ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
It's the old "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," alt-righters can't defeat progressives using their own tools.
But this progressive matrix exists within yet another matrix, the Enlightenment matrix, where in a similar way, late 20th century conservatives engage in a Sisyphean struggle to dismantle the works of theliberal left using the tools of liberalism. The only way conservatives can win is to reject the liberal frame entirely. Cthulhu swimming left isn't mysterious, it's simply carrying Enlightenment ideas towards their logical conclusions. These conclusions are too monstrous to reach in a single generation, but over many generations under the Enlightenment framework we will inevitably reach them, no matter how hard people stand athwart history shouting "Stop!"
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
China didn't have protestors trying to storm Zhongnanhai last year, China doesn't have homeless people with 18 prior arrests raping joggers in their richest, most prestigious city.
While it's been a decade since I've lived in China, I just have to disagree with this. Living in China and talking to Chinese people opens up a vast pool of "common knowledge" that is just not available to Westerners since it's not reported in the media and since there are a lot of pro-Chinese westerners in China or Westerners who are (rightfully) afraid of posting anything critical of the govt online. There is a shit ton of stuff that happens in China that you'll never hear about. Most of what happenes, actually.
Homeless dudes might not rape you in the park in China (though then again they might, if you are one of the non-persons living in a slum or migrant laborer camp!) but a well connected person like a school principal, police officer, etc very well might sexually assault you or your daughter, multiple times, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. For extremely obvious reasons this stuff never gets reported -- most people just STFU about it to avoid any retaliation. Another example -- you might also get your ass kicked by local thugs who pay money to the cops, and nobody will ever hear about it. You could also get defrauded or robbed, and the cops are either too apathetic or again, on the take, so nothing will be done.
All of that to say, don't believe that China is some sort of "law and order" society. It is, but in the same way the late stage USSR was. The laws exist to protect and advance the interests of the powerful, and crime statistics serve to burnish the country's image, not to actually document how much crime is taking place.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Man, I felt this post deeply. This describes my experience and feelings to a tee. I've never been a big name around here, but I've been around since we lived on the SSC subreddit and I've enjoyed the years of effort posting. But I too feel that nowadays I often come here to hate read or consensus build rather than to engage. Similarly to you, some of this is because there is just less charity all around, but a large part of it is also that I feel that I've seen the "other side" of most issues and that my mind is more or less made up. And so it's probably time for me to stop posting.
The most valuable takeaway for me has been reading the writings of the progressive-adjacent posters who patiently stick around and explain blue tribe ideals despite the increasingly frequently dogpiles. They helped me discover some blind spots I have and have gotten me closer to passing the Ideological Turing Test. I am indebted to them and wish them all the best.
Big thanks to @ZorbaTHut for putting a ton of effort in to this community over the years, it couldn't have happened without you.
See you space cowboy...
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
I love my kids and Iove being a dad, so I'm glad we had a third (and I'm actually hoping for a fourth). We have a huge SUV, but I like huge SUVs. We might end up in a 4BR house, but not due to the number of kids. We're just going to stick all the girls in one room and all the boys in another; that's how my siblings and I were raised and we were all fine with it.
My wife is a SAHM who does freelance work. I'd say it's impacted both of our careers. I've had to work harder and at a more stable line of work, and she's had to pass up some larger projects.
But overall there's never been a single moment where we've regretted having our third kid. He's awesome.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
Bonus quote regarding "the Raft," a mass of floating trash and boats inhabited by millions that circulates on the Pacific current, picking up the global poor as it passes Asia and dumping them by the hundreds of thousands on the shore of California (cf. migrant boats/caravans):
"So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent.
"Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean."
"I've heard the expression, yes."
“That’s my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know–it’s a piece of information–data–that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America’s like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel.”
"Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier."
Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy.
"That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way."
"Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
To me, even that rudimentary cause-and-effect thought (if I shout the right slogans, covid will go away) would be comforting because it would mean that there's at least some thinking going on. But my uncomfortable, reluctant suspicion is that a sizeable minority (at least?) don't even engage at that level. They're simply not engaging at all.
I think we all actually kind of do this sort of thing in certain situations. I know nothing about sports other than what I've gleaned from others' conversations and watching my dad yell at the TV growing up. That said I can still make comments in a casual conversation along the lines of "Yep, that's our $NFL_TEAM, choking at the 1 yard line, as is tradition, haha." When I say that, I'm really just making mouth noises that convey "We are similar! I wish to be friendly!" I'm communicating zero information about my opinions or thoughts on sports, even though it might seem otherwise. I'm not actually engaging my brain at all.
Maybe this is actually a good thing? Perhaps most people were, after all, born to live simple lives and have no desire or ability to form coherent political thoughts? It really gives me a dim view of democracy, dimmer than the one I had before covid.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
The therapist isn’t magic and doesn’t know exactly what you need to hear. The entire point is to be a nonjudgmental sounding board and even if it’s imperfect,
This makes me wonder -- would people take up an offer of two heavily discounted introductory sessions with ChatGPT (say $10/hour) and then have the third session with a live human who has read the transcripts? I'd probably go for this. I've always disliked paying for the first few "get to know you" sessions where nothing substantial is accomplished.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
True, human rights are political. Who defines them? Who interprets them?
This is the biggest "emperor's new clothes" problem in all of modern politics. When it's pointed out that "human rights" were pulled out of some committee's ass 70 years ago and have absolutely zero philosophical grounding**, the room gets quiet for a moment, people clear their throats awkwardly, and then a few seconds later conversation picks up again and politics continues as usual. I can't stand it.
Obligatory Legutko quote (long but well worth reading):
Especially striking is a change in the meaning of the word "dignity" which since antiquity has been used as a term of obligation.
If one was presumed to have dignity, one was expected to behave in a proper way as required by his elevated status. Dignity was something to be earned, deserved, and confirmed by acting in accordance with the higher standards imposed by a community or religion-for instance, by empowering a certain person with higher responsibilities or by claiming that man was created in God's image. Dignity was an attribute that ennobled those who acquired it. As noblesse oblige, dignity was an obligation to seek some form of self-improvement, however vaguely understood, but certainly closer to the Socratic way and further away from its opposite. The attribute was not bestowed forever: one could always lose it when acting in an undignified way.
At some point, the concept of dignity was given a different meaning, contrary to the original. This happened mainly through the intercession of the language of human rights, especially after the 1948 Universal Declaration. The idea of human beings having inalienable rights is counterintuitive and extremely difficult to justify. It may make some philosophical sense if derived from a strong theory of human nature such as one finds in classical metaphysics. However, when we accept a weak theory, attributing to human beings only elementary qualities, and deliberately disregarding strong metaphysical assumptions, then the idea of rights loses its plausibility. It may, of course, be sanctioned as a mere product of legislation through a Parliamentary or court ruling, which entitles people to make various claims called "rights," but these claims will be no more than arbitrary decisions by particular groups of politicians or judges who choose to do this rather than that due to circumstances, ideology, or individual predilections or under pressure from interest groups. It would indeed be silly to call such claims "inalienable," because inalienability by definition cannot be legislated.
Thus, in order to strengthen the unjustified and [...] unjustifiable notion of human rights, the concept of dignity was invoked, but in a peculiar way so as to make it seem to imply more than it actually did. This concept created an illusion of a strong view of human nature, and of endowing this nature with qualities nowhere explicitly specified but implying something noble, being an immortal soul, an innate desire for good, etc. But on the other hand, in using this concept, unaccompanied by other qualifications, the framers of the human rights documents apparently felt exempted from any need to present an explicit and serious philosophical interpretation of human nature and to explain the grounds and the conditions on which one could conceive of its dignity. This operation-or more precisely, sleight of hand, and not very fair to boot-led to a sudden revival of the concept of human dignity, but with a radically different meaning.
Since the issue of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, dignity has no longer been about obligation, but about claims and entitlements. The new dignity did not oblige people to strive for any moral merits or deserts; it allowed them to submit whatever claims they wished, and to justify these claims by referring to a dignity that they possessed by the mere fact of being born without any moral achievement or effort. A person who desired to achieve the satisfaction of a pig was thus equally entitled to appeal to dignity to justify his goals as another who tried to follow the path of Socrates, and each time, for a pig and for a Socrates, this was the same dignity. A right to be a pig and a right to be a Socrates were, in fact, equal and stemmed from the same moral (or rather nonmoral, as the new dignity practically broke off with morality) source.
Having armed himself with rights, modern man found himself in a most comfortable situation with no precedent: he no longer had to justify his claims and actions as long as he qualified them as rights. Regardless of what demands he would make on the basis of those rights and for what purpose he would use them, he did not and, in fact, could not lose his dignity, which he had acquired for life simply by being born human. And since having this dignity carried no obligation to do anything par ticularly good or worthy, he could, while constantly invoking it, make claims that were increasingly more absurd and demand justification for ever more questionable activities. Sinking more and more into arrogant vulgarity, he could argue that this vulgarity not only did not contradict his inborn dignity, but it could even, by a stretch of the imagination, be treated as some sort of an achievement. After all, can a dignity that is inborn and constitutes the essence of humanness, generate anything that would be essentially undignified and nonhuman?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
There's also the case that a lot of right wing people are of the conservative/loyalist/traditionalist mindset, which isn't that motivated to pursue the badly paid journalistic path as much as people who believe themselves to be rightful agents of bringing about a better future are.
I've never been fully convinced by this. Once upon a time I was an idealistic young traditionalist. If I could have, I might've joined a religious military order, or a very socially conservative think tank or news outlet, or worked in the administration of a paleoconservative or reactionary state. But almost every institution I could've joined was left-leaning or explicitly leftist/liberal, so I figured that the best way to follow my moral compass was to avoid joining any existing institution at all. I work in private sector partly because I think it gives my ideological enemies the least amount of succor. If there were a conservative Catholic software company out there I would probably take a pay cut to work there.
The "take a pay cut to serve a Great Cause" options are far, far fewer for right-wingers
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
You forgot to take it all the way, it will be blamed on "evil capitalist for-profit medicine, and wait a minute, which side was known for being pro-business back then?" and just like that the blame will be laid at the feet of the right, just like how eugenics has been laundered using the shoddy commutative equation "eugenicists= Nazis = right-wingers = conservatives".
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
GPT stuff aside, this:
What this transcript doesn't show is that each paragraph with a line break above was sent separately as a message that took time in between.
is something that I always assumed was designed to keep the customer engaged. Even clearly human chat support agents do this. Every 3 minutes they'll write something like "Thank you for your patience, we're still looking into your request."
Same reason corporate phone lines have hold music that gets interrupted every fifteen seconds with a human voice ("is it someone finally answering my call??") that says "Your call is very important to us. Please hold while we connect you to the next available representative."
It strings you along and manages to keep you on the line or chat way longer than you would if you weren't getting a steady but meaningless drip of feedback. It's dehumanizing and humiliating and encapsulates the ugly, cloying impersonality of modern life in a way I can't clearly describe.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
I think it must have been something last minute because making a half-ass announcement like that is burning some credibility, as well as a wasted opportunity to be the first to maneuver and scare off his political rivals in the GOP.
I'm not so sure. There's a reason that "two more weeks" is a flippant meme used frequently against MAGA people, Q believers, and low-information dissident rightists. The ecosystem of grifters that has sprung up around these people is practically always promising some big revelation ("trust the plan," "tick tock," "release the kraken," etc.) and it never fails to reel in and rile up the true believers and hardcore partisans.
This just seems like more Trump showmanship:
"Coming straight to your living room this November... an exclusive sneak peak of The Trump Saga, Part 3... The enemies of America and Freedom shall tremble... Libs shall get owned... Mysteries shall be revealed... Tuesday, November 15th...at 8 PM Central... America Shall Be Made Great Again... Only on Truth Social."
People eat this stuff up.
"Studies show" isn't the be all end all of certainty (effectiveness of parachutes, etc). It's an open secret that Indians in management at many large tech firms in America preferentially hire other Indians to such a degree that entire departments become Indian, often of specific castes (probably eliding some nuance here but I'm sure some of our resident Indian longposters will show up to nitpick).
How many studies on Indians preferentially hiring other Indians are there? A quick search came up with a ton of studies about Indians and Pakistanis getting discriminated against but zilch on Indian nepotism in U.S. tech hubs, so by your standards anyone who disagrees ought not trust their own lying eyes. Studying hiring practices of brown people (Indians) that disadvantage mostly white and Asian candidates in gauche so it is just not done.
So it goes with overrepresentation of Jews. Can you imagine a serious academic discussion about the topic, not to mention any affirmative action to correct the I can't because it would be immediately rejected, the researcher blacklisted as an "anti-Semite" (what does that even mean anymore), and discussion in the public fear quashed.
Here's the part where I have to prove my bona fides lest I get accused of being a 4chan pol poster. I don't think there's an international Jewish conspiracy or even a national one. The vast majority of Jews don't coordinate outside of their immediate networks, just like most people. There is however a "perfect storm" (for lack of a positive term) of factors that lead to Jewish overrepresentation. Like Indians, Chinese, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and many other communities with a strong group identity, they feel warmly towards and elevate their own (this is a good thing IMO). But, they also have a siege mentality that strengthens these feelings, cultural traits that happen to make one more successful in the modern information age, and higher IQs on average.
So there's no mass Jewish conspiracy, it's just a lucky confluence of genetic and historic factors, but AA proponents are still hypocritical for ignoring it, and whites should not be scolded for Jewish success by statistically aggregating the two.
And finally (and perhaps most controversially) the suppression of any "noticing" of this fact is extremely creepy. Wouldn't most people be concerned if there was massive overrepresentation of Scientologists, or Iranians, or [insert your favorite identity group] in positions of power? It would demand an explanation.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
So sacrificing food and other resources to gods that there is no evidence for is not wasted time and resources that has been done for millenniums? All of the superstitions that people use to have that where disproved by science in one form another makes them valid again, because they were practiced for longer than it has been disproved.
They very clearly were not useless. Such rituals granted legitimacy to kings, united the people for whom they were performed, and often gave those people the "why" they needed in order to suffer through the current "how." It doesn't matter that gods are not actually eating the food. If these rituals had truly been stupid and pointless they would have quickly died out and been replaced by something that wasn't.
Other people in this thread are making comments about the Drug War and other failed government programs. Similarly, there is a vast bureaucratic behemoth that benefits from the Drug War continuing. Whole areas of law with specialized lawyers, myriad government task forces and agencies, lots of police work to be done, lots of political points to be scored by being "tough on drugs." The Drug War is a waste of resources if you only measure it's efficacy at keeping drugs out of the hands of Americans. But as a self-licking ice cream cone it's a highly effective.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
This also bothers me. I'm continuously baffled by how the same people who never shut up about "protecting" "our" "democracy" can still get away with shitting hard on the opinions of the common man. And it seems like there's a large minority of the country who can doublethink this stuff into a coherent ideology. I'm deep enough into conflict theory territory that whenever I read thinga like this I just order more ammo for the day when they inevitably decide that something must be done about the ineducable subhuman underclass.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Oops, good catch, my wording was completely wrong. I meant that if two black men abused and killed a white child, I wouldn't be surprised for them to get away with a relatively light sentence.
This will not be a great post because I'm exhausted today, but I remember reading an author who coined the (awkward) term "indiscriminateness" to describe the fundamental principle that led to the disconnect you describe. This principle has become a cardinal virtue in our society.
The idea is that judging someone is about the worst thing you can do. You can't disparage train shitters and train masturbators as "scum" or "bad people" or "degenerate" or even "a public nuisance" because that would be cast judgement on their actions or character. And you know who does that? The hated and reviled Outgroup! Not only are you an ignorant person for negatively judging someone, but you even sound like one of The Bad Guys. And so you will do increasing complex mental gymnastics to explain Why Some People Are Like That, continue to invent ever more complex epicycles to explain social decay.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
I don't think it matters that much in the same way that red tribers want a Christian in office even if they themselves are poor Christians. Being healthy, physically fit, strong, and masculine/feminine (depending on your sex) is universally seen as a good thing by red tribers. Being too fat, too skinny, or too effeminate is seen as a bad thing.
My model of a physically fit red triber is a guy who does a bunch of free weight lifts, maybe does a moderate amount of cardio, maybe uses his strength for worker or outdoor hobbies, with a slight chance of being on roids or some other PED. He eats steak and eggs and burgers and might do CICO but that's about it. He plays pickup contact sports like football or basketball. He thinks the skinny runner physique looks DYEL or even "gay."
My (admittedly less clear) model of a physically fit blue triber is a distance runner or CrossFit-type gym goer. Probably uses Strava and has a bunch of exercises gadgets or at least an Apple watch. Eats a balanced diet of organic and locally grown foods heavy on the greens and micronutrients. Probably takes a collection of supplements, some of which are woo, some of which are not. His fitness is never really used in real life except for the 10Ks or half marathons he runs with his running buddies. He does a few other sports that require pricey equipment like snowboarding or paddleboarding. He thinks big muscles are gauche, low-status, and make you look kind of dumb.
As long as the Right pushes for the red tribe version of the physically fit man, they won't lose voters because even an obese habitual McDonald's patron acknowledges his superiority even if he won't say so outright.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
There's always a comment like this whenever media bias is brought up, and I still don't really know how to bridge the gap between your viewpoint and the OPs. I feel like you could make the same argument about a hypothetical issue of Pravda in 1950.
"Comrade, you say that everything in the news is about Marxism, or praising the Supreme Leader, or rooting out counter-revolutionary forces, but it is not so! Look, here we have an article about a town collective that exceeded their monthly ditch digging quote by 225%, here there is an article about new libraries being built using funds seized from wreckers, and another about the Mayor of St. Petersburg providing commentary on the liquidation of kulaks which, as far as I can tell, is completely neutral. Then there's a simple factual article about a former KGB lieutenant getting appointed as governor of an oblast. Sure, there's an article about Pavlik Morozov and how we need more patriotic children like him, and there's an opinion column about how wreckers are undermining the socialist state and ought to summarily executed, but really, you're only going to be upset by that stuff if you go looking for it. Perhaps you have some sort of complex?"
That last line, the psychoanalysis angle, has always been unproductive, IMO and is more of a veiled sneer than anything. Anyway, my point is that if you're a liberal sea creature swimming in liberal water, you might only notice that there's water at all when there's a particularly strong current. But a conservative land creature under 20 feet of water will feel a.quite justifiable sense of weight and oppression even if the waters are perfectly still.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
surgeons were much more of a mixed bag and good ones could be very good given the technological limitations of the day.
And worst case, if they botch your amputation, you get a discount on your next haircut.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
Would you rather live in a socially conservative Denmark or a [insert you favorite ideology] Guatemala?
Wasn't it applied to fans of "The Man Show?" So it's probably around 20 years old. Maybe it (or a sanitized version of it) started offline?
Edit: Since people seem unfamiliar with the term -- my understanding is "person (usually a guy) who leans left not out of pure devotion to the progressive cause, but because he enjoys fun deviant stuff like booze and porn that the prudish Christian Right would try to restrict or ban."
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
That always sounded like a folk etymology to me. Does anyone have thorough sources about the word's relation to homosexuals?
Sorry, but no, it's really not. I was living in Tokyo at the time, and Japan is not really a car-centric society. Not only do they not sell bikes like that in Japan (never seen one in years living there) but the sidewalks and parking areas are way too small for something like that.
Congrats to the Netherlands I guess, but not every country has been built around bikes in the same way and so you can't extrapolate what works in the Netherlands to other non-car-centric countries.
Also not to get personal but I'm tempted to ask whether you have personally spent a year carting groceries back and forth on a giant tricycle for your spouse and children. Have you done it with a 39 degree fever? Have you done it when it's raining? Freezing cold and snowing? While heavily pregnant? When your spouse is travelling and you've got no one to watch the kids? It's not as easy as "get a giant trike bro."
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