Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@GottaLaff I think the thing I was replying to or boosting there was deleted or something, so that post may not make much sense.

@jhavok@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel beg pardon, I tried to address that (with "at least, it seems structurally there are always 2 major parties that will seek balance") but I can see I was totally unclear with the next sentence. My claim is that with the way US presidential elections work, it appears that there will always be two parties, and neither will dominate (for long). One may die and be replaced by something else ~right away that has a different name – we've seen that, you're absolutely right.

@ChrisHolladay @GottaLaff @emptywheel Maybe we mean different things by authoritarian? I would have thought Democrats' support of powerful far-reaching government (welfare, health codes e.g. covid, gun control, etc, etc, etc) was pretty well known. (I mean, I'm not even saying all those things are bad...)

@pdiff1 @73rdNemesio @GottaLaff Yeah, I've noticed this too about hardcore libertarians. I mean, there's a balance, right? You don't want the state to be too authoritarian, but certain things probably aren't going to go so well if you go too far in the other direction.

@GottaLaff @emptywheel I think it can't really die – or, at least, it seems structurally there are always 2 major parties that will seek balance. (One or both parties may shift dramatically, as we've seen, but I think not die.)

Both parties certainly have their authoritarian elements, so keeping the rise of authoritarianism in check is important.

@simon_brooke @GossiTheDog Interesting. In the US both parties are absolutely awful on this particular kind of issue. A few pols in each party would see the problem with OP, I think, but as a whole I suspect they'd both enthusiastically support this proposal.

@simon_brooke @GossiTheDog American here: I was under the impression that the UK is always absolutely terrible on these issues, regardless of which party is in power. Are conservatives worse?

@emergent @stavvers probably not, though. https://en.chessbase.com/post/gender-differences-in-che

@ruffin @pikesley So I guess in some sense, if "she was playing her best", I could just stand there and ~probably get a point or two across the entire match.

(Of course, if she was in on it and trying to stop me from getting a point, then as you note she could just dial her serve back a bit and I would almost certainly get no points. Or even return anything.)

@RowinSpeez @pikesley @starkos Sure, but those men/boys teams are *really good* – definitely way better than 7/8 of men. They're more like .1%ile, not 12%ile.

@csstrowbridge @pikesley Unfortunately for us men, I think if Williams was playing against a 12th percentile male tennis player, she could dial her serves back enough to basically never fault.

@pikesley Accurate tweet: this is what would happen to you if the ball was going fast enough. Turns out it wouldn't throw your body back against the fence like you see in movies sometimes.

@Wikisteff @Andres @pikesley I'm not 100% sure I'm parsing you correctly, but even if the question was: "if you played a 5 set match against Serena Williams, do you think you would score a single point in any of the at least 30 games?" well, then 1/8 is still absurd.

There's a Dude Perfect video with Williams, and they manage to return a serve by having all 5 of them ready to receive at the same time. She easily gets the point anyway. They're far better than 7/8ths of men at tennis, of course. (The injuries they sustained in the video aren't as bad as the tweet, but still no points.)

The 1/8 is Dunning–Kruger at its finest.

@queenofnewyork @futurebird @keyboardworrier@lgbtqia.space Well, I won't say "never" – you make a good point that anything's possible.

But one thing to consider about those examples is that major political movements have been trying to undo affirmative action and make abortion illegal for a very long time, and they've been very explicit about it the whole time.

"Keep trans people out of an activity (like chess) open to only non-trans" is really not what I'm hearing anyone saying these days – it's not just that people are lobbying for that but have no political power to speak of.

In that sense, at least, this would be different from those examples.

@keyboardworrier@lgbtqia.space @queenofnewyork @futurebird Seemed a bit dickish the way it was worded so I took it back; beg pardon! But yes – any chance to wrestle with the cognitive dissonance?