2rafa
7d ago
For example, the pattern of jewish overrepresentation in certain jobs and the majority getting mad at it is found broadly in space and time, which cant be explained by Ashkenazi selection in the middle ages.
Arab Jews have the same relative advantage in the Middle East that European Jews did in European lands. 95 IQ in a land of 84s is as much an advantage as 112 is in a land of 100s.
For a contemporary example, see the Lebanese who dominate commercial life in large parts of West Africa. In much of the West (outside of America which got the most elite Maronites), these are not hugely impressive immigrants - in Australia many are considered a underclass! - but in West Africa they are a market dominant minority, sometimes to a scarcely believable extent in places like Liberia, but to a great extent even in the larger nations.
Sephardic Jewry’s outperformance in European lands (where the differential was less) was more contingent. They did well enough for a time under the Arabs as a middle man minority, and restrictions on usury meant many adopted roles in finance / lending too, and therefore were early to the shipping and capital markets boom in the mercantile age in Amsterdam, but the advantage was less than it was in either Ashkenazi or Mizrachi lands.
In a way, that arguably led to less antisemitism, which while certainly prevalent in the inquisition etc, was probably still substantially less violent than the Jewish experience during the crusades in Western and Central Europe or in Eastern Europe later in the millennium, or the Jewish experience in Persia, which alternated between semi-tolerance and what European Jewish visitors in the 17th and 18th centuries often considered the worst persecution they had encountered.
2rafa
7d ago
I don’t think you’re the villain, but like many men you have a prurient interest in a ‘fallen woman’ (whether she is or isn’t, or what that means, is less important than that you think she is one) and both your interaction with her and more substantially this story serve that. In the end, that’s probably your most TLP-like trait of all.
2rafa
7d ago
I thought this was fun. The writing did wander, and I think you somewhat self-consciously allow the AI a little too much of a free hand with the editing pass (your writing was better before it, really). But it was good, and I was entertained throughout.
As regards the story, there’s plenty unsaid that you’re not yet ready to admit to yourself, especially around your offer. But you know that.
2rafa
7d ago
No, but in 2016 when woke started, most executives in American companies (probably at least at 70% of them) were white men.
I agree with @FiveHourMarathon below. The reality is that many of the prime drivers of racial and gender affirmative action were old, largely white, men in positions of economic and in some cases political power in many of these institutions. There was some pressure around board seats or gender reporting, particularly in parts of Europe. But the majority was not forced.
There are two motives here, both obvious.
To a smart old man, a young, highly ambitious man is competition in a way a young, even highly ambitious woman is not. The woman probably won’t make it to the top; even today, when big law new hires are gender equal and have had many women for a long time, 75% of new partners are men. In finance, probably 75% of new managing directors this year are men, too, (apparently 73% at Goldman), more at some places. Race is an additional variable; because of longstanding stereotypes eg. about how personable Asian applicants are, or implicit beliefs in other details, Mr Editor in Chief might not see James Wong or James Chukwu as as much competition as James Williams or James Goldstein (and make no mistake, in publishing/media/film/arts, a lot of the ‘white men’ shut out over the past decade who would previously have found a place in the business were Jewish). The boss may well be wrong. But his belief is there nevertheless. Creative businesses are those in which youth is often prioritized; a senior director in advertising has seen 28 year old guys replace 55 year olds because they have better ideas, are younger, hotter, and cheaper, before.
The second motive is sex. Well, not necessarily sex, but men enjoy and have always enjoyed the company of pretty younger women. In 1975 you had to deal with the sweaty young men who worked for you because that was who the firm hired. In 2020 you could become ‘executive mentor’ to a bunch of pretty, 28-32 year old Asian, Indian and white women under the guise of “equity and inclusion” and be praised for it. What’s more, none of them had the chutzpah to book coffee with the head of division and pitch that they can do your job for half the pay.
An underhanded competition between old men in power and younger versions of themselves isn’t the only story of the woke era, but it is one of them.
2rafa
9d ago
By the mid 1930s it had transitioned into a party of government and so serious people of all sexual persuasions wanted to climb to the top. It’s like if you suddenly put the Catholic Church or Church of England in charge of all politics the proportion of gay priests would fall quite rapidly.
2rafa
9d ago
The SA which was by far the most classically fascist ideologically was pretty gay. Once a totalitarian party cements itself fully in the governance of the nation anyone ambitious joins, so the fact that few leading German political figures in terms of power in that era were actually gay is true but irrelevant.
The process in the UK would be very different and there would be an investigation during a suspension and then likely a tribunal. The defendant could make the very reasonable case that this was a joke about 24 hour hackathons being sweaty and that no offense to Indians was plausibly implied, nor was this in any way a malicious or specifically targeted communication, and might well win. Unless they were contractually prohibited from any comment on social media (and even then it’s very unclear that that kind of thing would be enforceable in most cases) they would have an OK case.
2rafa
10d ago
There are reasonable pros and cons. The reason Americans are paid more than the French (size of the economy, labor pool, lower taxes, more natural resources, bigger domestic market, more capital, better entrepreneurial culture, despite the origin of that word) isn’t primarily due to labor laws. The Scandinavian countries have very restrictive labor laws and low unemployment, for example, while other countries have high unemployment even with loose laws.
2rafa
10d ago
Men on the far right are disproportionately gay and men on the far left are disproportionately (heterosexual) sexual predators. This has always been true. The Nazis and Italian fascists were pretty gay, the 1968ers rioted at the Sorbonne over getting access to the girls’ dorms overnight. Why? Because straight pervs go where the women are (the left), and gay ones fetishize masculinity, maleness, and in particular often sexually fixate on male ‘brotherhood’ in the army, navy, male organizations, which fascist groups usually are.
2rafa
11d ago
The of return is an application rather than an entitlement, it's subject to the whims of the Israeli state and can be denied for many reasons at the relatively arbitrary whim of the state. Israel doesn't consider non-Israeli Jews to be, legally, citizens. In that case it's closer to 'ancestry visas' for e.g., great grandchildren in countries that support them, like Portugal, England and others. Italian hereditary citizenship (until earlier this year) was automatic for subsequent generations, you applied for recognition of citizenship, not for citizenship or a visa itself.
2rafa
11d ago
The impact and influence of hyper-online nationalist Chinese netizens is often very much overstated. The reasons are multifaceted but are essentially that most western “China watchers” are (by very nature of their own demographic - mostly white young men in the Anglosphere - their education and academic interests, their experience in China proper, and their literal profession and their clientele) mostly interested in Chinese views on geopolitics. The reality is that most Chinese have few to no prominent views of geopolitics beyond the bland centrally taught views of the wider society in which they live, they are almost uniquely parochial even when compared to Americans.
So these guys hyperfocus on a relatively small minority of very online young Chinese men who have very strong opinions on what Chinese foreign policy should be and who have strong views on things like the Ukraine War, Israel Gaza, American foreign policy in South America, immigration to Europe and other stuff that people discuss all the time on X.com. Thus even serious professional China analysts often post about the views of “Chinese netizens” as if someone in China was writing about, say, groyper views those of all “American people”, uncritically.
2rafa
11d ago
A lot of it really is the same people who played back then, now in their fifties and sixties. The same is true of EverQuest, the average player today is probably late 40s / early 50s now, some in their sixties and a few in their late 30s or early 40s who are the kids of the former category and started playing at 10 or 12 with Dad.
2rafa
11d ago
Britain had its own baby boom, but it was bifurcated into a wave in the late 40s and one in the early 60s, with an era of postwar austerity in the lean 50s in-between. America had more of a consistent boom.
2rafa
11d ago
There’s a strong case to be made that Contrapoints to some extent agrees with core aspects of the Blanchardian hypothesis. Not in its entirety, but they understand that they approach life in a certain context as a performance and that gender is part of that.
There are trans forums where they dislike Wynn for this reason, because they understand that there’s an acknowledgement, on some level, that it’s drag.
2rafa
11d ago
Moving against dual-citizenship would seem to be effective
As Randy Fine noted in response to Fuentes a couple of months ago on this subject, to his knowledge (and I think he’s probably more accurate than not) no Jewish congresspeople are Israeli citizens. In the same way, very few Jewish American billionaires or otherwise powerful figures are Israeli citizens. Zuckerberg, Ellison, Altman, Iger, none of these people have Israeli passports in all likelihood (I say because it’s possible they do in secret, but it’s very unlikely - there is no reason for them to).
2rafa
11d ago
Each party to the debate is speaking to his own audience. This is often an under-appreciated dynamic in this kind of situation.
2rafa
12d ago
After about two weeks, I figure either they have the evidence to catch you and you're in jail, or they don't and you put it out of your mind and never tell anyone.
Unlikely, the odds are very much against you, the only ‘smart’ move is to use your head start to get as far away as possible and then blend into a new life, like that American guy who hid in Wales for 20 years. Even stuff like AI facial recognition on public sector camera footage (outside any federal building, on an officer, a police car, in any government office, facility, bus station, subway station, outside a court, a school etc) is going to be much more common as those things increasingly feed into centralized FBI systems. The further you go, the less likely you trip some kind of alarm (the way the would-be Welshman did).
2rafa
13d ago
There are suburbs for upper-middle class and wealthy people across the developing world, from Peru to Nigeria to Kenya to the UAE to Malaysia to China, that explicitly model themselves on American suburbs, at least aesthetically, and often copy even semi-distinctive McMansion elements from the aforementioned. They are usually gated communities and are often still denser than American suburbs (so they look more like communities of townhomes do in the US) but that is the intention.
The difference is that in many of these places there are also a lot of wealthy people of all ages who live in apartments, which is rare in the US outside of NYC. In Indianapolis or Omaha or even Los Angeles you might find young high earning people who live in downtown apartment buildings, but very few families do. In China, like in Paris, Munich and São Paulo, you find many families who still live in apartment buildings even when suburbs are an option.
2rafa
13d ago
The Israeli crisis is due to NIMBYs and planning laws, not lack of space though. The settlements are ideological, there is plenty of land within even 1948 Israel for suburban development. I don’t mean deep in the Negev either.
2rafa
14d ago
The EU exports about 5 million cars a year and imports 4 million. Tariffs can be adjusted and are unlikely to provoke some kind of Chinese ban on…Chinese exporters selling car components (the recent Dutch case was very different). The manufacturing workforce in places like Germany is also ageing rapidly. The car industry is just a very emotive thing. There are other far larger problems with the European economy, but they won’t be solved until either the EU falls apart or the Germans naturally reassert themselves once more.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if we got a picture of you guys hugging?” “Yeah, I’m seven glasses of wine down, why not”.
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