4 ms·

It turns out eventually you have to deal with reality.

SecretDreams 4mo ago
Sadly, all the time spent deferring reality ends up hurting a lot of bystanders. The debt they've run up is going to be painful, maybe moreso than the damages incurred from the anti-science and anti-transparency policies.
- vkou 4mo ago
  The debt would be less painful if the pricks that were responsible for this mess would be billed for the consequences of their poor king-making. We can start with whomever showed up to that inauguration, and expand from there. If they could afford that bribe, they can certainly afford to pay for repairing the damage their golden boy has caused.
  - brookst 4mo ago
    And/or if the debt was for something useful. There’s nothing wrong with running up massive low-interest debt if it’s invested in high-return projects. I’ll borrow every cent anyone will lend me at 2% if there’s a 4% savings account handy, and that’s the leverage the US used to enjoy. But just cutting taxes for the rich is not that model. Hopefully sanity prevails and we retroactively declare those tax cuts as loans, now due with interest. Yeah, not how contracts are supposed to work. So what.
    - ligne 4mo ago
      As we discovered to our cost here in the UK a few years ago, increasing government debt to give tax breaks to the rich doesn't just cause huge economic damage, it also makes it difficult for more responsible governments to borrow for actual investment, however critical.
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago
  [dead]
bko 4mo ago
What does this mean
- krapp 4mo ago
  Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. See: viruses and the efficacy of vaccines thereupon.
  - throwawaypath 4mo ago
    See: trans-women are human males.
- nolok 4mo ago
  The vaccine was mandatory, like in pretty much every army base of every half developed country, because not having it mandatory led to infection waves and in the army that's even worse than in genpop. The reasons for not doing the vaccine anymore were, essentially, "the vaccine is more dangerous than the sickness" and "the vaccine is not necessary to avoid the sickness". Both of those statement are, factually, scientifically, not true. That's reality. Which is what parent meant, no matter the deep conviction and the political innuendo, ultimately reality is you either do the vaccine and are safe for no risk or you don't and you get infection waves.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > because not having it mandatory led to infection waves and in the army that's even worse than in genpop It also makes a stupidly-obvious tactic viable for the enemy.
    - fhdkweig 4mo ago
      Specifically, there is a reason the US military still vaccinates for smallpox, a virus that was eradicated world-wide 50 years ago. As a civilian, you can't get it even if you wanted it, but as a soldier, you have to take it even if you don't want it. There is also the legend of sieging cities by catapulting diseased cows over the city walls. And if anyone knows the citation for that story, I'd love to see it.
neilv 4mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
- andai 4mo ago
  > The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
  - actionfromafar 4mo ago
    The actors of the empire are dismantling said empire. It will be studied, not least by its adversaries.
  - esafak 4mo ago
    I'm still waiting to hear that soliloquy in a movie.
    - CamperBob2 4mo ago
      It's pretty much a rewrite of a famous monologue in Network, for those who haven't seen that before. At least in tone and delivery.
      - andai 4mo ago
        https://youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs https://youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs
  - foogazi 4mo ago
    Deserves to be named too
zephen 4mo ago
[flagged]
javascriptfan69 4mo ago
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."
- jqpabc123 4mo ago
  I like it.
pixelpoet 4mo ago
"It is a well-known fact that reality has liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert
- zulux 4mo ago
  That's a bumper sticker looking for a Prius.
anon-3988 4mo ago
Hot take but we should let reality deal the blow. There's so many things that people think is redundant and unnecessary but actually have an army of people and machination that are working tirelessly to curb it. Only to called bloat and the deep state. Vaccines should not be given automatically, because that causes people to not think about why they need it. They think that it is something is imposed on them. But if they always have to request it (and the request is quick and always given, or super cheap at the shop) then people would have to know to get vaccinated. Parents will talk to each other about which vaccine is necessary (and its going to be all of them because they will know someone that died from it) This is true for any crisis really. For example, lets say that you are managing someone's finances or health, you found out that they are in a horrible situation. But then, you discovered a solution that does not require their attention. So you work tirelessly behind the scene to fix their finances or develop new cure. Voila! Problem solved. Or is it? You have not fixed the fundamental problem that they are an obese with obese lifestyle.
- annzabelle 4mo ago
  If millions more people are obese than were obese 50 years ago, clearly something has changed systemically that has made people more sedentary and eating more. People 50 years ago were not paying more conscious attention to their health than people today, but the background environment of available food and sedentary jobs/entertainment were different. The personal responsibility model of obesity works for individuals (including myself), but falls flat when discussing how to lower the weight of millions.
  - hammock 4mo ago
    “Freedom works for me but I want to also control millions of other people, for the good of me and their own good since they don’t know any better”
    - bjustin 4mo ago
      “Finding and halting the boot stomping on your friends and neighbors is a violation of your friends’ and neighbors’ freedoms”
michaelteter 4mo ago
Maybe. But long before that, many other people have to deal with the consequences of a few others' disbelief in reality.
roxolotl 4mo ago
> Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can't come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn't come true. Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday's weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can't violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. — Orwell https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Arubis 4mo ago
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
- analog8374 4mo ago
  all form is interpretation
jghn 4mo ago
However, they already got their headline. While I saw the original policy covered heavily in conservative news sources, I've not seen this retraction covered at all. Thus the base believes that the military is no longer "woke", and 100% of the desired value has been achieved.
iJohnDoe 4mo ago
All of this talk about reality is giving them way too much credit. The simple fact is that we’re dealing with idiots and pure stupidity. Idiots elected them and the idiots are having their day in the sun. Unfortunately, their stupidity is no longer contained to the office environments and executive leadership roles they had before. They are unfortunately able to make decisions that affect the general population. The US did an okay-ish job for a long time keeping people like this from gaining a foothold of too many positions of power. Unfortunately, we lost control and we may never get it back on the right track.
- hackingonempty 4mo ago
  Secretary Hegseth earned a BA from Princeton and an MPP from Harvard. Princeton and Harvard are graduating idiots?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - iJohnDoe 4mo ago
    Thank goodness! Such a relief! In that case, since he went to Princeton and Harvard, we shouldn’t consider his actions idiotic. Instead his actions are malicious intent.
    - hackingonempty 4mo ago
      But you didn't just say Hegseths actions are idiotic (fwiw I think they are), you said Hegseth is an idiot. The evidence suggests he is not.
    - hackingonempty 4mo ago
      There was another article about cheating at Brown that said Princeton hasn't proctored tests since the 19th century so maybe you are right and Hegseth is an idiot but still managed to cheat his way through school.

Sadly, all the time spent deferring reality ends up hurting a lot of bystanders. The debt they've run up is going to be painful, maybe moreso than the damages incurred from the anti-science and anti-transparency policies.

vkou 4mo ago
The debt would be less painful if the pricks that were responsible for this mess would be billed for the consequences of their poor king-making. We can start with whomever showed up to that inauguration, and expand from there. If they could afford that bribe, they can certainly afford to pay for repairing the damage their golden boy has caused.
- brookst 4mo ago
  And/or if the debt was for something useful. There’s nothing wrong with running up massive low-interest debt if it’s invested in high-return projects. I’ll borrow every cent anyone will lend me at 2% if there’s a 4% savings account handy, and that’s the leverage the US used to enjoy. But just cutting taxes for the rich is not that model. Hopefully sanity prevails and we retroactively declare those tax cuts as loans, now due with interest. Yeah, not how contracts are supposed to work. So what.
  - ligne 4mo ago
    As we discovered to our cost here in the UK a few years ago, increasing government debt to give tax breaks to the rich doesn't just cause huge economic damage, it also makes it difficult for more responsible governments to borrow for actual investment, however critical.
redsocksfan45 4mo ago
[dead]

bko 4mo ago

What does this mean

krapp 4mo ago
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. See: viruses and the efficacy of vaccines thereupon.
- throwawaypath 4mo ago
  See: trans-women are human males.
nolok 4mo ago
The vaccine was mandatory, like in pretty much every army base of every half developed country, because not having it mandatory led to infection waves and in the army that's even worse than in genpop. The reasons for not doing the vaccine anymore were, essentially, "the vaccine is more dangerous than the sickness" and "the vaccine is not necessary to avoid the sickness". Both of those statement are, factually, scientifically, not true. That's reality. Which is what parent meant, no matter the deep conviction and the political innuendo, ultimately reality is you either do the vaccine and are safe for no risk or you don't and you get infection waves.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > because not having it mandatory led to infection waves and in the army that's even worse than in genpop It also makes a stupidly-obvious tactic viable for the enemy.
  - fhdkweig 4mo ago
    Specifically, there is a reason the US military still vaccinates for smallpox, a virus that was eradicated world-wide 50 years ago. As a civilian, you can't get it even if you wanted it, but as a soldier, you have to take it even if you don't want it. There is also the legend of sieging cities by catapulting diseased cows over the city walls. And if anyone knows the citation for that story, I'd love to see it.

neilv 4mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

andai 4mo ago
> The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
- actionfromafar 4mo ago
  The actors of the empire are dismantling said empire. It will be studied, not least by its adversaries.
- esafak 4mo ago
  I'm still waiting to hear that soliloquy in a movie.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    It's pretty much a rewrite of a famous monologue in Network, for those who haven't seen that before. At least in tone and delivery.
    - andai 4mo ago
      https://youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs https://youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs
- foogazi 4mo ago
  Deserves to be named too

zephen 4mo ago

[flagged]

javascriptfan69 4mo ago

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."

jqpabc123 4mo ago
I like it.

pixelpoet 4mo ago

"It is a well-known fact that reality has liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert

zulux 4mo ago
That's a bumper sticker looking for a Prius.

anon-3988 4mo ago

Hot take but we should let reality deal the blow. There's so many things that people think is redundant and unnecessary but actually have an army of people and machination that are working tirelessly to curb it. Only to called bloat and the deep state. Vaccines should not be given automatically, because that causes people to not think about why they need it. They think that it is something is imposed on them. But if they always have to request it (and the request is quick and always given, or super cheap at the shop) then people would have to know to get vaccinated. Parents will talk to each other about which vaccine is necessary (and its going to be all of them because they will know someone that died from it) This is true for any crisis really. For example, lets say that you are managing someone's finances or health, you found out that they are in a horrible situation. But then, you discovered a solution that does not require their attention. So you work tirelessly behind the scene to fix their finances or develop new cure. Voila! Problem solved. Or is it? You have not fixed the fundamental problem that they are an obese with obese lifestyle.

annzabelle 4mo ago
If millions more people are obese than were obese 50 years ago, clearly something has changed systemically that has made people more sedentary and eating more. People 50 years ago were not paying more conscious attention to their health than people today, but the background environment of available food and sedentary jobs/entertainment were different. The personal responsibility model of obesity works for individuals (including myself), but falls flat when discussing how to lower the weight of millions.
- hammock 4mo ago
  “Freedom works for me but I want to also control millions of other people, for the good of me and their own good since they don’t know any better”
  - bjustin 4mo ago
    “Finding and halting the boot stomping on your friends and neighbors is a violation of your friends’ and neighbors’ freedoms”

michaelteter 4mo ago

Maybe. But long before that, many other people have to deal with the consequences of a few others' disbelief in reality.

roxolotl 4mo ago

> Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can't come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn't come true. Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday's weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can't violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. — Orwell https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Arubis 4mo ago

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

analog8374 4mo ago
all form is interpretation

jghn 4mo ago

However, they already got their headline. While I saw the original policy covered heavily in conservative news sources, I've not seen this retraction covered at all. Thus the base believes that the military is no longer "woke", and 100% of the desired value has been achieved.

iJohnDoe 4mo ago

All of this talk about reality is giving them way too much credit. The simple fact is that we’re dealing with idiots and pure stupidity. Idiots elected them and the idiots are having their day in the sun. Unfortunately, their stupidity is no longer contained to the office environments and executive leadership roles they had before. They are unfortunately able to make decisions that affect the general population. The US did an okay-ish job for a long time keeping people like this from gaining a foothold of too many positions of power. Unfortunately, we lost control and we may never get it back on the right track.

hackingonempty 4mo ago
Secretary Hegseth earned a BA from Princeton and an MPP from Harvard. Princeton and Harvard are graduating idiots?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- iJohnDoe 4mo ago
  Thank goodness! Such a relief! In that case, since he went to Princeton and Harvard, we shouldn’t consider his actions idiotic. Instead his actions are malicious intent.
  - hackingonempty 4mo ago
    But you didn't just say Hegseths actions are idiotic (fwiw I think they are), you said Hegseth is an idiot. The evidence suggests he is not.
  - hackingonempty 4mo ago
    There was another article about cheating at Brown that said Princeton hasn't proctored tests since the 19th century so maybe you are right and Hegseth is an idiot but still managed to cheat his way through school.