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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It's not a fun thing to discuss, but unless you're willing to pick up a gun and likely die in the effort, rules and laws are all you have. The ball game is the rules mattering, and if the best you can do right now is kayfabe, that's the best you can do.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

To be clear, it is extremely well supported internationally that income negatively correlates with birthrates as women get more education and more options. This is great! But the OP is not about the international trend, it's about whether incentives work in developed countries. A different point!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I'm aware that Cato itself isn't reliable, but the article links several studies on the topic I was discussing and it seemed to be a reasonable summary of the findings inside developed countries. I certainly read your study as being fairly open to exactly what I'm saying.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And there's a complex social interplay there. As "having kids" becomes something that mostly rich people do, it becomes a status game, parents are expected to be much more involved. That drives things even more towards people who have email jobs. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

<em>Population and Development Review</em> | Population Council Journal | Wiley Online Library

Rich societies have witnessed a postponement of parenthood over the past two decades, and young adults’ economic conditions are often invoked to explain this trend. However, macro-level trends in bot...

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I don't think anybody discounts that there's a substantial int'l connection between women working and having options and decreasing birthrates. That's very clear. My point is that in developed countries, increasingly rich people have kids and poor people don't. www.cato.org/commentary/n...

cato.org

No, Prosperity Doesn’t Cause Population Collapse

A growing body of research is challenging the idea that rising prosperity always suppresses fertility.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also, you don't need to point out that it's an anecdote, when I literally prefaced my comment with "Anecdotally". What do you think you're acheiving there?

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's an anecdote that supports the material correlation. Here's survey data that reflects the same thing. www.unfpa.org/sites/defaul... My point was more that it seems pretty obvious that "hey, here's $10,000" won't be sufficient to make somebody jump into an obligation many times more expensive.

unfpa.org

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I dunno, I think the material analysis is pretty relevant. Anecdotally, I and all my rich friends have kids or are trying, all my non-rich friends aren't even in the universe of considering it. We're all mid/late thirties. I just think the bonus needs to be crazy big to overcome everything else.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'm working on a take that bullying was a load-bearing part of society that we got rid of. Men should be bullied for being trash fathers/husbands! Women should be bullied for being "WNBA fans" who can only name Sophie Cunningham! Everyone should be bullied for publicly saying illiterate idiot shit!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is like a 10/10 on the "Am I in Count Dracula's house right now?" red flags list.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Yeah, I'd disagree that the basic foundation of WWII was lawless. The axis powers were truly evil, not just a degree worse than the allies, a difference of kind. The allies committed crimes, some of which were prosecuted (not enough), but the basic endeavor was legally valid and just.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Legally supported violence as part of a declared war under a real and valid cassus belli.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It is a bad strategy to attempt to beat fascists in a lawless violence contest. This is their whole deal. Might as well try to beat a fish in a swimming contest.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I dunno, I read each of these as pretty fair and reasonable summaries. I think the anthropomorphizing language is the mental cheat, actually.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I mean, hucksters and fabulists have been around for ages. The stereotypical "snake-oil salesman" is an Old West invention, "sophists" were described by Plato. I'm more concerned with mechanisms to keep those folks out on the fringes and away from power. Shame used to be the big lever there.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The search for a kind of alchemy where being extremely cruel to someone else is good, actually, is one of the darker human thought patterns, and has lead to many of our darkest moments.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Odysseus, post Thrinancia: Dude, same!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think you'd have to RP any charisma check into full AI-speak. "Ah, you're totally right that I'm trying to get into this secure area, but that's because I'm also a guard. It's not just decent coin - it's a civic duty!"

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There will always be Nancy Maces. You can't discourage them because they cannot feel shame. You can encourage the person who would have cleaned her clock years ago to the point where you'd have never heard of her.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

In a nation of 300M people, where congresspeople earn less than the salary of a first year lawyer, you will tend to discourage people with prospects and encourage people for whom that is a lot of money. The overlap on the Venn diagram of "can win an election" and "is wowed by 170k" is just grifters.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ok, I know a good D&D warlock concept when I see one.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Look, it seems expensive, but what price could be too high for the world's greatest White Elephant gift?

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Driving a taxi or last-mile amazon delivery don't scratch that itch because they're already dominated by people who've internalized "no degree=percarity". Truck drivers (and auto workers, oilfield workers) are the last bastion for white dudes who got D's and who want to still do Leave it to Beaver.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's low education, male-dominated, reasonably paid and very white. A very large portion of the current political zeitgeist is a bunch of dudes who feel like they were promised sole-breadwinner status with no post-secondary degree, and are mad as hell they can't have it.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I mean no shade on the actor! I just think there have been a fair number of directors who, upon having to find a way to make a little money on a real turd have said "hey, do you think Staham would do it?"

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

There's something funny about how you can look at Uwe Boll's career and just watch the evolution of dogshit lowest common-denominator slop. Zero-effort video game adaptations? ✔️ Lazy rip-offs of better movies? ✔️ Jason Statham? ✔️ Casual racism? 💯 The man knows how to collect a cheque.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Kelvin Sheppard is getting fired, man. Sorry, seems like a good guy, but holy crap.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And the knock-on is that after future-ISIS poisons a reservoir or takes down a power grid, the only answer will be an insane omnipresent surveillance state.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The risk that I keep thinking about is the possibility that it just lowers the threshold for planning and executing really terrible terrorist actions. Like, the reason we don't see a lot of really destructive stuff is because only a few mostly sane mostly happy people know how to do those things!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Come for the tea, stay for a legitimately kinda heartwarming story of a relatively nice reply-guy calmly explaining that the "OMG IDIOT DESTROYED" initial read of this is actually just somebody being cool and open with somebody else!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

That's actually a pretty reasonable goal for Deshaun if you remove "week" and amend it to "over the course of the season".

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You're the author, I'll defer to you on what you meant, but I read your article (in good faith, if you'll believe it) and I came away with some pretty anodyne textbooky descriptions and some flat discussion questions, and with an implication that some teachers would use it to fail critics of Israel.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Your article in included examples of curriculum that I pointed out can be read multiple ways (including very progressive ones), and you responded "we all know that that isn't what's suggested to be taught here". Indeed, I think you are flatly saying we can't trust teachers with the nuance here.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Like, it's a modernization of the old "they claimed to want to protect the world from authoritarian communism, but actually just massacred innumerable innocent people", which was basically what I learned about the Cold War in High School. I mean, give teachers an ounce of trust here.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"Our ideals can come from understandable places and take us to dark ones" and "claiming virtue and living up to it are very different" are maybe THE fundamental lessons of civics! I don't think we know at all what will be taught based on what's in the article!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"Fix You" in the Newsroom for both. Undeniably affecting (self-derogatory) but also just the cheesiest most melodramatic thing in the world. The whole program in microcosm! I hesistate to post it because it's so cringe! www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6JJ...

youtube.com

Newsroom - The Shooting

YouTube video by dnasewell

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I think you're reading anti-Palestine messages into flat questions that could go either way. "How did the focus of zionism change over time?" and "how can you include others who are different from you?" seem open to clear progressive answers. "What has happened to refugees since '48?" Even more so

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I'm not sure I agree with the thrust of this. Contrasting Canada and Israel seems extremely relevant for Canadian kids. Can a state both openly favour a religious group and remain democratic? Do "guarantees" of rights actually mean those rights are advanced? These are big important questions!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I mean, "fraud" includes several crimes. Lots of people lying here, and lots of potential angles where they might have violated one criminal provision or another. Tax fraud? Wire fraud?

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

That's true, but there's still enormous resentment on East/West lines, and it's massively prosperity focused. I have a whole branch of my family who lives our East and like half of them are big AfD people. It really sucks!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It is an uncomfortable truth that our societies have optimized for growth by immediately chucking people who aren't good at school into a dumpster. That does like 50 things, but one of them is create a massive urban/rural split. These people are still smart enough to see that we abandoned them!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

IMO, it's winners vs. losers. You're not supposed to call rural places backwards because it's rubbing it in. The reality is that the top half of the graduating class of all of these places immediately flees to big cities. It really is inequality, just not the kind we feel comfortable ameliorating!

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Not for nothing, but trade wars are wars of will. Yes, the states is way way bigger, but we care way way more. Our leader polls like Saddam Hussein in forged Iraqi polls, their leader polls like Saddam Hussein in American ones. We can target specific states and races, they can't. Canada will win

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The person who created this 100% knows this. This is the whole cultural significance of Starship Troopers to the modern right. It's a way to advocate fascism in a plausibly deniable way.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Honestly, big win for the Clippers to not have to give these picks to Sam Presti, as per usual.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Granted, "we'll single cover the fastest guy on the field, and keep doing it, damn the torpedos" for a whole year sounds pretty pretty unlikely.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Everyone associated with the Lions loves Jamo because he's basically everybody's little brother. He gets talked up like crazy every camp. IMO, his production is pretty defense dependent. If they sell out to stop the short stuff, he crushes, so it comes down to how teams will defend the Lions.

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Bernie Hendriks @berniehendriks.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Trump in Canada is the perfect wedge issue. Infinite salience, splits the cons exactly 50/50, unifies everybody else. It's what the cons try to do with trans stuff except that it 100% obviously matters to everyone all the time.

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Reposted by Bernie Hendriks

Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

We're throwing up assad numbers here, GET SPENDING

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