100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
12d ago
So yes I guess if you like barely legal "age is just a number" mentalities
But that's the thing, though, right?
18 is 18. Uncle Sam has no problem getting her to sign papers that might lead to death in one direction or another. She can take out enough debt via auto-loans, college loans, and credit cards to destroy her life permanently. She can marry anyone in any state.
Either the age of majority has real, meaningful weight or it doesn't. "Yes, you're 18 now, but don't do 18 year old things for, you know, a little while longer" destroys the whole concept.
But this is all besides the point. If you're not comfortable with her being in the group, I would say something along the liens of "We're not comfortable with you being in our group."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
12d ago
If a mid who uses dramatic eye makeup and slut-adjacent tattoo-ery "isn't even that hot" then the young men of America have no shot.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
The Shiloh Hendrix case is the "free speech freshman year debate" hypothetical come to life.
"We should protect free speech!"
"Well, what if someone started shouting 'the n-word' at a child!"
And it was handled in the worst way possible. A trial over a disordery conduct charge. I really, really want to know why the prosecution decided to go to trial over this instead of dropping the charges. I believe, IIRC, the consequences are a $1000 fine and a few months of probation? In return, Hendrix has raised nearly a million in a go fund me because she has received credible death threats. The rare combination of libertarians and everyone right of center will make this some sort of cause as well.
Oh, and she's an attractive white woman. The self owns on all sides just seem insane!
I mean, what's next? A white, female muslim candidate gets into hot water for being too muslim to be gay?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
Oh buddy that's not the cleanest shoot.
I think there's a tell as one of the other cops (male, to the left of the center of the frame) is pretty obvious giving the "mother_FUCKER" body language towards the end of the clip.
This reminds me of the kind of shoot that, 15+ years ago, the Police Union would huddle around the cop hard and find a way to keep him out of jail .... but also probably produce a non-official deal where he gets medically retired within 6 months.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
I strongly dislike basketball and, especially, the NBA.
And - you are wrong on almost all of your points and have betrayed the fact that you don't watch much basketball.
Let's start with the whopper:
he result of this is that basketball is a highly statistical game - the opposite of soccer, upsets and comebacks in basketball rarely happen, because there are so many scoring plays, and scoring is so easy. By minute 5, you can already see which team is better, and the same ratio of points will likely continue for the rest of the game.
(Link) Literally the most recent NBA championship included the largest comeback in finals' history.
This is an embarrassingly cliche level of "truth nuke" as the kids say. Basketball is not "highlight statistical" (what does that mean?) and there's a ton of randomness. You can tell because of the length of the season. They need 80+ games to feel confident that one or more teams didn't just hit a statistical (there's that word again) improbability for a 10 game stretch.
the average for pro players is the 99th percentile.
(Link) And the Finals MVP, from this years' championship team, is 6'2"
Again. Big yikes. Sure, 6'2" isn't manlet territory, but, in relative sense in the NBA, in actually is! Brunson's whole "vibe" is that he is undersized and also not a giga-autist shooting specialist. He works his ass off and mostly focuses on ball movement and causing defense schemes to falter and break so he can exploit it. It's actually quite cerebral.
and yet 98-99% of people can never go pro no matter how hard they work or how skilled they become.
How is this not literally exactly true for MLB, NHL, NFL, UFC, Pro Soccer, Olympic Wrestling, Professional Musician, Professional Actor etc. etc. etc.
On a more serious note, the modern style of play has devolved to take advantage of these silly rules. Many plays I see in modern games are just a big player bull rushing with the ball in their hands for three steps, then leaping through the air and tipping the ball up while in midair.
(Link) Again, literally the opposite of what is happening
Mid 2000s NBA? Maybe. That's back when the typical (white) boomer Dad joke was "NBA, more like WWF!" But Steph Curry et al changed the game on such a fundamental level that a Shaq-like player wouldn't make it out of the D League today. You might be pointing to Lebron as this "bull in the China shop" And it's also true that LeBron has always received favorable foul treatment. He's also a 5x 1st-Team Defensive player and noted for his assists. Much like Brunson, interestingly enough, LeBron is so good because he makes other players on his team so good that the opposing team has to make a lose-lose choice to double up on LeBron and leave someone else open, or single cover LeBron and open themselves up to his penetration game (...hehe).
There's no teamwork beyond setting picks, no finesse, just a big flying body that the defender is not allowed to do anything about.
See above. Teamwork has never been more important. The pace at which defense (and offenses, frankly) adapt in game is so fast that incomplete team play is how you get blowouts.
it's usually a foul and free throw so just as good.
Okay, but later on you say:
(BTW, how are there professional players who can't hit free throws? What an embarrassing sport!)
So, free throws aren't "just" as good as making the basket. Hmm.
Third, shooting baskets is stupid.
There it is.
Seriously, can someone come up with any other action in life that is remotely like shooting baskets? How much of our kids' time is wasted on this junk?Also, there's relatively little interaction involved in shooting baskets.
This is perhaps the strangest argument. Practice one's shot is absolutely a necessary part of training, but it's not the only thing you do. And eventually, you know, you're playing or practicing with other people. Specifically, you are coordinating in real time with a group of peers to accomplish a competitive goal against a common opponent. This is what makes all "sports dumb lol" arguments so tedious. Sports are one of the most effective ways to build real pro-social capability. There's a reason why college athletes have such better life outcomes (in general, across the distribution) than college non-athletes. This "shooting baskets is stupid" (literally what you said) is taking a very specific item and stripping away all of the context around it as a means to paint the entire enterprise of Basketball as vapid. It's almost a .... Motte and Bailey.
All basketball arenas should be renovated into indoor soccer arenas.
Even if I shared your potentially homoerotic inclinations for indoor soccer, I couldn't get past the fact that this is an insane de-growth position. The 30 NBA teams are worth, on average, $5.4bn each. That's About $150bn in just team value right off the top. Add in the various marketing, promotions, adverts etc. and The NBA (like the other Big 4 sports) is probably close to a half-a-trillion-dollar-per-year economic impact across the US.
Indoor soccer is not. It's not a tenth of that value. It may be a hundredth, but I don't know (nor do I care). But your position seems to be that we should turn a half-a-trillion-dollars into far, far less because you don't particularly like Basketball. But literally millions and millions of other people do and are willing to pay for it. You must make a stronger case.
Here's The Stronger Case for Why Basketball - Specifically, the NBA - Sucks
All of these are common knowledge problems. I've done enough citations above for the day. If you want to look these up on your own, you can. They are all valid.
-
Tanking. Because of how the NBA draft works, teams towards the bottom of the league, at the end of the season, will lose on purpose to secure a higher draft pick for the next season. One player can really be that important (LeBron in Cleveland being the canonical example). This means that the end of the regular season is a fucking travesty.
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Sports Betting. In the past few years, several players (including major names and, oddly, retired superstars) have been indicted for fixing games, point shaving etc. This corrupts the game, of course, and creates is own gravity because it helps the mobile sports books make money and set better lines. It's become so ubiquitous that, IIRC, the NBA league office is hiring Cybersecurity teams to monitor and secure player devices around game times. There's probably a lawsuit in there somewhere. But the larger point is that guys making seven figures a year still think it's a smart move to get paid $50k to shave points. Which leads to point number 3....
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Culture War (Hey, we made it!). The NBA is the most "culturally" aware of the Big 4. Baseball, Football, and Hockey dudes tend just to want to score points, win, and go home (and / or party). The Colin Kapernick saga in the NFL showed that if you really want to get hyperpolitical, you can Resist (TM) your way out of a contract (Also, side note, Kapernick really did suck as a QB, but that's a different thread). In the NBA, being "cultural" seems to be par for the course. It starts at draft night where guys are wearing the most retarded suits in the world. It extends to post game interviews where they discuss, with the media, the scientific merits of flat earth theory (look it up, seriously). And eventually you get the fuckery that is smile posing with Jay-Z while wearing comic sans "I can't breathe" t-shirts.
The issue isn't that the NBA has gone too woke (ask them how they feel about gay players!), it's that the league has become a hyperslop live action TikTok. This is the league of "dabbing each other up" before games (look it up). If Gen-Z wanted to ironically-vibe-code a sports league, it wouldn't be surprising if the "app" turned out to be today's NBA.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
I've always liked James Buckley's thoughts on this matter.
- The undercurrent is an argument for Natural Law. Where do rights come from? Mutually-agreed upon rules isn't enough, that's just a fig leaf in front of tyranny.
In his Farewell Address, George Washington would ask, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths ….?” And in an opinion quoting the judicial oath of office, Justice Samuel Chase would write, “No position can be more clear than that all the federal judges are bound by the solemn obligation of religion, to regulate their decisions agreeably with the Constitution of the United States.”
- You want religiously minded people in positions of power because they take their faith seriously, and may be more consistent than a humanist-rationalist who might find new and inventive ways to weasel out of things.
When I took my oath of office as a federal judge, I solemnly swore that I would “administer justice … according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.” The authority that was vested in me on taking that oath was derived exclusively from the Constitution. Thus the justice I was sworn to administer was not justice as I might see it in a particular case, but justice as it is defined by the Constitution and laws and legal traditions of our country. And if I consciously deviated from that body of law to do justice as I saw it, I would have violated my oath of office and undermined the safeguards embodied in the Separation of Powers.
- Religion governs personal behavior in ways that laws fundamentally cannot.
Thomas Cooley noted in his 1871 treatise on Constitutional Limitations, the Framers considered it entirely appropriate for government “to foster religious worship and religious instruction, as conservators of the public morals and values, if not indispensable, assistants to the preservation of the public order.” As that perceptive observer of the American scene, Alexis de Tocqueville, put it, “while the law allows the American people to do everything, there are things which religion prevents them from imagining and forbids them to dare.”
Wokeness is absolutely a (pseudo)religion in that it gives its believers a sense of being among the "elect" and "right" in the metaphysical sense. Where it falls woefully short, of course, is in its role as a cohesive and consistent worldview and moral compass. How do wokies deal with the very common idea of "You don't like thing x, but you have to do thing x as part of your job / role / responsibility?" They don't, the cry out "oppression!"
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Look, I agree with the sentiment. But, come on, you literally clipped the quote right before I wrote "in theory."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
SSPX
Timely reference, hydro.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
This is correct.
Even well intentioned and thoughtful liberal leaning folks confused "individual sovereignty" with the -ism that is "individualism." Individual sovereignty is at the core of American politics (the rest of the west ... maybe). The basic idea being that the government can't tell you what to do outside of the basics; taxes, laws*.
"Individualism" is a self-maximizing ideology that blends together individual freedom, lack of responsibility, hedonic indulgence, and social-proof ego maximization. It cannot lead anywhere but to a neurotic state of simultaneous self-reverence and self-loathing. What better example than the Instagram account with over a million followers who suffers from depression and addiction.
The whole point of family formation is that an individual makes the conscious and affirmative decision to demote themselves in importance in order to gain a level of happiness that is not possible on one's own, even with unlimited financial resources. Every (good) family I've seen start in my friend group has resulted in both the husband and wife taking a step back or slowing down in their careers, social life, hobbies, and even physical fitness (dad guts and mom butts!) .... and then, within a few years, being obviously more happy and fulfilled than all of the single strivers or, god forbid, DINKs.
Modern individualism is the ultimate bill of goods. It is the secular "Non serviam" and it's led, as its biblical predecessor did, to hell.
- And, if you don't like taxes or laws (which are fundamentally the same thing) there is recourse to change them, in theory. Let's avoid a deep dive into political theory for the purposes of this post.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Not to sidetrack, but I have my own theory for the fertility collapse: SSRIs.
About the only agreed upon effect of SSRIs is a side effect; they reduce libido and cause other (reversible) sexual dysfunction.
Something like 1 in 5 western adults has been on SSRIs at some point in their life, with a disproportionate number being women.
Gotta fuck to make babies, as they say. If you ain't fuckin', no babies.
I am aware that the immediate counter to that is that TFR is down all over the world and, therefore, has a looser correlation with SSRI use. But my counter to that counter is that I don't trust non-western TFR data to be anywhere near as reliable; home births are still far more common, hospital data has to be highly variant, and there's also the, you know, infanticide problems.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
(I should probably turn this into a longer effortpost. We'll see)
The homogenization of America is real. Several of my destinations we're B/C tier cities. As an example; Huntsville, Alabama.
These cities are NOT in decline or blight the way the canonical Gary, Indiana or East St. Louis are. In fact, many of them have experience real population and median income growth over the last decade. Visiting them in rapid succession, however, placed in obvious relief that there is a "book" for modern small city / large down development.
Easily 50% of my conversations with locals went like this:
Me: "What's a good neighborhood for a night out? Dinner, drinks" Them: "Oh, you've GOT to go to the historic district! It's so cool. Tons of great restaurants. Go to [Insert single first name like Jimmy's or Silvia's or Tom's] they the best burger! And there's also like three really good breweries there to."
Everywhere has the best burger. There are always three to a dozen breweries "that let it dogs! and have a great trivia night!." After a few of these same places, I developed a mental formula that involved number of coffee shops with young women outside of them around lunch, number of hand-chalked signs with puns on them, and if a place had a co-working spot with a name like "the railyard" or "brick factory." If yes to all of these - congrats, you're in the "hip, revitalized" part of town.
I'm being a little flippant as this isn't a real culture war issue (or thread). But I do bemoan, to some extent, that regional variety does seem to have slipped meaningfully. I can remember growing up with a friend who had been born in Pittsburgh. He was too young to have absorbed that city, but his parents were deep "Yinzers." In our teenage years, the Dad told us drinking stories about Pittsburgh that seemed like combat to my young ears. I've since been to Pittsburgh and though you can see shadows of the "tough Iron worker" culture, it has no teeth.
Another part of me, however, kind of appreciates this. Plainly stated, more small cities are safe, workable, and viable destinations for relocation for people who want to move. Using Huntsville as an example, if you weren't from there up through the early 2000s, could you ever actually fit in after a move? Or would Alabama Southern Society culture suffocate you? If you moved to, I don't know, Buffalo NY in the 1990s and picked the wrong street, would your car get stolen? While homogenization makes places look the same, it also makes them function the same to an extent. In a nation as large and diverse (diversity is our strength!) as the US, an expectation of similar overall capability as you travel is probably a feature, not a bug.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Download all of the booking apps from the major chains; IHG and Hilton come to mind.
If the hotel is on the app, it's been through a recent refurb so that it can deal with mobile bookings. For many of the Hilton group hotels, they have full check-in on your phone so you don't have to go to the front desk. Your phone is your room key.
If they've been through that refurb, the hotels themselves are going to be fine. The other guests, however, are always a gamble.
I have the advantage of being a rather tall and scary looking white dude, so my "fuck-with-able" coefficient is very low.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Yep, the whole calculus changes with kids, and you have to be much more intentional and disciplined about meals, bathroom breaks, and finding ways to keep them occupied.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Any reliable way to determine if they are present upon walking into a room?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
I don’t consider 800 miles in a day as a lot.
Cool. What is a lot then?
Here's my math:
A heuristic for hourly all-in speed is about 60 mph. This takes into account stops for fuel, rest etc. You're doing 75 or so on the highway, but there's traffic etc.
12 hours would be 720 miles. 13 would be 780. 14 would be ... you get the idea.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Some Observations From a 2500 Mile Road Trip
I spent a large part of June on the American Interstate.
I decided to take an "open ended" summer vacation. What I mean by that is that I got in my Truck and drove with generally a city in mind, but with no reservations already booked or itineraries planned. I'd get to the target city or, in a few cases, decided on the fly to keep truckin' to a different city, and then book a Motel/Cheap Hotel instantly on my phone. Think "Holiday Inn Express" grade of places. Clean enough, with AC, locks on the doors that work, 24 hour person at front desk. Nothing fancy in the rooms, but they did have coffee makers.
I'd spend between one and three nights in a given city and then move on.
Here are some assorted notes on the moving on part - the driving.
- Drive between 150 - 200 miles at a time, then take a 10 minute break. If you do this, you can do 600 miles per day without feeling road weary. My longest day - where I was intentionally trying to set my own record - I hit 803. That was a lot and I wouldn't do it again. Trying to do a marathon push of 5+ hours behind the wheel, in my experience, creates a negative compounding tiredness.
- Big breakfast, snack and starve during the day. I started each day with truly epic breakfasts at the classics spots - Denny's, Waffle House, iHop. I'd leave with large ToGo cups of coffee. I was peppy and alert. Then, for the rest of the driving day, I'd eat some variety of trail mix and drink water. This kept my energy level smooth and consistent and I never got drowsy behind the wheel. I can do a bunch of caffeine in the morning but, after lunch, sodas or coffee get me feeling over-stimulated for some reason. The jitters make the drive more difficult. Dinners were only after I had checked into a hotel and were more modest the breakfast.
- (Staying On food) the reality really is grim for truckers. There can be lots of highway between even small cities, and its populated by gas stations and fast food outposts. The really is a dearth of semi-healthy food options. It took a lot of discipline for me not to eat a burger or hotdog each day, and I was driving without deadlines or within the context of a "job." It is easy to see how someone working under stress is going to default to the most convenient option.
- I don't think chronic speeding gets you to your destination faster. The naive argument of "It's speed / distance!" doesn't hold up for a number of reasons. First, once you're at 80 mph+, your effective miles per gallon plummets because of the energy needs to overcome air resistance at that speed. Depending on tank size, this can result in an extra fuel stop or two. If you aren't practicing your NASCAR team refueling process and, instead, using the bathroom, buying snacks etc. then these pit stops negate any time saved from speeding. More systemically, my observation was that traffic really does exist in "waves" even on the loneliest of highways. You may be able to speed at 80+ for some time but, eventually, you'll just run into a dozen or so cars / trucks moving in a rough "pack" closer to the speed limit. If you find something like an RV or a heavy load truck, it can be in the right lane doing below the speed limit and cause a jam up around it. You then have to fight your way through this "pack" before getting back up to speed. Much like the pit stops, this sucks back any time gains earned while speeding. Thus, my strategy was to be captain cruise control - speed limit plus 5 mph. People could pass me on the right as much as they wanted. When I passed people, I'd get back in the right lane ASAP.
- Silence >>>>> Podcasts > Musics. Driving without any podcast / music in the Truck was the easiest mileage I did, and I felt the best after. Still, eventually I did get a feeling of antsy-ness that would get cured with a podcast. Music I left for in town driving because I have a tendency to start hitting the skip button a lot trying to search for a "perfect" song.
- Drivers are truly insanely dangerous. The overestimation of ability is breathtaking. Constant tailgating and lane weaving at 70+ mph. A human simply doesn't have enough basic reaction speed to adjust on the fly at those speeds. Add in the fact that bad drivers seem to always be somewhat distracted. Death machines, each of them. I saw multiple cases of people clearly watching something on their phones while driving. One woman I passed was eating with a plastic fork and knife out of a Styrofoam food container she had balanced on the neck behind the steering while, obscuring her own dashboard. Another guy was tailgating an 18-wheeler, perhaps four feet from the truck's rear bumper, while laying on his horn. I have no idea what his intent was. According to Wikipedia motor-vehicle deaths are, if I'm reading correctly, the 2nd most common cause of accidental death in the US, behind "poisoning." As much as a car enthusiast as I am, I am beginning to think that driver training should be far, far more involved and thorough than at present, and that loss of license for repeated infractions (speeding, recklessness etc.) should be more common.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
The media was all over J6'ers about being broke idiots. Literally.
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
So, a population of 125 comes up as perhaps one standard deviation above expected random sampling.
This is selection bias at a cartoonish level. But it's dressed up with enough circumstantial relevance and high-minded sounding statistical framing that the self-assured PMC'er reading it can go, "Oh, of course, those crazy MAGA folks are aggrieved because they haven't the sense to manage their money properly. Harumph. I, on the other hand, am always wise in my investments. Why, just look at what we did for young Junior - $300,000 for a degree from Am'erst (not Am-herst ... the "h" is for the peasants)."
Hat tip as ever to Scott's idea that the media doesn't lie in a factual sense, but just frames and reports selectively to, nonetheless, alter the perception.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
This is just such a willful sidestepping of the obvious context of the issue. @Sloot's comment was very clearly about Ukrainian women who left when the war started and are now going to bed with EuroBros elsewhere.
Your comment isn't in bad faith, per se, but it's an intellectual dodge. You're better than that.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Something something "believe all women."
Unless those women are 250,000 little British girls, I guess.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Thanks. And thanks for doing the survey. Survey's take a little bit of doing.
The takeaways are interesting to me because of the next level of analysis they point to; the context and nature of the events surrounding an infidelity event.
Based on the survey and several different comments in the thread, I think a starting point framework could be as followed:
- Men cheat in in-the-moment opportunities or (often drunken) impulsive and horny decision making.
- Women "cheat" by creating the conditions in their own relationship to push them into the arms of another partner (notice I'm saying partner here because, I think, this holds across hetero/homo/bi).
This mirrors the "porn versus romance novel" framework. Men are captivated by the act itself, while women like the lead up to the act.
I've been thinking about marriage in the west for about 7 years or so. That's when my friend group started to get married, so it makes sense. I wonder how many of these marriages will make it 5, 10, 20+ years. There's already been a few divorces less than 3 years after the wedding. Then, I think about how many of these marriages will turn into dead bedroom, mutual-resentment situations. How many will have to deal with either or both of physical infidelity or emotional infidelity.
The postmodern (and wrong) response to this is the current vibe of polyamory and its various branches. Interestingly enough, the survey demonstrated that that is a more unstable structure than monogamy.
The 'conservative' view of this is "welp, yep, marriage takes work and even couple goes through a rough patch or two." Think of the fat boomer (and, increasingly, millenial) men who like to say "happy wife, happy life", "let me check with the boss" when asked about going to a game / bar / boys night, and makes a lot and makes jokes about spousal murder. In many ways, I hate this "version" of marriage the most. It's a long-term, slow neutering of the modern married man and "battle-axe-ification" of the modern married woman. This is how you get "Karens" and their husbands, which google tells me are one of "Dale", "Darren", "Ken", or "David."
I've written before about how marriage is a miracle that, along with children, sits as the basis for the rest of a functioning, large scale, self-determined society. And I think that we've spent something like 4 or more generations now not only not doing the basic maintenance of marriage as an institution, but actively undermining it.
The results of that are hinted at in the survey -- realtionships, in general and across the board, seem to have more failure modes than success states. To be sure, this has been the case forever, but the entire point of the institution of marriage - along with the stricter courtship habits preceding it - is to give a massive social support to the odds of a marriage working out.
We've traded that for mobile-based-hookups and a silly vibe of "sexual freedom" and "self expression" and now, again according to the survey, the majority of people are having a very bad time, for at least part of their life, with it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2mo ago
I gotta say, selfishly, I like this comment and the responses to it because it confirms my original hypothesis that "Mr. Brightside" is a choose-your-own-adventure about relationship ambiguities, general feels of "hurt" or "pain" etc. and that is why it's such a big song.
I don't think anyone in this thread is right because I also don't believe anyone in this thread is wrong. And that makes me happy. I guess I'm looking on the brightsid---GOD DAMN IT.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2mo ago
Although I no nothing about the professional music industry, I think "Mr. Brightside" is probably a song that nearly every songwriter and pop(ish) performer has a huge love-hate relationship with.
They "love" it because it's a simple enough song to write and arrange. The detailed Wikipedia entry on it has quotes from The Killers that say as much. The song itself was a "yeah, I guess this one isn't that bad" level of initial excitement. It was certainly not a "we knew this one was special" kind of track.
Some of the lyrics are high-school sad poetry levels of overwrought;
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
I'm just imagining the "cool" 10th grade literature teacher saying "Wow, these are such raw emotions. But, maybe you should spend more time thinking about, you know, word choice and avoid cliches."
Which leads right into why, I think, a lot of artists also "hate" this song -- it shouldn't be such a staple. There's nothing very specific or unique about it. It's a Rorschach test for each and every listener to map their own personal experience to. The experience of infidelity (to some degree) is common to many (most? idk) people. And it has a unique emotional resonance. Until the advent of true maturity and, very often, never, people always think their experience with cheating was the absolute worst. So, a song that makes (almost) everyone who listens to it feel like it's "their" song is bound to be huge.
But, again - why does this very median song (especially the lyrics) just "hit" so well compared to the thousands of other songs about infidelity and the harshness of romance? I think it's genuinely mysterious. And I think that's maddening for people.
To add another, slightly different concept in support, I also think that Mr. Brightside hits a kind of midwit depth of emotionality. To a lot of listeners, Mr. Brightside seems "deep" and doesn't come across as the overproduced love songs of, say, Mariah Carey. But it isn't nuanced. Once we get to the chorus of "[she's touching his] Chest now..." it's damn obvious whats happening and how you (in the person of the singer) should feel. Compare this to a classic like "Casey's Last Ride" by Kris Kristofferson which is a subtle meditation on isolation, loneliness, the remembrance of love or something that felt like love (is the unnamed paramour in the song, perhaps, a prostitute?). That kind of depth is something to genuinely wrestle with. It's ponderous and weight. Mr. Brightside gives you a much cleaner payoff -- "dude, like, this song. Bro, this is exactly what happened when Kayley/Ashleigh/Tara/Madison cheated on me with Chet/Chad/Braden/Glorp." You get to feel the emotional satisfaction of "literally me" paired with the intellectual self-satisfaction of "nobody gets this but me."
I think it's worth comparing Mr. Brightside to it's cousin; "Misery Business" by the band Paramour. This is a song from a female protagonist viewpoint (sung by a female lead, the quirky-alt-chick archetype Hayley Williams. You'll remember her from being the profile photo of literally every girl with a LiveJournal from 2004 - 2012).
The plot arc of the song is something along the lines of;
The female "protagonist" in the song sees a guy friend being mistreated by his existing girlfriend. She, the protagonist, somehow steals the guy and starts dating him. The song is then a kind of victory chant to the other, unnamed, female antagonist.
If Mr. Brightside had a, well, brighter side, it very well might be "Misery Business." And it has a lot of the same features I pointed out before; goofy teenage quality lyrics, personalized "literally me" accessibility, and just enough depth to make it seem authentic and meaningful.
I'm not trying to be critical of either of these songs. I'm just trying to figure out why they are what they are.
They are both far better than "Imagine" by John Lennon.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2mo ago
I’m a software developer and I deal with that all the time when trying to communicate with non technical people.
And
labels are not the truth and that the words we use daily are more probabilistic than discrete
Pick one.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2mo ago
Because if you define gay as “person with XY chromosomes attracted to another person with XY chromosomes”, it’s not necessarily wrong, but it might not be useful.
So this is actually a profoundly monstrous argument.
If you take this to its logical extreme, this is literally saying "there are things that are true and there are things that are useful. We should focus on the things that are more useful."
Cue the hyper cut to soviet pogroms, concentration camps, khmer rouge, whatever.
Normies will look at semantic word games like "it depends on how you define that" and "what are you saying when you say you don’t think I’m a woman?" and simply roll their eyes, I get incensed by them because that slipperiness not with the truth but with the relative importance of the truth to utility is how you unlock the gates of Hell.
When's the last time you checked on your local, elder millenial foids?
They have thoughts on Data Centers and Democratic Socialism, don't you know?
One of the thing that keeps me coming back to the Motte is the lack of any algorithm-ing. Posts get upvotes in the original reddit style and that's all you need. Still, one notices patterns. One style of persistently highly upvoted post is that of the personal story or extended anecdote. It's no mystery. People relate to people and the writing quality here on the Motte is generally high enough that a "human interest" story generally weaves together that emotional resonance with content rich analysis of the pressing issues of our time.
I include this preamble as a means of introducing what will be an attempt to combine some thoughts on recent data center posts, DSA (that is, Democratic Socialists of America) wins, and the current state of local foid vibes.
Why the focus on foid vibes? Mostly because I noticed this post got a lot of good comments. It seems like my "Lauren" archetype struck something of a nerve, but a generative nerve.
So, let's talk about "Lauren" (Again, not her real name and, this time, also kind of a mashing together of a few different folks I have semi-regular contact with in my little town).
Lauren Doesn't Like Elon Musk's Rich Guy Data Centers.
Lauren, like most normies, doesn't know what Anthropic is. She knows that Claude is an AI chatbot and knows that "GPT" (meaning ChatGPT) is like, a different AI chatbot, right? OpenAI is some sort of an AI company, but the connection between OAI and ChatGPT may not be solidly in place in Lauren's mind.
But Lauren knows who Elon Musk, the person, is. And, obviously, he's a Nazi because he "literally did the Nazi salute!" His desire to go to Mars is just a rich man's self indulgence and there's no real need to go to space when we have so many problems on earth. People are literally starving!
Unsaid by Lauren is that Elon is just plain weird in a weird guy kind of way. She hints at it with little jokes, but she's pretty sure he's into weird sex (probably anime stuff), and smells bad. His autistic ouevre during interviews doesn't come across as "quirky sensitive boy" who will write her poetry but as "potentially dangerous engineer dude who might show up unannounced at her home."
She (Lauren) also knows that Elon is "doing lots of AI" and, therefore, has to build a bunch of data centers - including one in our area!
Data Centers are not good. They use a ton of water and also pollute the water. They're loud. Or they make a sound or something. Lauren isn't sure where she read it, but she knows she read that being around Data Centers can cause all sorts of cognitive issues. Plus (like Elon) they're so ugly!
I'll inject my a TollBooth editorial background comment here. Lauren has recently started seeing a new therapist. Lauren tells me this therapist (female, black) is literally so much better than her last therapist - whom Lauren stopped seeing in about 2021. She's very happy that the Therapist is helping her stand up for herself and focus less on people pleasing. Lauren looks forward to reporting to the therapist how much non-people pleasing she's been doing recently (primal scream from TollBooth: MY GOD, THE IRONY).
But back to Elon's Load Bearing AI Data Centers. So much yuck! I gently tell Lauren that the water usage issue is quite fake. There's enough trust between us that after I pull up a few stories on my phone - from sources she trusts (like Vox!) - that she shrugs and agrees. Water issue aside, however, the real issue is that the local government isn't being transparent enough with how they're dealing with the Data Center developers. That's the problem; transparency!
I ask her what that means. Lauren tells me that out of the three different public town halls that the local government has hosted, two of them were delayed by 30 minutes, but then finished at the scheduled time instead of extending! They couldn't even get through all of the public comments verbally and people had to submit their concerns to the specially created data center public commentary website. Zero transparency! Zero accountability!
I emote with Lauren. I agree that when things happen people feel things about those things that have happened. She loves that I "get" her - she tells me so.
Again, gently, I point out that having all of these town halls and creating a special website for public comment seems above and beyond, no? Aren't most issues around here handled through the normal city/county calendar of public hearings etc.
Lauren cedes the point before doubling down on it (a very underrated tactic). Yes, they're doing "more than usual" - but the data center issue is so big they need to be doing even more! And that lack of doing more means, of course, that the fix is in and a deal's already been made and so that's why there's no transparency! These greedy capitalists!
Which brings me (Lauren?) to the DSA. Have I, TollBooth, seen the fun wins all of the DSA members are racking up! Isn't it AWESOME! Lauren says this, funnily enough, tongue-in-cheek. Lauren knows I am a real life conservative. She knows I am not jazzed about the DSA wins. But Lauren also thinks that I am literally Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. She thinks my conservatism is funny ha-ha "I like guns" conservatism. Lauren sees me as actually a totally good guy who is pretty much a White Dude for Kamala but also likes Jesus a lot. So Lauren isn't worried about me flipping out over the DSA stuff. And I don't flip out, because I am not a fucking psycho.
But I do point out that the DSA has listed, official factions and causes that are deadly serious actual Marxists and Communists. These people think Lenin had it right and we have to commie harder in America. Lauren pauses for a second - actually pauses - and states she didn't know about things like The Marxist Unity Group who advocates for:
They literally want to overthrow America, Lauren, I say.
Well, that's not Lauren's DSA. Her DSA just wants the obvious, basic things; free healthcare, free education, a living wage! Like, hello, why are we evening talking about this in 2026? Lol!
I order another beer, smiling. Lauren veers off topic again, this time about a "Mayoral Election" for pets that is a charity effort for a local non-kill shelter. She's really excited about it. More excited about that than Elon Musk, Data Centers, and the DSA. A while later, she tells me - with mischief in her eye - about her friend, Molly, who, yes, is 41 and divorced, but is actually so smart and really cute. I lament to Lauren that while I can easily envision saxophone-accompanied nights of passion with Molly (before watching Parks and Rec afterwards, of course) I've got a lot of business travel coming up (which is true) - so I can't risk falling in love all over again. Lauren, laughing, accepts my polite decline. She shows me some photos of her niece on her phone.
Commentary
I've said it before and I stand by it: Lauren is a Basically Good Person (BGP). She's divorced and clearly heartbroken but not actually bitter. She knows in her heart of hearts she's not going to be a Mom. I genuinely feel for her on that one. She doesn't hate men. She doesn't hate America. But she's so full of emotional incontinence that anything that isn't soft and cuddly (Elon, AI, data centers) becomes a target, and anything loud and passionate that resonates with her (DSA, Kamala back in '24, the World Cup (for some reason)) becomes her sacred, personal cause....
Until she gets into what really matters; things and people that make her feel at ease and comforted; Ted Lasso, animal city council elections, the potluck that Chris from the bar is having on Saturday afternoon, Words with Friends, being the "matchmaker" for her single friends (while STAUNCHLY refusing to date on her own ... unless, like, Mark at that coffee shop asked about her?)
Lauren's problems aren't whatever her therapist is telling her. Her problem (singular) is that she is utterly disconnected from the rest of society. It doesn't look like it from the outside, and doesn't feel like it to her personally; she's out and about all the time. Her social calendar is booked up! But that social calendar is just "vibing" with people. There's no deep interpersonal anchor. No commitments.
So this means Lauren doesn't experience social issues, politics, or anything else in the way that those words traditionally imply. Lauren isn't looking at issues and plausible outcomes of policy, legislation, and local development on her local or national community. This is even more true in how Lauren relates to technology. She isn't trying to think about the downstream consequences of disrupted knowledge work or the knock-on effects of physical world (data center) construction. She hasn't thought about the revolutionary potential of nuke energy because "Hiroshima was a tragedy."
For her, all of it - literally all of her waking time - is emotional pattern matching. "Does this thing go in the "make me feel good" bucket or the "make me feel bad" bucket?. That's it. That's the rubric. There isn't even the introspection done to determine how and why she has developed various emotional attachments. Not to "Freud a Foid" too hard, but does Elon remind her of the kind austic guy she dated in college who was bad at sex yet still ended up awkwardly dumping her? Is Trump "an asshole" because he is literally the same age as her estranged father?
Nope. It's finish-the-emotion all the way down.
Which brings me to the final stanza here - the LLMification of human brains. A small thread and exchange here.
AI fucking up the corporate or commercial life of people doesn't really bother me deeply. The person who, today, thinks it is acceptable to read back LLM output verbatim during a job interview is the person who, 5-10 years ago, was mainlining hustle slop from Gary Vee and Tim Ferris before launching a podcast about crypto automation. Same agent (thank you very much) different skin.
Lauren's situation is worse. She has adopted the (lack of) introspection of LLMs as well as their simple method of "complete the x with the y most probable next token." Where "x", in Lauren's case, is a emotional-judgemental-moral reaction loop to anything. Added to that pitiful epistemic model is the sheer superficiality of it. For example, Lauren was really into the World Cup. Because soccer is left coded but it's also a sport and sports mean hot guys might be around (it is astonishing how, in her 40s, divorced, Lauren's approach to dating is essentially unchanged from her mid teens).
But even though Lauren was into the World Cup, she never learned about soccer. She didn't really understand even the basics like off-sides (the concept, not how it is enforced, which truly is Kafkaesque) the extra / stoppage time situation, or corner kicks versus throw-ins etc. And that's because none of those details fit into the "emote-judge-moralize" loop that seems to govern her life.
Perhaps most chilling is the fact that Lauren is not at all a heavy user of AI. She doesn't have a secret AI boyfriend or a galaxy of prompts to write her on-demand romantasy. But, somehow, through the collective-insect-brain of popular leftist, mainstream culture, she has adopted so many LLM-like habits that it's hard not to point and scream at it.
It would be reductive to call Lauren and NPC and then dismiss her. This is a real person with a legitimate claim to human dignity and an actually strong social track record. Lauren pays her taxes, stays employed, doesn't break the law more than a speeding ticket here and there, and some technically still illegal marijuana at her apartment. This is exactly the kind of person who I want to have feel like they are engaged with society so that they are thinking about society. But that's not happening. What made Lauren feel bad today? What made her feel good?
Lauren is not x, she's y - and that's the thing no one else is talking about. We should try to surface the scaffolding of the heart of the issue. Open the door and walk through it.
If you'd like, I can continue unpacking this in the comments.
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