden’s Budget, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139726
29:00 The social conservative core of the Republican party
34:00 Why the lab leak theory matters, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opinion/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-covid.html
39:10 Peter Zeihan says China will be a failed state in a decade, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yttug-a3sWI
40:00 Who will Dominate the Geopolitical System in this Decade?
45:00 China’s $18 Trillion Ticking Time Bomb Threatens ‘V-Shaped’ Boom, https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2021/05/25/chinas-18-trillion-ticking-time-bomb-threatens-v-shaped-boom/?sh=5b6ec53814af
48:00 Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain The World’s Sole Superpower, https://www.michaelbeckley.org/book-project
49:00 Michael Beckley essay on China vs USA, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00066
51:00 Why would America leave globalism?
53:30 China is not a Superpower | Professor Paul Dibb, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYgZkNWep0
1:04:45 China’s Economic and Demographic Problem, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P13r6teKIW4
1:19:45 The U.S.A. as a Rogue Superpower | Michael Beckley, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LDMzqvEcBo
1:22:00 A Summer of China | George Friedman Interview 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCKRCtdAkNE
1:27:50 China will not attack Taiwan | George Friedman April 2021
1:49:00 Deep Rig, https://www.infowars.com/posts/new-film-deep-rig-proves-the-2020-election-was-stolen/
1:52:00 Patrick Byrne: pro-Trump millionaire pushing election conspiracy theories, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/29/patrick-byrne-trump-fundraiser-election-conspiracy-theories
2:02:00 Russian collapse
2:04:40 U.S. Alliances in the Western Pacific Archipelago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAco4W5kuUQ
2:12:00 Stained Steel And A Tricky Trade Truce, https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2021/05/18/stained-steel-and-a-tricky-trade-truce/?sh=2dc526d67709
2:14:00 Disunited Nations 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwVaUntpNQ
2:15:00 Naftali Bennett Joins Forces with Yair Lapid to Form Unity Government
2:33:40 Peer-reviewed science papers
2:46:00 Mid-West vs Southern attitudes towards investment

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NYT: Efforts to Advance Racial Equity Baked In Throughout Biden’s Budget

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Luke Ford

From The New York Times:

Sprinkled throughout the president’s enormous spending plan are scores of programs amounting to tens of billions of dollars intended to specifically bolster the fortunes of Black people, Asian people, tribal communities and other historically underserved groups in the United States.

…That idea — of focusing special attention on the distribution of taxpayer money across racial groups — has never been approached as methodically as it has this year by Mr. Biden, advocates say.

…That approach has incited anger from conservatives, who accuse the president and his advisers of pursuing a racist agenda against white Americans. Fox News ran a headline accusing Mr. Biden of trying to “Stoke Nationwide Division With ‘Racial Equity’ Push.” And The New York Post published an editorial, titled “In Push for Woke ‘Equity,’ Biden Abandons Equality,” that accused the president of being “un-American.”

A group called America First Legal, which is run by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, two top aides to former President Donald J. Trump, won a preliminary injunction this week from a Texas judge against an effort by Mr. Biden’s Small Business Administration to prioritize grants from its $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund to businesses owned by minorities or underserved groups.

“This order is another powerful strike against the Biden administration’s unconstitutional decision to pick winners and losers based on the color of their skin,” the group said in a statement.

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When The Gay Money Comes Pouring In

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Luke Ford

From the New York Times Book Review:

How the Religious Right Made Same-Sex Marriage a Gay Rights Crusade

THE ENGAGEMENT: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage By Sasha Issenberg

Money itself, especially the importance of “gay economic might,” also takes center stage in Issenberg’s book. “A galaxy of covert donors orbiting around Denver software millionaire Tim Gill remade the gay-rights movement in their own image,” he writes, “ideologically conservative and strategically radical.” Gay marriage activists, modeling themselves on corporate PACs, successfully transformed into a lobbying force one likened to a “Gay Pfizer,” using the carrot of political contributions and the stick of funding one’s opponents. The strategy worked: In 2011, three Democrats in the New York Legislature reversed their earlier positions on gay marriage after witnessing gay organizations’ ability to end political careers. In 2012, after President Obama announced his support of gay marriage, according to one campaign staffer, “You could literally hear the gay money pouring in.”

…Through Issenberg’s illumination of the donors, activists and attorneys on both sides of the saga, another aspect of the battle for marriage equality becomes starkly clear: its whiteness. Obama plays an important role, certainly, but nearly all of the individuals at the core of the narrative — dozens of them — are white. Issenberg doesn’t shy away from examining the role of race in electoral politics (the loss of the Black vote against Proposition 8, he concludes, was merely the symptom of a more widespread messaging problem), but we don’t learn why, exactly, queer Black activists were such a rarity in the upper echelons of the marriage fight.

They have long told us the reasons: In addition to broader racism and transphobia within the mainstream gay rights movement, marriage was always primarily a white, cisgender issue. “Gay marriage? Please,” wrote Jasmyne Cannick, a Los Angeles-based political strategist and journalist, after the passage of Proposition 8. “The white gay community is banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on it parity with heterosexuals. But the right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both Black gays and Black straights. Does someone who is homeless or suffering from H.I.V. but has no health care, or newly out of prison and unemployed, really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?”

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NYT: ‘Pandemic Fuels Surge In U.S. Guns Sales’

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Luke Ford

I don’t think the pandemic fueled gun sales. It was the violence surge initiated by BLM/Antifa that has led to this.

America did not have a surge in murders until after the George Floyd death on May 25 and accompanying protest movement. Prior to that, crime was stable.

New York Times:

“There is a breakdown in trust and a breakdown in a shared, common reality,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who writes about political violence. “There is also all this social change, and social change is scary.”

…Sales did not change much under former President Donald J. Trump, but they exploded in 2020, up by 64 percent from the previous year. The single highest month last year was in June, as protests swept across the country after the murder of George Floyd.

…But while research has shown that higher gun prevalence is associated with a higher rate of gun deaths — including suicide — the question of whether a sudden surge in gun sales prompts a corresponding rise in gun violence does not have a clear answer…

Violent gun death rates in the state dropped by about half from 1989 to 2019, said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, compared to a 13 percent drop for the nation.

Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, said laws were often less effective than gun control advocates say. He said controls that targeted high-risk individuals, like mentally ill people, seemed to work better than those that sought to prevent young people from buying guns. Mass shootings, he said, were the least likely type of violence that laws would be effective against.

I suspect gun deaths dropped in California for reasons of changing demographics (fewer young people) and tougher sentences for criminals (three strikes law).

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Just Be Yourself (5-30-21)

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Luke Ford

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Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (5-28-21)

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

00:00 My 55th birthday
03:00 Disunited Nations 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwVaUntpNQ
06:00 The Inflating of Fears, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwzU9MxmGy4
09:00 Life After Trump – China, https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0c9&id=bba991dfd7
27:00 Emotional Energy Levels, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdga_AHBGv4
33:00 Who won the great debate? Nick Fuentes or Robert Barnes?
37:00 Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann: A Video Review, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R6MQVW35DU
41:00 Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome- causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, pathology
44:30 Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: My Story, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQr8Gu4WImg
49:00 “Sleep Disorders in Ehlers-Danlos and Related Syndromes: A Panoply of Paradoxes” – Alan Pocinki, MD, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr6Iv8_NVOw
54:20 Barricade Garage: “PLEASE SATISFY MY WHITENESS”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_IYNt79XIM
57:20 Opie & Anthony Was A Place For Men, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r3P47R6sAg
59:20 Robert Barnes says Nick Fuentes hates Jews
1:00:10 Every Dr. Fauci Interview
1:01:50 Jewish matchmaking
1:04:00 The Opie & Anthony Show – Anthony “Dice” Seinfeld
1:06:45 Jewish girl prank calls her parents on Z100
1:11:00 Vaush Reacts To A MASK OFF “Pro-White Europe” Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9UILCQ53A
1:15:00 What if there is no such thing as character?, https://medium.com/stoicism-philosophy-as-a-way-of-life/what-if-there-is-no-such-thing-as-character-f71f02a75f02
1:19:00 Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139670
1:24:00 Empirical approaches to moral philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character-empirical/
1:32:00 The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-accidental-superpower
1:40:20 Israel is a Giant Machine for Generating Anti-Semitism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpurS8LyuLI
1:44:30 Fat acceptance
1:48:10 The Psychology of Israel and Palestine | Jordan B Peterson
1:55:00 Pilleater: An Introduction to Al Stankard (HAarlem VEnison), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NcKRIWrIMc
1:56:30 Tucker Carlson on the Left’s war on science

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Addicted To Livestreams

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

From this 2021 paper:

* Indian users spend eight hours on various live streaming platforms, which is far more than the average six-hour trend globally (Ganjoo, 2018). These trends are visible on a regular basis. Recently, an incident was reported in India regarding a 26-year-old man who sought medical help to control his heavy viewing of streaming videos. He admitted that he used to watch streaming videos on an average 12 hours a day to avoid his unemployment issue and family pressure (Ganjoo, 2018).

* Four hours or more of viewing every day is defined as heavy viewing and may interfere with real-life relationships…

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Jewish Matchmaking

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

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Why Are Ethicists Usually Late To The Party?

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

Philosopher A tells me: “They tend to pick up social science stuff much later, and deploy it in their own feuds. They prefer reasoning by intuition. But when someone forces them out of it they respond. Moral psychology is a big thing now, but in the past it was just something that someone like Rawls had but didn’t defend.”

Philosopher B tells me: “Philosophy–particularly ethics–attracts people who, even if they’re intelligent, prefer to reason by intuition. They’re not good at critically analyzing empirical work. They usually just accept whatever studies jibe with their intuitions.”

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The role of wishful identification, emotional engagement, and parasocial relationships in repeated viewing of live-streaming games

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

From this 2020 paper:

* As viewing and interactions with others increase, audiences develop certain psychological feelings, such as wishful identification with the celebrity live-streamers and emotional engagement with other viewers, which go beyond the vicarious experience of watching a professional play a live-streamed game.

* “Virtual networking provides a flexible means for creating diffusion structures to serve given purposes, expanding their membership, extending them geographically, and disbanding them when they have outlived their usefulness,” and viewers are more likely to learn new ideas in the casual environment, like online communities, than normal social cycles. Thus, viewers put greater motivational investment in viewing live-streaming games when they think the streamer and/or other viewers are helpful in achieving their goal of acquiring new skills and tips. Additionally, the viewers exchange tips and tricks of their own during live-streaming sessions. This exchange enhances their bonds and ultimately helps them achieve satisfaction by accomplishing set goals, such as improving game skills and efficacy. In other words, the viewers and the streamer of the live-streaming games work together to achieve their collective aspiration in playing games, helping them to shorten the skill acquisition process.

* Emotional engagement occurs when a viewer is situated in a fast-paced interactive chatting environment where he or she feels emotionally connected with others and subsequently expresses his or her emotions in reacting to the live-streamer or other viewers (Lim et al., 2015). Therefore, to experience the emotional engagement, the viewer must get to a state of psychological immersion in the live chatting environment with an awareness of others’ presence (Brockmyer et al., 2009). The notion of emotional engagement has emerged as a central component of social TV, which enables viewers of a live-streaming show to feel emotionally connected (Guo, 2018; Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018) and express their emotions in response to the performer and other viewers.
In terms of triadic reciprocal causation, emotional engagement is an important behavioral factor that represents a new style of behavior (e.g., using emotes in Twitch) people start to learn from others as well as from the rules of the platform. Emotional engagement has emerged as the most conspicuous phenomenon that distinguishes viewing livestreaming shows on YouTube and other live-game platforms from viewing television shows. Observing how viewers are emotionally engaged during a streaming show stimulates one’s own emotional engagement. The SCT of mass communication states that individuals are “easily aroused by the emotional expressions of others” and “seeing others react emotionally to instigating conditions activates emotion arousing
thoughts and imagery in observers”.

* The term parasocial relationship (PSR) refers to a one-sided and long-term intimate relationship that an audience feels toward a media personality or celebrity based on repeated encounters with the performer through mediated reality… PSR can also be reinforced through the process of mutual awareness. Unlike passive entertainment consumption, viewing live-streaming
games may enhance the perceived mutual awareness when the game streamer acknowledges the presence of viewers and/or mention them while broadcasting their show. Unlike traditional celebrities, YouTubers and other live-streamers are empowered to speak with their audiences directly in real-time (Hou, 2019), and this allows for more effective interactivity. Thus, viewing live-streaming games facilitates the development of PSR more than watching other types of content in digital media.

* Emotional connectedness is a psychological state in which users feel they are emotionally connected with other viewers as well as with the streamer of a live-streaming show. The feeling of emotional connectedness comes from the nature of fast-moving live chats with other users who respond to each other’s comments and questions—some of these chats include earnest comments for the streamer. When viewers are situated in the fast-moving live chat environment, they may experience the phenomenon of immersion, or a “mental sensation of engagement” (Shin, 2019, p. 1214) momentarily, which drives them to be actively engaged with others.
Another type of emotional engagement is established through emotional expressions using the so-called emotes, which are used to call for instantaneous emotional reactions, such as surprise, excitement, joy, happiness, or sadness in the streamer and other users. Live streamers also use various techniques (e.g., have bots automatically answer viewers’ questions) to give the impressions that they are responding to their fans’ questions and comments. One of the essential user experiences in viewing a live-streaming game is the sense of emotional connectedness that the user feels while reading and responding to other users’ comments. Viewers of media content develop a sense of emotional connectedness not only with the performers (Russell, Norman, &
Heckler, 2004) but also other viewers who are participating in real-time conversations (Guo, 2018; Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018; Lim et al., 2015; Shin, 2016). Shin’s (2016) research suggests that viewers who experience a high level of emotional engagement with other viewers, as well as the performer, are more likely to develop a rich PSR with the performer.

Giles’s (2002) conceptual model of the development of PSR clearly explains the role of other users in the PSR process. Giles suggests that other users’ comments continuously update a viewer’s judgments about a media character or a performer during the viewing, which influences the development of PSR with the media character or the performer. A viewer’s ability to understand the emotional reactions of others is also strongly linked to PSR (Davis, Hull, Young, & Warren, 1987). Therefore, if users feel more emotional engagement with other users and the streamer, they will have a stronger sense of PSR with the streamer. Thus,
we propose the following hypothesis:
H2. Emotional engagement has a positive effect on PSR.

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