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
8hr ago
It's important to distinguish between entry level affirmative action, in colleges or pathway jobs, and leadership level DEI efforts.
A lot of entry level DEI works out fine, because the requirements were fake and gay to begin with. Fine grained LSAT and uGPA distinctions are fake and gay so law school admissions are only lightly impacted by diversity efforts, the black kid with a 165 lsat isn't actually much worse at law on average than the white kid with a 168. But once their careers are underway and the selection metrics are more meaningful, promoting unqualified diversity candidates to partnerships or judicial seats can really bite.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
I have no problem with making up fun stories as a hobby or even professional pursuit. But when you're trying to cycle that "information" back into the real world in order to effect real world outcomes you're engaged in an enterprise that is actively hostile to basic civil liberties.
It's interesting that a lot of the problems of information that threaten civil liberties and privacy now, were originally kept public for civil liberty reasons. Property records and arrest records being public prevents people or property from being spirited away under cover of night. But now with the internet, it gets to be too much for everyone to know.
The use of public information to look into crimes used to be helpful when it took work. When you had to go to the courthouse to get access to files. With the internet to spread it, it's all too much.
I go door to door in local elections, and we use software on our phones that filters houses for registered voters, and "supervoters" who vote in every off year primary. I find it creepy that I know all these things before I knock on their door, so I always knock and act as though I'm just knocking on every door, because it would be weird and off putting for me to start by knowing their name and their voting record and their registration.
Kind of like, when it rains, my wife gets vastly more answers than I do. When I'm schlepping around in a big coat, sopping wet, everybody looks out and says what's this fucking creep doing out there? When my wife is wet, people all answer the door, oh you poor sweet beautiful angel are you ok?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
Reflections After One Year of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
-- I recently read our friend @jdizzler's substack for his Infinite Jest review, which linked to his post of ten books he wants to read before he dies.* That's how I felt about BJJ going in. I'd always felt like it was something I should learn before I die, to be a complete person. About since I discovered the UFC on SpikeTV**. At the time, I took up boxing and Muay Thai because those gyms happened to be closer to my house, then fell out of combat sports after a bad concussion senior year of high school left me nervous about accumulating too many. I'd always thought of grappling as something I ought to master at some point in my life, as one of the "true" martial arts. At some point in my life, I needed to, if not master, at least become fluent in BJJ. It was on that list of athletic things I ought to do before I died, like running a marathon, squatting 4 plates, or maybe one day hiking the Appalachian Trail. When a gym opened near me, it seemed I'd finally found the time to do it, and of course being in my mid-thirties I instantly started to regret not starting sooner. Why didn't I start training when I was in college***? Why didn't I join the wrestling team in middle school, which would have been so valuable now****? A year in, I understand most of BJJ, even if I can't execute it. I think another year at least is going to be required to reach the level of learning that is on my bucket list. I may or may not stick with it past that, but it was absolutely worth it for me to reach this level. If, like me, learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is somewhere on your bucket list, I highly recommend going for it, and do it soon.
-- What makes BJJ such a compelling hobby is that you get most of the benefits of fighting, with relatively little downside, so you can do it four or five times a week without dying. I couldn't spar this hard in boxing five times a week, I'd probably do permanent damage in a month. In a way I think this is why wrestling and grappling develops across cultures as a practice, it's a way to simulate a fight without killing anyone. For the most part, MMA has shown us that the superior grappler wins the fight 90+% of the time anyway, absent a significant difference in other training or skills. I get to struggle against a real live resisting opponent ten or twenty times a week, and live to tell the tale. The primal rush makes it worth it.
-- "Fight Club became the reason to cut your hair and trim your fingernails." I started BJJ as a kind of adventure in fitness, one more thing I'd do along with all my other fitness interests, and quickly it became the focus of all my fitness interest, it took over my life. While comparison is the thief of joy, avoiding comparisons is impossible in BJJ, you know the hierarchy of the gym, and I know that if I miss class the guys who I roll with are getting better and I'm not. My work schedule is complicated, I couldn't reliably go on certain days, and minor injuries were a constant problem, so I never really got on a solid schedule of when I went to BJJ and when I didn't, and I just went every day that I could go. So between prioritizing going to BJJ whenever I could, and the constant minor injuries, I never really got into much of a workout rhythm. I still lifted and climbed and did weird kettlebell stuff, but every time I tried to start a program or plan, I'd yoink something in my shoulder or throw out my back or get caught in a bad armbar and my elbow hurts or it's guillotine week and the Poconos Gorilla pulled my neck out of line, and then I'd prioritize getting back to class and put the lifting on the backburner. I want to fix that in the second year, my goal is to get into a good rhythm of lifting and jiu jitsu, I'm sort of on a blank slate this particular second as I had about two bad weeks of minor illness and work stress, so I'm fresh to start over. I lost a good ten pounds, I want to work on a 5/3/1 template this winter, and build some more strength. Aim for 3-4 days a week of BJJ, and take proper off days instead of going until I get injured, try to consistently stick to certain days.
-- I'm also considering checking out open mat hours at other gyms, rather than only doing classes at my gym; and then on the flip side being more willing to go to class at my gym and just drill instead of staying to roll every time. We don't do a regular open mat at our gym, but when we do on holidays I find I get more out of that hour than I do out of a typical class. I also need to be better about going just to drill and not rolling, when I don't want to get hurt or don't have much time. I also might try to get a buddy to just drill with me some days. I need to venture outside of the class structure, try to guide my own learning process.
-- I feel like I'm developing a style, and I still can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I tend to be very "position over submission," a station to station offensive approach: from top I mostly pass full guard by passing to half guard, then passing to side control from there, then aiming for low percentage submissions like americanas to open up higher percentage submissions or advance position; from bottom I mostly try to get to half-guard if I'm stuck in side control or mount, then try to get to a tight waist and sweep or get back to full guard and sweep or submit from there. Half guard is where I win or lose the round. I'm constantly attempting moves that don't give up position, I only go for moves that do give up position when I have a good opening; for a while I joked that attempting an armbar was just how I gave up side control. I don't know to what extent I should lean into my style, versus trying to develop the weaker parts of my game. Probably everything, I mostly just suck.
-- BJJ has definitely proven my theory developed in rock climbing: if you keep at something, you will get better, but you mostly will always feel like you suck exactly as much as you feel like you suck at the start. At first you'll feel like you suck because you don't know anything; when you get better, you feel like you suck because you should know more. At first you feel like you suck because everyone is better than you; when you get better, you'll feel like you suck because he's better than you and started after you, or because you're just at some nowhere gym in PA anyway. This has been my experience with BJJ so far. At first I was the absolute worst, and I hated myself for sucking at it; now I'm more like bottom third or so, and I hate myself for only getting this far in a year. This is pretty much true in all hobbies: you'll feel as weak as you did when you started lifting no matter how many plates you put on the bar, as slow as you felt when you started running, etc.
-- Leglocks: Friend or Foe? is the great debate for BJJ aficionados right now. Are they too dangerous to train? You don't get the same pain feedback before the blow up someone's knee that you get before an armbar goes too far, so it's risky, put it on wrong or too jerky and you can really hurt someone. They are absolutely necessary to train for high level competition. But, you can't use most of them in lower level competitions, and if you go to another gym the "unwritten rule" is that new guys aren't to be trusted with most leg locks until you know them, so you risk causing a scene if you try a heel hook and they don't judge you worthy. As a result, I've more or less given up on using any leg locks except the straight ankle lock live, I haven't committed to competing yet but if I do I see no reason to practice moves that I can't use in a comp and screw up my flow. I also, in general, avoid moves that I have to worry about hurting my partner, because I don't like double-clutching when I'm rolling, I prefer moves where he has plenty of time to tap***** before he gets hurt. I've gotten a pretty wicked straight ankle lock when rolling by focusing on applying it, and it's become my go to in a lot of positions: it's what I fight for in a dueling leg lock, and I sometimes go straight into it from open guard to single leg x or pop it on when I can't get by a knee shield. My coaches, who are deep in the black belt competitive scene, keep encouraging me to do more heel hooks, and I drill them, but I don't really see much use for them yet, I don't really wind up in a position where I can hit the heel hook but not the straight ankle. To be honest, if you take out the straight ankle, the americana/kimura, and the triangle, I probably only finish about three or four subs a week.
-- Goals: Eleven months ago, I was getting depressed at how little progress I felt like I was making, and told myself that if I didn't get a sub by the end of February I'd quit. That night I got lucky against another white belt, pulled off some kind of half-remembered muay thai hip throw from the clinch, got his back, and tapped him on a rear naked choke. Over the next couple of months I set goals of hitting different subs, of hitting a single leg takedown, of tapping a blue belt, and finally last month I managed to, just once, sub one of the coaches. I got lucky on an ankle lock. I'm not sure what my measurable goals are anymore. The one thing I don't like about BJJ is that it's so random, at least at my gym, depending what day I show up and who shows up that day, I can be anywhere from dominant over the other guys, to just struggling to survive, it can be anything from needing to play light to avoid winning too easily to knowing that my opponent is just toying with me. So I'm not sure how to set useful goals, now that "hit X once" has mostly been exhausted. Suggestions?
*Footnote: dizz, while I admire your effort to read books in their original language, within a blog post written in English you should stick to English when giving book titles for consistency. The books were mostly familiar enough to recognize, even for a dirty monolingual, but it kinda threw off the flow, especially with Mishima in English at the end. Also, out of curiosity, do you intend to read the whole Sea of Fertility series? Runaway Horses was one of my favorites, but I stalled out midway through the next book, probably in a teenage boys inability to read books about girls.
**Is that still on? Apparently not, it was "rebranded" to Paramount, which I think is the home of stuff like Yellowstone and other boomer-fantasy TV. I wonder to what extent the audience stayed consistent, or it is only a rebrand in the sense that it's the same like channel number. I used to like Spike when I was a teenager, I wouldn't actually watch it now, but still, a shame.
***I was too busy, when not studying, trying to make the men's eight for the Head of the Charles, drinking, or courting Mrs. FiveHour; all of which seems less important in retrospect now that I see the value of being pretty close to training with early career Jon Danaher.
****Because I liked baseball and basketball better, and all the wrestling kids were juvenile delinquent tough kids who would have beat the piss out of me and stolen my copy of The Return of the King and never given it back.
*****I still shudder thinking about the one roll where I got my partner in an Americana, and started to apply it, what I thought was very slowly, giving him a long time to tap, and then this awful grinding sound came out of my elbow.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
Those are unspoken or indirect or accrue over time, the military gives benefits immediately upon marriage for the act of marriage.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
I'm not a runner, you'd be better off asking Walterodim or @jdizzler about it.
My impression is that Five hours is roughly just under the cutoff time for most organized marathons to finish and close the course up. So it's basically the max time you can hit and still say you ran a marathon. 5mph for five hours is 25miles, so you really only need to jog part of it to finish in five hours.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
It's more interesting than most comments in WW, like my stories about bike rides or open mats.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
The more I think about it, it's probably a cultural failure, the Manhattan institute is a conservative think tank, but its workers and interns are still blue tribe college graduates, who understand that the statement "Israel is a colonial state" is associated with leftist critiques of Israel, which I don't think most normies would understand that way.
I actually think you could use a much more inclusive definition, like some that I'd fail, that I'd agree with more. Like "Imagine a woman close to you was dating a man and considering marrying him, and came to you for advice. Would your advice change if he were Jewish?"
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
My opinion is that Jews are a sort of "Schrodinger's race" in modern American society. Sometimes they're a separate ethnic group, sometimes they're not. Conviently, it seems to go back and forth depending on whichever interpretation is the best for them. When it's time for the special ethnic groups to get their own special recognition, they of course deserve deep honor and respect for their unique history and culture- they're not one of those shitty bland stale whites who have no culture. But when it comes to break out statistics by ethnic group, they usually blend in with the general "white" category. It would make organizations like the Ivy League or Big Finance look absolutely ridiculous if they had to disclose how importunately higher they were hiring Jews than any other ethnic group.
I was thinking of this reading the WSJ this morning. In the Op-Ed section under Notable and Quotable they cited a Manhattan Institute Poll showing a purported rise in right wing antisemitism:
...A meaningful minority -- 17% -- meets our definition of Anti-Jewish Republicans. A respondent falls into this category if they 1) self-identify as both racist and antisemitic and express Holocaust Denial or describe Israel as a colonial state, or 2) do not self-identify that way but nevertheless hold both of those extreme positions.
The confusing nature of their definition (what purpose does self identification have if it can be skipped?), is used to smuggle in a mild definition to the major heresies. Colonial is at most a totally mild critique of Israel actually. It's mostly a neutral, factual description of the country's history: Israel is a country that grew out of a colonial project. I would actually expect that the word Colonial, a pejorative in leftist faculty circles, is fairly neutral in conversation for a lot of Red Tribers. It mostly has positive associations in New England, the Colonial militias fighting the redcoats, various high school mascots and college sports conferences are the Colonial so and so, the Colonial Inn or the Colonial Diner is just an early American theme restaurant.
I could maybe see saying calling Israel an apartheid state is anti-Israel, though I would still bristle at calling it anti-semitic. But Colonial is a totally neutral definition to most Republicans. Trying to portray that statement as anti-semitic is clearly trying to massage the statistics.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
Eh, I'm continuously mystified by girl's taste in celebrity men.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
People who snap these days may be more likely to commit modestly confusingly politically motivated murders and try to escape rather than shoot up a kindergarten. For a while the latter was a quick path to notoriety, now the former will get you Fame and fangirls.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
I'm going to register that posts like this have no place on this forum. We're not some gang of true crime wine moms out to ruin the lives of random people.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
Man, what the fuck is water?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'm not sure that's true. I don't think soldiers have a higher rate of being paired off than guys the same age that work at Wal Mart, but Walmart doesn't instantly pay their young male workers thousands of dollars extra for getting married.
Soldiers also have higher divorce rates than civilians.
If we made it a national policy to pay everyone thousands extra for getting married, instantly, we'd raise the marriage rate. I'm not sure that's increasing the status of young men, exactly, just paying people to get married.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The military achieves a high marriage rate by legislating benefits for married servicemen.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'll have to pick up a copy next time I take a weekend trip.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
they should kill each other like ants from rival colonies put in a glass jar.
Why? Why would it matter to them?
In my mind what Bannon and Chomsky have in common ideologically is that they are both, by the old Matrix-derived definition, Red Pilled. Both are prone to smugly asking the reader if they think that is air they are breathing.
Their enemies are more in the Blob than in each other, at least until the Blob is defeated.
A couple years back, my patriot news type conspiracy theorist trailer park carpenter helped me take a delivery of a large load of drywall. The delivery driver was a black guy from Chester, who was a black Muslim type conspiracy theorist. They got along famously. Each was telling the other about conspiracy theories they had NEVER HEARD BEFORE. They were loving it. Did you know that they opened the oldest vault and all the saints were black? Did YOU know that Joe Biden is only a fake president, and that really the military took full presidential powers before Trump left office? No shit! Did you know that they're importing immigrants to drive black people, who are the real jews, out of the cities? No way I didn't know that man!
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Weiss' resume isn't that deep, in terms of running a major television news corp. For comparison, the equivalent guy at Fox News started on O'Reilly before Weiss was out of college. She had a roughly ten year career in print journalism, and founded a modestly successful substack. By that standard, she's about as qualified as Scott Alexander to run CBS news. There's a ton of gentiles with resumes that stack up against hers. And frankly if there aren't, that seems to be giving the game away to SS to begin with, doesn't it?
Another point in Weiss's favor is that she courts controversy -- and this being media, that's usually a good thing. Hell, when was the last time anyone talked about CBS this much?
CBS news affiliates mostly cover local news. Becoming purely ideological may or may not be a good approach there.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
If in order to discuss Capitalism I'm going to have to defend the most ignorant thing you've ever seen on Twitter referring to Capitalism, we're already lost.
Capitalism as a system is defined economically by the investment profit motive, by taking investment capital and putting it to work to earn more capital, which will be invested again to earn more capital, and so on and so forth to eternity.
This is distinct from Feudalism, from Mecantilism, etc.
Until we can successfully imagine something beyond Capitalism, there is no way to imagine a worldview that privileges other terminal values than profit.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Is politics actually just Kabuki theater to the elites?
Yes
But I don't think the shock at this case is based in a good model of who Bannon and Chomsky are. Bannon has always been, or had pretensions of being, a real serious intellectual, who reads widely within academic texts, which means reading a lot of leftists any time since, what, Aquinas? Steve Bannon has definitely read and admires Noam Chomsky's work. Bannon has expressed his admiration and desire to imitate Lenin, you think he'd draw the line at Chomsky?
Chomsky and Bannon share a lot of analytical agreements about the nature of the political establishment, and about American foreign policy over the past hundred years. Their disagreements are actually a lot more minor than the disagreements between either and other Epstein buddies like Larry Summers or Bill Gates. If the guest list at that party was Bannon, Chomsky, Summers, Gates, Clinton, and Epstein; it's pretty obvious that Chomsky and Bannon would get along better together than with anyone else at the party.
Rather I think twitter turbolibs who are surprised about Chomsky and Bannon getting along are shocked because they haven't read Chomsky and just think of him as a harmless mascot of the generic academic left, not the hardened anti-establishment freak that he is; and they haven't read Bannon and assume he's just a MTG or Boebert style airhead, not the hardened anti-establishment freak that he is.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I actually do think there is significant room to blame white stakeholders for pulling up the ladder behind them. The most significant part of the support for affirmative action has always been from existing stakeholders, who want to reduce competition.
A lot of online rightists find it insane that any white people support affirmative action. White students are evenly split on affirmative action, despite being its putative victims. This support only increases as one reaches more selective schools, where affirmative action is harshest in action. Why is this? Because a liberal white student at Harvard Law, like the Manson family, believes so firmly and mystically in his own superiority that no white loss in a racial conflict can rattle him. He believes in his superiority as a talented white kid as firmly as he believes in gravity. He is one of the Great and the Good, his talent got him here, giving tithes to those inferior to him will only enhance his stature. After all, if I'm a white kid with a 165 LSAT who can't get into a T14, every 160 LSAT Black kid who gets in is a spot that could have been mine, I coulda been a contenda if only things were different. But if I already got in, if I'm confident that my 179 LSAT is such that I always will get in to whatever I want, then I'd rather a less qualified kid got in than a more qualified one. If you're trying to get into a class of 800, ever non-merit spot is a spot you lose, I go from having 800 chances to get in to 600 chances to get in. If I'm already in a class of 800, every non-merit spot is a kid who isn't competing with me anymore for the top spot, I go from competing to be 1/800 to competing to be 1/600. Let the Blacks push out the whites and the Asians, the Blacks won't be able to compete with me anyway. If we're all at a firm together, my pedigree and my talent are worth more the fewer people exist with my pedigree and my talent. Affirmative action at top schools is a way to narrow the field of actual competitors from that school.
Imagine as a model an elite selective law school where 800 new students are admitted every year. First 400 students are admitted on "pure merit" for LSAT scores, the top scorers are brought in automatically. Then those 400 students vote on the rules used to choose the other 400 students. The 400 students admitted on merit have no real interest in the other 400 students being admitted on merit. The kid with a 179 LSAT doesn't benefit from making sure that the kid with a 172 LSAT makes it in. The kid with a 172 is quite likely to compete with him in class for the top spots, the gap in ability isn't that large. But if he votes to admit kids on affirmative action grounds with a 160 LSAT, those kids aren't likely to compete with him. The same applies for any situation where incumbents are choosing the rules for those coming after him.
For a young white man applying to school, trying to get a job, trying to make partner, affirmative action harms him. For an old white man who already made partner, affirmative action helps him maintain his power, no young up-and-comers are coming for his crown because he makes sure that the lower levels are full of undeserving sycophantic incompetents. As corrupt leaders choose unqualified lackeys and promote them above their competence level, knowing that the lackeys will be forced to remain loyal to the leader because they can't survive on their own, so incumbents elevate diversity picks knowing that they won't threaten the current leadership, and will remain loyal to the institutions, because they owe their success to those leaders and institutions and values.
We saw this dynamic play out in the Democratic party over the past ten years. An emphasis on affirmative action in their choice of candidates left them with a thin bench, and allowed Joe Biden to become President. Joe Biden was always incompetent, but he had tenure, and by supporting minority candidates he protected himself against the rise of anyone ambitious and competent enough to supplant him. We didn't see ambitious young whites rising in the Democratic party, we saw affirmative action picks everywhere, and as a result in 2020 we wound up with the only half-competent white guy in the race winning, despite his being older than cable television. Nor would Joe have lasted as long as he did in the presidency with a competent vice president breathing down his neck.
Stunting the rise of competent competitors benefits boomer incumbents, protects them from being pushed out on an ice floe when they should be.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's amazing how bad humans are at understanding probabilities. The existence of some successful white men doesn't mean there is no widespread discrimination against white men, any more than the existence of successful black women tells us that racism against blacks is fake.
Affirmative action's impact is by its nature stochastic, but as the old Democratic campaign line goes when you are out of work the unemployment rate is 100% for you. It's not that every white man makes 20% less, it's that some percentage of white men will be unable to get a job or a promotion or a project completed, while the rest move through their lives normally. If I'm at a law firm that commits itself to diversity in the partner ranks, it's not that I'll be paid less because I'm white when I'm an associate, or paid less if I make partner, it's that when I come up for partner I might draw the short straw and be up as the same time as a black guy or an Asian girl and get shafted.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Ellison was going to pick someone with pro-Israel credentials, and almost certainly someone Jewish.
Why is this almost certain? There's no shortage of Christians with pro-Israel credentials.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
We'll see how I look by 40. I've tried buzzing it down to a 2 a few times, and I have an odd shaped head, I feel like I look like a baby, and also like I shouldn't hang out too close to a synagogue.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I have family abroad in a country with iffy relations with the United States, so I've always joked that if I had to do a runner I'd show up at my uncle's doorstep, and hopefully have squirreled enough money away from whatever white collar crime has caused me to flee the country that I'll be able to open an American theme hamburger restaurant.
I feel the same way right now. Brothers 🤝🏻
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