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
16hr ago
Love:
No Place Like Home for the Holidays Out of the classic songs that get played over a store radio this time of year, this is the one that I whistle to myself when I'm cutting down the Christmas tree. My mother loves Christmas, which is the only thing I really like about Christmas, so that's what makes me happy to think about.
What are you Doing New Year's Eve Obviously a holiday season song rather than Christmas, but New Year's Eve is my favorite romantic holiday. Valentine's day is commercialized garbage, anniversaries are mostly kinda dumb in practice; but kissing at midnight to ring in the New Year is a particular moment that can only happen with one person every year, and having someone to kiss is a critical status symbol in high school/college, and being together is part of being a couple. The O'Jays do a really perfect, slinky arrangement. It carries both the longing and pleading, and a certain sly naughty offer to it. The speaker is humbling himself before the object of his longing ("Oh-oh, just in case, I stand one little chance, Here comes the jackpot question in advance..." "out of the thousands of invitations you receive") but the performance and arrangement reflects a confident offer of pleasure.
Hate:
Wonderful Christmastime I hate the Beatles, which makes this pretty straightforward. Saccharine and awful.
Happy Holidays My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays. Growing up I was a good little liberal, inculcated with the idea that the "War on Christmas" was Fox News bullshit and that inclusiveness meant wishing everyone Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, so that you wouldn't make people feel bad if they didn't do Christmas. This was based on growing up in a culture in which the religious majority-minority dynamic was built around Christians and Jews, and Jews historically took the view that celebrating Christmas was a threat to their religion, and equally they have no interest in me celebrating their holidays. I wanted to be tolerant, so I went along with it. Then as I grew up I got to know more Hindus and Muslims, and they love Christmas, and they would love for me to stop by on their holidays. I realized that nobody means Happy Holidays, it's just a corporate generic gesture, not the way one means "Merry Christmas." I don't feel good when someone wishes me Merry Christmas, and I'm not offended or left out when someone wishes me Eid Mubarak or have a good Diwali or whatever. We should all just wish each other to have a happy [holiday one actually celebrates] and we all understand that if we aren't celebrating, they're just hoping we have a good day that day.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
I don't think there are a lot of actual genetics deniers out there who don't believe in the heritability of DNA from parents to children. What gets strawmanned or parodied as "blank-slatism" is either a denial that there is a strong race/class correlation because we aren't sorting efficiently enough as a society, or a quibble about what percentage chances are involved. There's a tension between stated beliefs and revealed preferences, much like choosing schools and neighborhoods, but one can find one's way around it pretty easily.
Good substack article on the weakness of twin studies here, the particular portion I think is relevant to this question (check the article for the scatter plots):
Heritability is, by construction, a population-level aggregate. Before it can inform policy-making (or even personal decision-making), it must be interpreted at the level of individuals. This is where things get interesting and counterintuitive. Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects? Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution. Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential. At 50%, being genetically average starts to limit your optionality, but the spread remains massive. Had you been marginally luckier—say, in the top third for genetic potential—you’d still have a shot at becoming one of the smartest people around. At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.
Most debates aren't between genetics deniers who think that there is zero correlation between parents and children and feudal pedigree enthusiasts who assume that children are clones of their parents. It's a debate between people who think there's a 30% correlation and people who think there's an 80% correlation. And further, I think most of the debate between blank slatists and genetic determinists is a debate is between people who agree that the correlation is 50% but disagree about whether society is overrating or underrating that correlation. A 30% correlation is still a chance that one wants to take to benefit ones children, but it might not be a chance that you think society should shut doors against. Most people would acknowledge that there is a correlations between IQ and wealth and between parent IQ and children IQ, people still wring their hands about the fate of coal towns in Appalachia.
There's also a simple element: I don't get along with dumb people. Even if I thought having kids with a dumb girl wouldn't lead to dumb children, I wouldn't get along with the dumb girl anyway.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
There's a good possibility that releasing a huge batch of files will likely lead to some investigative reporting putting together more circumstantial evidence of something or other.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Yup. And then he'll build up another winning streak against broke guys, and the haters will work themselves into a fine lather about how they want to see him humbled, and then there will be another big payday against a name.
It's classic professional wrestling storyline building. Your heel beats a bunch of fan favorites, with the crowd tuning in to watch him lose, until it's time to cash in and let him lose.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Dude, are you asking a serious question?
Askren, Woodley, and Diaz were MMA fighters, not professional boxers, and they all fought at 155 or 170. Joshua boxes at heavyweight, where he was once world champion. Joshua is definitionally a ranked contender in boxing, the others never were. There's no universe where an MMA welterweight and a heavyweight champion are comparable fighters. To say nothing of the difference in leverage and earnings.
I couldn't have predicted in advance the outcome of Jake's fights any more than I can predict what will happen in the next episode of a sitcom. But I can tell you how the plot arc will end.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's amazing to me that Jake Paul, a person I've only been peripherally aware of, has managed to reinvent professional wrestling from first principles, and make absurd money doing so.
For those blissfully unaware, Paul is a former disney channel actor and youtube personality who started setting up tomato-can pro boxing matches some years back, and slowly worked his way up through a series of has-beens to grandpa Mike Tyson. Whether those fights were on the level and he just won against bad opponents, or if they were works, is a matter of debate. Last night he organized a fight with a real contender, former heavyweight champ and olympic medalist Anthony Joshua, a fight that Paul was in no way qualified for, and in which he would certainly be murdered if Joshua chose. But, a fight for which each fighter stands to make around $90,000,000.
I feel like a crazy person seeing twitter fill with people gloating that Paul lost. As though that hasn't been the goal of building him up as a heel for years now, to set up a huge cash in when he faced a real boxer and people tuned in to watch him lose. That's always been the way of professional wrestling, build up a heel, make him win so that people hate him and tune in to watch him lose, until it's time for the big moment.
And people BET ON IT. This is like betting on the outcome of a TV show. How are gambling commissions allowing that to happen?
The phrase is overused, but generational wealth was produced in this spectacle. And I feel like I understand the past better. It was a classic "dumb guy" trait in TV and movies when I was a kid, especially older stuff, that stupid people believed that professional wrestling was real. And now I'm seeing people, many of them otherwise intelligent fight sport observers I follow, act like Paul's rejiggered version of professional wrestling is real. And they think they're the clever ones.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I find the whole "release the files" thing so funny.
If you really believe that there exists a DoJ employee who is so moral and ethical that he would neither leak an incriminating document during the Biden admin, nor destroy it during the Trump admin, and so powerful that he could not be fired or forced to do so during either; then you probably believe in the Easter Bunny.
If there is anything incriminating in there, it's going to come together weeks from now. It's going to be a reference that correlates to a hint that leads to a receipt that pulls on a thread that leads to an angle. It's going to be some clue so small that they forgot to redact it, and it's only going to make sense as a piece of circumstantial evidence, a piece that completes a puzzle we haven't taken out of the box yet. But probably it won't be that either.
It's not going to be something that MSNBC can broadcast in real time.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Let me know what you think of The Killer Angels, I was just talking about it with someone.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
- Girls are more attractive in casual clothing
Or
- Girls look younger in casual clothing
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Honestly, I figured I was on the low end here.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Nah, the pretzel stand is the Yoders, Stoltzfoos sells raw milk and prize winning aged cheddar.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I've been lucky enough to be able to train with champions in Muay Thai and BJJ within ten minutes of my ancestral farm. And we've got such high quality wrestling that I'm consistently getting smeared by D1 guys in class. I'm not knocking the quality of the training here, moreso if one day I find myself the best in the gym on any given day, I wouldn't feel like I was good at Jiu-Jitsu, I'd feel like I'm a big fish in a small pond who would get eaten alive at b team or whatever.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Leaving aside absurd Veblen goods, I could buy the highest quality stuff at full price. But I'd very quickly accumulate too much of it, because top quality stuff doesn't wear out in a year. I can only own so many suits and leather jackets!
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
The Steelers winning would actually be a pretty hilarious outcome this year, for many reasons. And hey, why not? The only teams in the AFC bracket I really like are the Chargers and the Bills, and are both wildcards and are known to piss down their leg in big games. Bo Nix seems like a good candidate to implode, and the Pats seem a little young as an org, which is funny to say given that they're not that far removed from Belichek.
When Cowher was here people hated him too (how quickly we forget!) and came up with racial rumors that were just bizarre: Cowher and Kordell Stewart were secret gay lovers, which is why Kordell was still QB; Kordell was still QB because Cowher was having an affair with his sister; and Cowher impregnated a black woman who works for the Steelers. This last one is my favorite because it didn't explain anything. It should also be noted that the first one was an outgrowth of the rumor that Kordell Stewart had been arrested at Schenley Park's notorious "fruit loop", a public running track that's notorious for anonymous gay sex. There is no public record of such an arrest, but Stewart had to make an announcement to the team about how he wasn't gay, and every Pittsburgher's uncle knows the cop who arrested him.
This is why you need people, you never learn things like that from TV coverage.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I am curious if we'll see an increased defection rate from high-tfr subcultures into a low-tfr mainstream as the low-tfr mainstream ages and the value of young people increases. Arguably, this is already the dynamic of third world immigration to aging first world countries.
But I wonder if we'll see more young Amish or Haredi defect as they get a better "deal" from a mainstream culture desperate for young people.
When I buy pretzels from the Amish girls at the best pretzel stand in the world in Intercourse, PA; naturally one sometimes daydreams about marrying a pretty Amish girl in a bonnet. Theoretically, this is possible, to marry an Amish or Mennonite girl, but it rather seems not worth the effort. Right now, if I found myself single, like generations of wealthy but balding middle age professionals before me I'd get into my convertible and drive over to the local liberal arts college library and say "Whelp, nothing to worry about, they're still making them." But what if they stop making pretty undergrads? Then does the incentive to put a lot more effort into marrying the mennonite pretzel girl start to make more sense?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
So, they found him dead in a storage locker or something.
Conspiracy fellas, what's the deal? Was this dude a left-wing stochastic terrorist? Is this a coverup for...something or other?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
You can't just introduce random elements into your hypothetical haredi society and assume the breeding will stay constant.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I think you're missing my point, I'm not debating whether it is morally permissible to do what they do, I'm debating whether it would work without a much larger host culture that absorbs your cast-offs.
When nations face civilizational catastrophe, they've been known to try many things that don't work. It is important that we check to see if the thing we're trying will work before we waste time on it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I think injuries suck the most in the NFL, because you're sitting around with 52 guys that could win a Super Bowl and you're missing the one you need.
Though, of course, the Eagles won behind Nick Foles, so stranger things have happened.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 5 [1973]—Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, the Yankees starting left‐handed pitchers disclosed today details of an exchange of families. The pitchers, who have been the two closest friends on the team for several years, said they and their wives began discussing last July the possibility of an exchange and that they put it into effect at the end or last season in October. At this time, Peterson is living with Susanne Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 4 years old, and Reagan, 2, and they plan to be married as soon as they can divorce their spouses. That would be next October at the earliest, Peter son said.
Both pitchers, in separate interviews after the Yankees disclosed the basic details, stressed that there was nothing sordid about the situation and it wasn't a matter of wife‐swapping. “It wasn't a wife swap,” said Kekich, who married Susanne in 1965. “It was a life swap. We're not saying we're right and everyone else who thinks we're wrong are wrong. It's just the way we felt.” “It wasn't a sex thing,” Peterson emphasized. “It was not a cheap swap.”
The two Yankees and their wives began discussing the possible exchange last July 15 on what the pitchers said was a high plane and amid “a tremendous amount of affection and compatibility.” While remaining with their own families, they spent a lot of time together and individually —each player with the other's wife. There was such harmony, Peterson said, they even thought about having a double divorce and a double marriage and they discussed the possibility of dividing the children so that the older in each instance would go with the father and the younger with the mother.
From the 1973 NYT reporting on the swap
This article from New York magazine was where I first heard the story. Bronx Zoo indeed
Fond of long, introspective conversations, Kekich was drawn to the thoughtful Marilyn Peterson, while Fritz, always in the moment, paired off with Susanne, a former cheerleader and cross-country runner. Gradually it became apparent to all four that perhaps they were married to the wrong people. “By American standards, I had a good marriage,” Kekich said. “But I wanted a great marriage. I was idealistic, I guess.”
By their spring-training press conference, Kekich and Peterson were hardly speaking to each other. Much had happened in the interim. The couples did “swap lives,” moving in with each other’s spouses in the fall of 1972, with differing degrees of success. Peterson and Susanne Kekich were happy. Kekich and Marilyn Peterson were not. The physical attraction between Marilyn and himself was strong, Kekich would say, but since they were “born under the same sign, we sometimes butt heads. She and I are on a higher pitch in our emotions.” Kekich claimed everyone had agreed that if any of them were unhappy, the entire deal was off. Peterson said they had already tried that (the couples had attempted to reunite for a time) and it hadn’t worked. In a statement, Peterson said he and Susanne were both now “free people” with “free minds.” It would have been perfect if things worked out for everyone involved, “but I don’t feel guilty.”
Kekich cut a far more sunken figure. The terms of the swap dictated that the kids would stay with their mothers. But now Marilyn Peterson was taking her children to her parents’ home in Illinois. His daughters living with Susanne and Peterson, Kekich was alone. Calling himself “one of the biggest soul searchers around,” Kekich said he would break up his family only “for love far greater than any I have ever known.” Now he was “dubious” such a love existed.
Asked if he expected to be traded, Kekich said, “I’m here. We’re still teammates. I only want to be where Fritz is.” It was “the only way I can be sure of seeing my daughters.” This was not to be. After pitching fourteen innings for the Bombers in the ’73 season (walking fourteen batters), Kekich was dealt to the Cleveland Indians. Still a Yank, Peterson finished the season with a dismal 8-15 record and was also shipped out, to Cleveland, though by that time Kekich had already moved on, to Japan. Still, when it came to the Trade, Peterson was generally considered to be the winner. After all, he and Susanne are still married today, with children of their own. This result was predicted by Dr. Joyce Brothers, famed TV psychoanalyst. “It’s very rare that a four-way swap ever works,” Brothers said.
I don't think we have anything quite that wild today. I guess the Musklings count, but he at least has the decency to try to hide it. There's the WSJ article I read today about a house built to accommodate a rich gay throuple, but this is a little more than that isn't it?
Supposedly for years Affleck and Damon wanted to make a movie about it, out of pure hatred for the Yankees, but to my knowledge it never got off the ground.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
let's call it post-socialist bourgeois liberalism as The Way of Things.
I think the term you're looking for is Reaganism, Thatcherism, the Reagan-Thatcher consensus, or the Washington Consensus.
Some of it is a narrowing of the Overton window, but I think in other ways it's useful to see as a rising and receding of the tide, as a genuine improvement. For the divorced dad example: it was very common in the early years of no-fault divorce for dads to simply abandon their children after the divorce, and this was seen as fairly normal. Frasier is one example, another in James Clavell's Noble House (published 1981 and set in 1963) a character left his wife and kids and reflects with self satisfaction that they got "enough" money in the divorce that he doesn't need to be involved in their lives, the well researched portrayals in Mad Men are a contemporary example portraying the historical norm. This was normal, and not considered particularly noteworthy or blameworthy, divorce was considered bad but once it happened it was natural that the father would move on from the children. Today, we see that as bad, we see it as important that a divorced dad stay close with his kids, do his best to remain in their lives, or at the very least feel bad about it if he can't do those things.
I consider that to be actually good moral progress on the topic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I still haven’t seen a reasonable counter-argument to “learn from the Haredi”.
A big aspect of Haredi culture, and Amish/Mennonite/etc culture, is that people can leave. There's a big outer world to exit to.
I couldn't find good numbers for Haredim in particular. For Orthodox Jews in general, 67% of Orthodox Jews raised in Orthodoxy remain Orthodox as adults, and 94% remain Jews with the difference moving to more mainstream forms of Judaism. The best estimates I found for Haredi were casual, but guesses were around 5-20%, which aligns pretty closely with the Amish. Amish communities typically lose around 15% of their youth during Rumspringa. Amish communities probably land a little higher, a core anabaptist value is free choice, kids must choose to be baptized as adults even if they are raised their whole lives in the religion. The Haredi are more strict about retention, that's kind of their whole thing, so I'd imagine they land higher, but 5-10% seems realistic.
I'm more familiar with the Amish, they're really my people when it comes to weird high-TFR religious minorities, and I'd imagine it's easier for an Amish to move from the farm in Intercourse to Bernville or Kutztown and live a life that's not too dissimilar to the one they left in structure of work and values, just a little less restrictive. Compared to a Haredi who has to adapt to a really different lifestyle, but then they're urban oriented so maybe it's easier. I'd guess most Haredi just become Orthodox Jews, and most Orthodox leavers become reform Jews, etc.
Now, for most religions 80-95% retention would be brilliant work. Tradcaths and Evangelicals would be thrilled with those numbers. But it's not 100% and this creates important things to think about.
Much like private school numbers are often disputed because they simply expel problem students, who then have to attend public schools. Strict religious minorities shed their problem children, their overly independent women, their dreamers and disruptors. They maintain stability by expelling the problem kids.
For comparison, about 11% of Americans report having a substance abuse problem at some point in their lives, about 14% will go to jail for any period, about 5% will go to prison, somewhere between 6-14% will experience some form of homelessness, about 6% will be diagnosed with a Severe Mental Illness. Probably most of those numbers overlap.
The existence of a functional high-TFR minority does not serve as proof of concept for a functional high-TFR country.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I'm excited to watch the whole series.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
The debates we're having about diversity in the workforce and affirmative action date back in more or less their current form to the 1970s at least.
I'm reading Eig's biography of Mohammed Ali right now, and it's fascinating how there are a lot positions that got mainstream news media coverage in the 60s and 70s that we would consider utterly absurd today. Black Nationalism, earnest black people who really did publicly believe in black separatism, were given TV coverage and newspaper op-eds. Two Yankees pitchers traded families in the 70s. There were huge socialist and communist organizations with broad support from the 1900s to the 1980s in America.
Even just watching sitcoms from the 90s, you see a lot of less traditional values that are constantly thrown in your face. Frasier, which I love, stars a divorced dad who is totally absent in his son's life. And this is not presented as a crisis, it is at most a minor personal problem every ten episodes. We would never accept that today.
Wokeness might be a local peak of leftism in 2020, and over time we can argue that Cthulhu always swims left, but there have been in certain ways higher peaks, and post Reagan we are more conservative than we were before.
Seemingly every month I find a new reason to dislike online gambling. It's becoming an intellectual doubt I have about a lot of the rationalist "gambling is a tax on bullshit" types.
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