FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
48m ago
No, it's not the same thing. But it's the same kind of weird deflection. What makes you think the most effective means of combatting anti-immigration sentiment is to point out that the perpetrator of a horrific violent crime was a legal immigrant? That's even worse than if it was committed by a refugee or asylum seeker!
Yeah. I'm similarly baffled when I see people mentioning that the perpetrator of latest mass stabbing incident was a British (or in one case, Irish) citizen (by which they mean someone who secured citizenship during his lifetime), like they're laying down a trump card.
So you mean our processes for immigration and naturalisation are so lacking that they can completely fail to identify and weed out a deranged knife-wielding lunatic? Way to tell on yourself.
FtttG
3hr ago
It would be interesting to find out what proportion of these murders were committed by first-generation migrants.
FtttG
8hr ago
The unserious gotcha is that I am skeptical of this kind of "strong revealed preference" argument, because you might say the same about doing heroin.
Why are you sceptical? Many people who do heroin do so more than once, from which we can infer that they have a strong revealed preference for doing heroin. Many women who have one child have more than one, from which we can make the same inference.
FtttG
8hr ago
There is at the very least no reason, by your logic, why confirmed lesbians and asexuals couldn't be allowed to serve.
I'm confused by the implication that being a lesbian or asexual means you don't want to be a mother, or can't find fulfilment by so doing. Many lesbians get pregnant via sperm donor.
FtttG
2d ago
On Sunday morning my girlfriend and I left our apartment building, which opens on to a little pedestrian lane. Directly opposite the entrance is another apartment complex and a shisha café, and standing outside was one of the most gopnik-looking Slavs you've ever seen: navy tracksuit, white sneakers, baseball cap. We assumed he was waiting for someone, although he'd incongruously placed two full canisters of nitrous oxide on the path in front of him.
We leave to do some shopping, and when we come back a few hours later he hasn't budged. Watching him from the window in our flat, he starts openly huffing the nitrous. I'm a bit put out by someone openly huffing nitrous oxide in broad daylight in a pedestrian thoroughfare with small children walking past with their parents, so I call the police, who never show up.
However, a few minutes later, the proprietor of the shisha café (an Arab man) comes out of the building and tells the gopnik to get lost, which he does immediately. Problem solved.
This little encounter inspired me to invent a new game I'm calling Ethnic Rock-Paper-Scissors. As we can clearly see from the exchange above, Arab beats Slav. Slav, of course, beats Jew. And who does Jew beat? Why, Arab obviously.
When I explained the concept to my brother, he proposed that Roman > Anglo, Anglo > Celt, and Celt > Roman. His friend suggested that Pakistani > Bangladeshi, Bangladeshi > Indian, and Indian > Pakistani.
What others can you think of? Note that I'm specifically looking for ethnic groups, not nationalities ("Vietnamese > American" doesn't count, because the American soldiers in Vietnam were multi-ethnic).
The proposition that the Wachowskis could make another thought provoking Matrix movie is unfounded.
Interestingly, while the original trilogy was directed by the Wachowskis, The Matrix Resurrections was solely directed by Lana. I'm not saying that Lilly's involvement would have improved the experience, but strictly speaking the Wachowskis have not made a Matrix movie together since Revolutions. (Lilly is, uh, otherwise occupied.)
FtttG
2d ago
Take the internet historians video about the sinking of the Costa Concordia, i was barely aware of it having happened but the story of how crazy the disaster was was interesting on its own without any investment in the actual real world event.
I hardly knew anything about Costa Concordia before watching that video, and I've since watched that video about five times.
FtttG
2d ago
I heard once that someone wanted to make a movie of it, and I'd be interested to see how the hell they would try.
James Franco has attempted to adapt at least one of McCarthy's less cinematic works, and my understanding is that the results left a lot to be desired.
FtttG
3d ago
It's the only McCarthy book I've read from start to finish, and I remember sobbing for literally hours when I got to the end. Not sure if I could put myself through it again.
I don't know why I mentally associated Cormac Mcarthy with abstruse James-Joyce-style "literary" fiction
I've heard that this is true of Blood Meridian, but that his style became more accessible the older he got.
FtttG
3d ago
I told my boss that, for my friend who works in a tech company, "AI" stands for "Affordable Indians". He nearly fell out of his chair from laughing so hard.
Earlier this week I finished The Story of a New Name, the second book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. While I can admire these books on a theoretical level, ultimately I just think they're not for me. The thing that really puts me off them is just how slow they are: that holiday in Ischia went for well over a hundred pages, most of which consisted of "we woke up, went to meet Nino and Bruno at the beach, we talked about this and that, there was sexual tension, then we went home", occasionally jazzed up with Lila throwing a tantrum or a visit from Stefano. Even my girlfriend, who loves those books, did admit that the slow pace had become a problem for her by the fourth book. I don't plan to read books three and four any time soon: I have a hard time caring what happens to any of the characters.
At @TitaniumButterfly's recommendation, I ordered Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, not realising until it had arrived that it's about nine hundred pages long. If I manage to finish it before the new year (which will be an undertaking) it will be the longest book I've read this year by almost three hundred pages. I started reading it on Thursday, and by page 17 it had already made me laugh out loud twice, which is more than e.g. Doxology managed in ~400. I'm liking it so far, but it has the same problem that every book with this narrative structure has: with the constant jumping back and forth between different perspective characters in different temporal and spatial locations, it's hard to stay immersed, as just as you're getting invested in one of the characters' stories, the chapter ends and you're whisked off elsewhere.
A long time ago I asked on this forum for deadlift advice, and someone linked this video which pointed out numerous things I was doing wrong: bending my knees too much etc. For deadlifting I wear a weightlifting belt and lifting straps. Yesterday my girlfriend pointed out that I may be leaning my head too far back at the top of the lift which could be hurting my shoulders.
With squats, I find the single most important thing is that the barbell should only move up and down: if it's moving forwards and backwards, you're doing something wrong. Maybe film yourself on your phone to make sure.
FtttG
4d ago
This video is private.
Obviously some people weren't as partial to it as you were.
If a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they begin to face harassment, abuse, violence and so on, and hence decide that it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation (even though doing so makes them unhappy) – then that's a travesty the trans community has every right to be outraged by. Whether they're trans women, cross-dressers or drag queens, I don't want any male people getting bullied or assaulted just because they're wearing clothes cut for women. A male person should not get harassed or beaten up for wearing women's clothes, even if by his own admission he's doing it to fulfil a sexual urge.
But if a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they attract a few funny looks, and hence decide it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation – I have to be honest, I'm nowhere near as sympathetic. To me, the fact that they were so easily swayed by minor social influences like this suggests to me that their gender identity wasn't a particularly stable one in the first place. It's grist for the social contagion model of trans identification. If getting someone to change their mind and revert back to being cis is as easy as getting a fence-sitting goth to remove their piercings, then I have a hard time believing that their gender identity is anywhere near as fixed, deep-seated and innate a characteristic as trans activists would have us believe. And if ten strangers giving you funny looks is sufficient to trigger a change in one's gender identity (or at least sufficient to make you change your mind on socially and medically transitioning), it stands to reason that medical transition on the basis of something so flighty is an even worse idea than it sounds at first brush. Like it or not, if you do anything a bit unconventional, there will be some amount of people who will laugh at you or give you funny looks. Imagine you heard someone say "I tried being a musician, but some people laughed at me and told me not to quit my day job, so I gave it up". A determined musician will keep at it in spite of people laughing at them and telling them not to quit their day job.
Maybe I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the study found that this was a common story: "I started socially and medically transitioning, but some people started looking at me funny or giving me dirty looks, so I decided not to bother – as a consequence of which my anxiety and depression have returned tenfold". But somehow I suspect that this isn't the case.
FtttG
5d ago
I don't doubt that some self-identified white nationalists have voted for candidates other than Trump. But I think it's reasonable to assume the majority of such people have voted for Trump in every election they've been able to.
The last few weeks, I've been doing strength training on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On each day, I do three of the five exercises, for which I do five sets of as many reps as I can before I have to stop. I vary it so I only repeat one of the exercises on consecutive sessions, and after five sessions I've done an equal amount of all five exercises. For example:
- Monday: deadlift (1), squat (1), bench (1)
- Wednesday: pullup (1), squat (2), overhead (1)
- Friday: pullup (2), overhead (2), bench (2)
- Monday: deadlift (2), bench (3), overhead (3)
- Wednesday: pullup (3), squat (3), deadlift (3)
Every Monday I increment all the free weight exercises by 2.5 kg.
I'm making steady progress on my deadlifts, and can now do ten* reps of 152.5 kg without stopping (this website puts my 1RM at 203kg which would put me in the intermediate category for my age and mass – that being said, I've never actually lifted that much weight). Partly this is because I've started using lifting straps: I always found my grip strength was the limiting factor, and it's always the grip on my right hand which falters first, even though that's my dominant hand. I can do fifteen squats without stopping, although admittedly only 80kg (I gave up on squats probably two years ago and have only recently taken them up again). My current goal there is to squat my bodyweight at least ten times, which if I maintain this program I will achieve by January at the latest. I'm a bit frustrated to find that, while my reps and maximum weight are steadily increasing on these two exercises, when it comes to the bench press my maximum weight is increasing but not my reps: last week I could do ten reps at 70kg without stopping, but on Wednesday I could only do seven reps at 72.5kg. My pull-ups are shockingly poor, and with the overhead press I'm starting from literally nothing, having never done one before a month ago.
I think taking protein powder every day (immediately after working out, where possible) is improving my motivation: it doesn't feel like such a struggle to go to the gym before work as it used to.
*True at the time of writing, I did eleven this afternoon.
FtttG
5d ago
I can't help but thinking that Stoeffel bears a passing resemblance to Denny from The Room. And earlier this year I said the same thing about Ziz.
Is everyone Denny from The Room? Are you Denny from The Room? Am I Denny from The Room?
I don't recall ever saying trans people aren't being discriminated against. What I've been consistently saying is that there's a big difference between discrimination and unjust discrimination. If you have gender dysphoria and people "treat you like a mentally ill person", that's "discrimination" – in the same way that it's "discrimination" to make accommodations for people with disabilities. Definitionally, you are treating people differently based on a trait. I literally don't know what the demand is here: "I have a mental illness (gender dysphoria), I am receiving treatment for that mental illness (hormones), it's obvious to everyone around me that I have a mental illness – but I don't want to be treated like I have a mental illness"? It just seems incoherent to me.
If you experience autogynephilia and people treat you like a sexual deviant, that's "discrimination" but, well, you are a sexual deviant. If you dress in a knowingly unconventional manner for your sex and people look at you funny, that's discrimination – but I also just think that's part of the game when you dress unconventionally. No one would care if a goth complained that he stopped being a goth because everyone was looking at him funny, so why should we care here?
I also think the practical effects of the discrimination being experienced matter here a great deal. I don't want trans people to be murdered, beaten up or harassed because of how they identify, nor to be unable to secure accommodation or employment. As trans people are so fond of telling us, they just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. Over the last ~decade I've had an increasingly hard time believing that's all they want – but if the worst discrimination you can honestly claim to personally experience is that people sometimes look at you funny but otherwise leave you alone to do your own thing, that sounds as close to their stated goal as makes no difference.
FtttG
5d ago
An AI covered Eminem's "Without Me" in a soul/R&B style and it works incredibly well.
As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the underlying flaw in these debates is that what progressives want from a police force (assuming they want a police force at all) is fundamentally incoherent.
Either the police can adopt an aggressive, proactive and hands-on approach to policing African-American (and Hispanic, to a lesser extent) communities, which means more COCs (criminals of colour) getting shot and/or being sent to prison; or they can adopt a hands-off, laissez-faire approach, which means more people of colour getting victimised by the criminals in their communities. There's pretty much no way for police officers to cut down on the rate of violent crime in a community without arresting the perpetrators, and there's no way for police officers to be more hands-off without a huge spike in crime victimisation.
I'd like to believe there's some hypothetical point on the thermostat that would keep the majority of progressive activists happy most of the time, but it's hard to envision what this might look like. American progressives have been complaining about over- and under-policing in black American communities for as long as I've been alive, and indeed many decades prior.
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