FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
I ask you to consider that the Overton window has shifted significantly with regard to judging female sexual choice and single motherhood since Sk8er Boi was released.
Like I said, maybe I live in a different one than you do. Because in my social circles, it's extremely common to mock women for getting ugly or having multiple uninvolved fathers to her kids. I guess maybe it's the kind of thing, like being fat, that's tied to another reason to hate them: look at this BITCH from high school and how fat she got. I suppose I wouldn't bring it up at Church, but it's a common enough topic of conversation.
My own "peaked in high school" anecdotes: a few years back I was waiting for a table at a Perkins with a couple buddies, and in the lobby I kept looking at this guy surreptitiously across the room. Because I couldn't decide if I knew him or not: he looked just like Johny Johnson the quarterback and star pitcher I went to high school with, but he was fat. Like, really fat. Like Johny ate himself. And I couldn't quite make up my mind to go say hello before we were seated, I wasn't sure if I knew him or not.
So I went home and found Johny Johnson on Facebook and, yup, that was him. He was a middle school teacher at a local school, and an assistant coach for their football team. And fat. Very fat.
And I'm not going to lie, there's an atavistic part of my brain that wants to buy into the revenge fantasy of the "peaked in high school" narrative. In high school he was a star and I couldn't make the baseball team, but now I'm in the best shape of my life and he is obese. In high school he made fun of me and got invited to the good parties, now I make twice what he does. It's an easy and appealing narrative for me. He made fun of me on occasion in high school for being a loser (I was), but now I will make fun of him for being a loser!
But if I'm honest, that's both cruel and pointless, and it's an attempt to impose a just-world meaning on events that are basically unconnected. Johny wasn't that mean to me, probably less mean than I deserved if I'm honest, the urge to get one-up on him is just retrospective jealousy. The "peaked in high school" narrative is an attempt to impose meaning: his success in high school destined him to be a middle school teacher, my nerdy loserdom destined me for success. My dateless suffering as a teenager lead me to read Tolstoy and Chomsky and built my mind for law school, while his easy athletic success stunted his growth. But that's not really true. I probably would have wound up pretty much the same if I had made the baseball team, and nothing about his college football career prevented him from joining my gym and staying in shape. My suboptimal talents and choices in high school didn't lead to optimal talents and choices as an adult, nor did Johny's more optimal talents and choices in high school lead to suboptimal outcomes as an adult. At any rate, middle school teacher is a noble profession and I hope Johnny is happy.
Two other kids from my graduating class illustrate the point.
There was another kid on the football team, an absolute brick shithouse of a running back. I was briefly madly in love with his ex girlfriend senior year, she and her family referred to him as "Hooked on Phonics" after a disastrous Scrabble game at her house. Hooked on Phonics would seem a prime candidate to peak in high school, a hulking jock who could barely spell, but last I heard of him he's a captain in the Army, I think in some kind of missile targeting role. Good for Captain Phonics! And frankly he looks like he'd still mog me in the power clean.
A close friend of mine from high school, Ben seemed like the classic kid who would blossom after graduation, he was a straight-A AP student who was majoring in STEM at a state honor's college on scholarship. And more than raw academic smarts, I never met anyone like Ben for competitive gaming, he was a genius, he once pioneered a strategy in competitive Pokemon so unbeatable that it was later banned, he was a wizard at texas hold'em and brilliant at any card or board game. He seemed like he had all the traits to succeed as an adult. Ben got into drugs, never graduated, got arrested a few times, and died a couple years back, probably a drug overdose.
The truth is that provided you graduate high school and go to college, there's not much that happened in high school that will really hold you back or matter for the rest of your life. If you don't get arrested, don't get a bunch of DUIs, or get yourself killed or addicted to drugs, a free man in America can probably turn himself around. In either direction.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
I suggest that we delineate female perishableness, which is a biological reality that cannot be addressed in polite company without the penalty of cancelling, from the peaking-in-high-school concept that does exist within the Overton window and is thus safe to discuss.
I guess maybe I live in a different Overton Window than you do, but it's pretty common both personally and culturally to mock the "hot girl in high school" who now either isn't as hot as the female speaker mocking her or who rejected the male speaker mocking her back then but would be chasing him now (see the link above to Sk8er Boi). My free association with "peaked in high school" is the proverbial prom king and queen, the jock and the hot girl, who are fat and ugly and still talking about prom twenty years later.
I’d also argue that it’s a bit over the top to argue that girls are often at their prettiest at 16-18. Realistically speaking I think female fertility and beauty usually peaks at the age of 21-22.
I'm not saying most women peak at 16, just that some do. Women in general peak in attractiveness after puberty and before they get fat, and because that's pretty much a ratchet (pre GLP1) and nobody really loses weight, girls who put on the freshman 15 (or 30) when they get to college are less hot than they were in high school.
If we're doing "peak hotness," if you take care of yourself and you don't get fat I don't think there's any really significant decline until at least 35, maybe later. Up to that point variation between people is much more important than variation between age groups.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
I think it varies person to person, not just culturally or on a biological clock. People mature at different rates, hit important milestones at different times, have particular peak experiences at different times. For some people it's high school, for some it's college, for some it's serving in the military, for one of my second cousins he talks the same way about the time he spent working as a milkman.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16hr ago
Total opposite for me. High school feels like a blur in comparison to undergrad. High school me feels largely remote and unimportant, closer to kindergarten than to today, where freshman to junior years of undergrad there's hardly a month that didn't hardwire an important part of me through some experience or other.
So I don't think it's just that. Rather peaking in high school is a useful insult because someone who peaks in high school doesn't do anything high status or interesting (to writers), where peaking in college you probably move on to something more high status. Perhaps, like Stoner you become a professor, the guy who peaks in high school and now coaches the high school wrestling team is historically regarded as less than the guy who peaks in college, hangs around to get a phd, and becomes a professor, even though it's much the same behavior.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
I'll check that out! My version, which I purchased for a great books course back in freshman year undergrad, is by Beidler. He doesn't do a poetic translation, but still rhymes occasionally, which I find off putting. If you aren't going to rhyme the whole time, I feel like you can never rhyme, because when I get a few rhymes I start expecting them to continue.
Let's return to some of the original texts: listen to Glory Days and read/watch/listen to Death of a Salesman with a particular focus on the characters of Biff and Happy.
Lyrics of Glory Days:
I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool, boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was
Glory days
Well, they'll pass you by, glory days
In the wink of a young girl's eye, glory days
Glory days (Alright)
Well, there's a girl that lives up the block
Back in school, she could turn all the boys' heads
Sometimes on a Friday, I'll stop by and have a few drinks
After she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband, Bobby, well they split up
I guess it's two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times
She says when she feels like crying, she starts laughing, thinking 'bout
Glory Days
This is the basic concept: peaking in high school is about a person who still talks about events in high school, when they were the number one in high school. It's also, we can see, gender neutral. If anything, peaking in high school is way more common for women: girls are often at their prettiest at 16-18, I can remember a lot of girls in college where my wife looked at their old facebook pictures and thought "wow they were so pretty 30lbs ago..."
They were the hottest and the best in high school, everyone thought they were so cool, they did all the cool things back then, and now they don't, their life is limited and boring. So they still talk about high school.
Then consider Death of a Salesman, which Arthur Miller specifically wrote in reference to his uncle Manny a salesman. When Arthur was young, Manny was constantly comparing his own sons to Arthur, with the implication that they were in competition. Arthur, the weedy literary type, would go on to write important American plays and bang Marilyn Monroe; Manny killed himself. Throughout the play, Happy and Biff are Willy Loman's pride and joy, and he brags constantly about their exploits as athletes in high school, and derides his friend's son Bernard as an "anemic" loser. Now in their 30s, Bernard is arguing cases in front of the supreme court, while Happy is a cad and Biff is a burnout working as an itinerant farm laborer. The action of "peaking in high school" is largely through the mechanism of the parents, Willy and Charley, rather than through the boys themselves. Willy is still bragging about the high school exploits of his sons, while Charley doesn't need to even talk about Bernard's accomplishment because they are so obviously superior. Biff and Happy are pathetic, man-children, immature.
Salesman lives on as a canonical AP English Lit play because it speaks to something in the human condition: Arthur Miller's revenge of the nerds fantasy against his uncle. A lot of people, high school nerds, recognize themselves in Bernard.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
the cover blurb is from the (now disgraced) Neil Gaiman
Is he still disgraced? The whole thing seemed so silly I kind of assumed it would blow over.
Yeah I can't defend the monkey picture application of NFTs, I'm talking about the underlying technology.
Burberry's sales have been cratering. It's just the lifecycle of the heritage brand. Lately they've been trying to reset to their "heritage" items, but the efforts have been flailing so far. You can tell, because I've read their puff pieces placed in the NYT and WSJ fashion sections, and they don't mention WWI, which is basically the birth of the brand. In WWI the iconic Burberry "Trench" coat existed for the trenches, and it was so good that while it was never issued British officers would buy them with their own money.
What I think could be a useful application of the NFT concept is if we manage to culturally tie the concept of owning an authentic rolex (and the utils that produces for people who own one) into owning the watch + the NFT associated with it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The book made Romain Gary one the guys I want to dive into this year, he's fascinating. WWII vet, fought under De Gaulle, married Jean Seberg before the FBI drove her to suicide. He actually won the Goncourt prize, the French equivalent to a Pulitzer in fiction, twice, despite the rules saying that you can only win it once, because he released another book under a pseudonym and his fake persona won the prize.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It appears to be OP's position that the majority of the American public is engaged in some level of treason against itself.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
You literally said these are the consequences of shooting protestors.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The merits seem to change on a daily basis, and have not been explained publicly in any way. I watched Hegseth's interview on 60 minutes last night, his explanation of the demand for "unconditional surrender" was vague to the point of incoherence. He smirked and played coy about whether there were troops on the ground ("well I sure wouldn't tell you that would I?" "we're not ruling anything out"), until the interviewer pointed out that he had said there were no troops on the ground earlier in the week at which point he claimed that was accurate.
As Daryl Cooper pointed out during the Gaza war, when Unconditional Surrender Grant or Eisenhower or Mcarthur demanded Unconditional Surrender from their foes, there was a basic understanding that once the foe surrendered, the conqueror would take on the government of the surrendered territory. We do not seem to intend to do that.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Israel and the US Military (but perhaps, not Trump) may have a plan that could work - but if the propaganda apparatus is efficacious enough Trump will bail and we'll be stuck with a hankering for revenge outcome.
Does anyone actually have any idea what this plan is? Has it been expressed to anyone publicly?
If it's a plan that won't work, isn't it treasonous to support it by your standard?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Although it did seem to very much alter the relationship between Venezuela and America's respective "regimes".
Mostly unilaterally, on the part of the United States.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
"Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse to hang the losers."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.
That would be a very good reason not to start wars that lack democratic approval.
The purpose of requiring a congressional declaration of war is to make sure that you avoid this problem by having democratic backing for your war effort.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I just finished Romain Gary's The Dance of Genghis Cohn, a genuinely mind-blowingly brilliant literary work that I only heard about because I saw it in the book review section of a vintage 1968 Playboy magazine I was reading. It's a buddy-cop novel set in the 1960s about the ghost of a Jewish comic that haunts the SS officer turned police chief who shot him, who have to solve a series of murders of naked men found around their German town. The best book I've read this year so far.
I also read Mann's Death in Venice, which...what the fuck? It's just that? This is a well known literary book I've run into mentions of many times, and it turns out it's just a book about an old German who spends the whole book mooning after a "beautiful" twelve year old Polish boy. I was less disgusted by Lolita. Just, what the fuck how was this published in 1912 Germany?
I'm starting the Canterbury Tales which is kinda leaving me flat. I think the translation I'm reading, which is the one leftover from the great books course I took in undergrad sixteen years ago, is kinda bad. It uses a lot of minced oaths, which just seem odd. It uses the word "screw" a lot to mean "have sex with" which just takes me out of the piece, it should be either "make love to" or "fuck," any other term is unpoetic to me. Stuff like that. I'm trying to do one tale a night, and the good news is the book is just a few of them, so I can switch translations soon, does anyone have a favorite? I prefer poetic beauty to accuracy.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
And really I think most of the AGI people will be happy to go about this probabilistically, you don't need AGI to have a 100% chance of coming about for these investments to become rational, as little as a 5% chance can make these investments start to make sense.
If you're willing to concede that you're talking about most AGI people, then I think we're in complete agreement! I'm not saying that all belief in AGI can be described as religious in nature, or that all people who have any level of belief in it can be described as religious. I'm saying that there exists some percentage of people working in AI who have an absurd, religious level of belief both in the odds of AGI occurring and the things that AGI will be able to do, and the combination is such that these people have effectively zero concern for all the sorts of things that ordinary investors care about. There's some level of irrational belief in the Singularity that is best analogized to religious belief in the apocalypse, and I think there's a percentage of workers in AI who have the belief.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's basically a fancy, unbreakable, unforgeable Certificate of Authenticity that comes with your aunt's collectible plates. The thing is, Certificates of Authenticity are a huge part of the economy. A huge percentage of what people pay for in many consumer goods is essentially some form of branding value, the provenance of the good rather than the use value. The NFT is a way to totally detach that from the manufacturing process, while also making it more concrete.
Whine about it if you must, but a huge percentage of the global economy is run on the basis that a Rolex Submariner is worth more than an Armida built to the same specs, a shirt from Ralph Lauren or Lacoste is worth more than one from LAA, an Hermes purse is worth more than one from Quince, etc. The material cost or production cost differences between the fashion brand name items and the knockoff is minimal, or sometimes even reversed: LAA almost certainly pays their workers more than Ralph Lauren does. The use value difference is virtually zero for the consumer, except insasmuch as the consumer draws value out of having an "authentic" xyz.
You can argue that there is no material difference between an "authentic" Rolex and a superfake, or between an Hermes Birkin and any other leather tote bag, but a huge portion of the economy is built on the opposite assumption. Is there any sense in which any visual art is worth more when authentic versus printed at a sufficient resolution and quality? The industry is built on that assumption.
The NFT, if accepted as the financial representation of that branding value, allows that value to be entirely controlled and separated from the good itself. The sense of "participation" that people have when buying something from a stylish brand can be marketed separately from the good itself, leaving behind the current crisis level concerns about superfakes and copies.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
They could be right, but that doesn't change the facts: if you're examining this from an investor's perspective, the insiders don't really think in the same frame of mind we do.
The investor is like a sports gambler trying to bet on a fight, and the companies are like a fighter who thinks he's figured out a brand new unbeatable Steven Seagal kick that will win them the fight. The gambler is betting based on conditioning, style vs style, form in fights going into the match, etc. The fighter thinks that conditioning and form are pointless to worry about it because the only question is will the kick work or won't the kick work.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
How exactly am I sneering? Calling something a religion does not mean that it is (necessarily) wrong or stupid, only that attempting to reason within a normal paradigm with believers in it is probably a waste of time, because their eschatology makes your reasoning irrelevant.
Trying to tell a Jehovah's Witness in 1970 about Stock:Bond ratios in retirement savings would be silly, because in the Jehovah's Witness' mind there was no retirement to worry about: the world was going to end in 1975 and that's all there was to it. If he had been correct, you would be the idiot trying to talk about Stock:Bond ratios; the world didn't end, so all the people who had no savings in 1976 were worse off.
The AGI fanatics don't care about P:E or debt ratios, because they won't matter once the Rapture Singularity occurs. It's the same reasoning. It's an essentially religious framework, immanentizing the eschaton. If you believe in it, sure, great, argue for your religion. It doesn't change the way to look at it from an investing perspective.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Believing that AGI is possible doesn't really require any kind of religion.
Believing that after AGI is cracked nothing else matters is the religion.
Much like fanatical Jehovah's Witnesses my father grew up with didn't save money because they thought the world was going to end in 1975.
In the same way you can't really examine the financial strategies of someone who thinks the world will end in 1975; you can't examine a company making decisions about investment and debt load based on immanentizing the eschaton.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I'm praying things quiet down, and doubting that they will.
You can interpret it many ways!
I think the countercultural reading of Biff tends to focus more on the fact that he doesn't want to get a real job, he liked being an itinerant farm hand.
But the Charley-Bernard vs Biff-Willy conflict is the heart of the "liked but not well liked" iconic line in the play:
Willy and his boys are focused on superficial qualities, athleticism and looks and appearance and popularity, High School qualities. Bernard and Charley focus on academics, learning, focus, and Charley finishes way ahead of Biff and Hap, who "peak in high school."
It's a sub plot, but it's there. And I think it can be considered central because of how Miller recounts being inspired to write the play by his uncle Manny and his "constant endless race" between Arthur and his own son.
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