I don’t read my replies

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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Poverty rates are extremely difficult to measure. I’m sure this data is good-faith, but there are lot’s of statistics like this that are dishonest and spread by people like Stephen Pinker in order to shill for neo-liberalism.

    For example the cash/day measure can be tweaked until you get the trend you want. We all know that cost of living varies between the States, so imagine how much it varies between different countries and continents. Saying a person only makes X/day would mean completely different things in a poor vs. wealthy country. Accounting for this difference is more opportunity to dial in the answer your looking for.

    I’ve heard conservatives argue that “assets” like refrigerators and ovens be counted as wealth; owing to their belief that poverty is a choice and the privations are exaggerated. Meanwhile those of us on the left are automatically skeptical of figures that don’t show that poverty is bad and getting worse.

    My point is that numbers like this should never be accepted credulously. Microtrends, the source of this data lives in the “market analysis” data space and I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the numbers align with the priors of conservative business types.























  • I looked this up, and honestly pretty tame.

    one of the stories:

    Struwwelpeter describes a lazy, dirty boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular.

    Devastating. In Irish lore, ghosts appear to be phantasmagorical dancers in the forest and if you join in, YOU JOIN IN. As I mentioned elsewhere, a trespass unto the wrong part of the forest or even stepping in a fairy circle might provoke the faeries to kidnap your infant.

    The Irish stuff is less cautionary tale and more explaining why terrible shit happens for no reason.

    EDIT: another story from Struwwelpeter

    Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben (“The Story of the Inky Boys”): Nikolas (or “Agrippa” in some translations)[7] catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips them in black ink.

    Based.