Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
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User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Sanderson writes very satisfying stories and he's known for sticking endings, but I think there is a sameness to his plot beats and his prose is definitely lukewarm, and I can never stop seeing the character sheets (and the Mormonism) floating around on the page. I agree that Tchaikovsky sometimes wanders off into self-indulgent tangents, but his ideas are exceptional and his writing is just better, especially in recent works.
I've only read Kevin J. Anderson once or twice and thought he was borderline awful.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Okay, that's enough 4chan-level shitty comments out of you, dipping into personal antagonism.
A lot of users are eagerly anticipating your banning. I try to factor in your unpopularity for just running against popular sentiment when you get reported constantly, but the fact is, your reports are increasingly for low-effort shitty comments and you seem to be trying to do a speed run on how many digs you can get in before you're banned. You actually occasionally have some interesting things to say, but it's mostly buried beneath snark and disdain.
You've gotten a lot of warnings and no bans yet. Here's your first one-day ban. I am disappointed that once again a left-leaning poster cannot control himself enough to avoid getting banned, but that seems to be the path you are on. Change my mind.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Big fan of GMT, and Churchill (the WW2 game that Versailles 1919 is based on). Churchill has the same basic setup: a three-player game representing the US, the UK and the USSR negotiating even as WWII is still going on. You need to make progress against the Axis (represented very abstractly on two different tracks, one for the war in the Pacific and one for the Eastern and Western fronts in Europe), but you don't want your opponents to make too much progress compared to you. You are also carving up the post-war world with colony chips, and there is a separate Atomic Bomb track. Victory conditions are kind of wonky, because if one faction wins by too large a margin, they destabilize the peace (being seen as a new existential threat) and then there are some complicated rules to figure out who is the "real" leader of the post-war world.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I am currently reading Private Citizen, by Tony Tulathimutte, on @FtttG's recommendation. (We had some discussion about his collection, Rejection, not long ago, in which appeared his most talked-about story, The Feminist).
So far, Private Citizen is quite entertaining with the same clever and descriptive wordcrafting and vivid descriptions of a certain caste of Millenial. They are all striving fail-trackers in San Francisco, messed up in various ways, and while I enjoy the true-to-life and often hilarious slices of their lives - self-involved neurotic would-be PMCs-in-denial at the bottom end of the social spectrum in the proto-woke era - gods, they're annoying. So far not much of a plot has emerged, but that was true of many of his short stories as well- they were more like "Here is a Certain Type of person and how they end up." It will be a super-dated book in ten years (it's already showing its age) but some things will probably remain timeless, such as the brutal takes on sexual relations. (The "nojob" is cringey and physically painful to read.)
On a less highbrow note, my current audiobook is The Air War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is the eighth book in his Shadows of the Apt series. I wish more people knew about Adrian Tchaikovsky. He's obviously a big seller, and he has two Hugo nominations this year, so he's not exactly a nobody, yet you rarely see him talked about with other big names in fantasy and science fiction. I suppose it's because in some ways, he's not a super-memorable writer; his prose doesn't leap out at you, and he writes so much that it's hard to say he's notable for any one thing or series (he isn't even a "fantasy" or a "science fiction" author - he is very much both, something many authors try to do but few pull off well), other than writing a lot of books. He also seems to be aiming for that inoffensive middle ground where his books are very people-pleasing and as an author, he's an enthusiastic science and gaming nerd but mostly seems to stay out of the culture wars and SFF politics.
But boy does he produce, his output is at Brandon Sanderson or Stephen King levels, and I have read about 20 of his books now and not one let me down. He switches between epic fantasy and space opera and writes long series. I think Sanderson is his closest comparison, and IMO he is a much better writer than Sanderson in every way.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Okay, since you're doubling down on being obnoxious and openly admitting to ban evasion (not that I was in any doubt), bye.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
This place isn't really for self-promoting. We'll let people post links to their blogs, but generally not as their first post with no previous participating in the community.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
There was nothing wrong with my reply.
I'm telling you there is something wrong with your replies throughout this thread.
You can reject that or ignore me. I'm just informing you of the situation and what the consequences will be if this continues.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I understand that 'more abortions for black women(and this is South Carolina)' is your #1 priority
Don't attribute motives to people they have not stated.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Okay, you're repeating the pattern that got you a warning and then a timeout just days ago, and once again you are filling the queue with reports from people annoyed by your behavior, and with good reason.
This kind of argumentation where you just drop low-effort snarky bird-flipping comments needs to stop. I'm warning you again; next we start applying longer bans.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
You know, I am not a puritan and don't really care if porn is available. But are we really supposed to be concerned that homeless people can't access free porn? Like their presence isn't making public libraries and coffee shops unpleasant enough as it is?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I didn't say that, I just said you can't say "the purpose of the law is support the child because the law says so, it's in the name, stupid". You do this multiple times so I'm only addressing it once.
Your rules are absurd and demonstration nothing because they could apply to a lot of laws. "You can't refer to the purpose of the law in describing what it does" would make many laws illegible.
The fact that the support ends when the child reaches age of majority This is also compatible with the mother support theory.
No, because it expires when the child no longer needs support.
How would you propose disentangling "mother support" from "child support." Any money given to a mother to support her child necessarily benefits her.
Do the needs of children scale with the father's income? They eat more food? Wear more clothes?
I am fine with a rich man having to pay more than a poor man to support his children. If you're rich you shouldn't get to leave your children in poverty because you don't think you owe them anything. If you want to propose a cap, I'd be amenable, but not if it's the bare minimum because fuck those kids (and their mother).
I'm less concerned about this part than other elements, but to the extent that it matters, it is a solved problem. You make it an EBT card with similar controls. Courts can pull the records on a moment's notice. There's way less deniability because the funds aren't co-mingled. This isn't rocket science. Wouldn't be surprised if some places already do this.
Wouldn't you still protest that she might be eating some of the food bought with the EBT card (which she almost certainly is)? Or, again, that being given money to buy food for her child means she can use some of her other money for not-child things? It does not solve the problem from your perspective (which is that we should somehow prevent the mother from benefiting in any way).
Do you actually know what typical child support is? Because you seem to think the median child support payer is being drained of half his income or more and it equals or exceeds the amount actually needed for basic living expenses for a child. This is not the median situation.
I have financial obligations to women all across the country and their children. No bailing on that one, unfortunately. I'd probably feel less bad about child support if it meant I never had to pay strange woman to raise another man's kid.
That's a slightly different issue, because enforcement is hard and society picks up the tab on deadbeats. But I'd be on board with much harsher measures for men who can't/won't pay- "lithium mines," sure. I don't think you actually would be, though.
Who cares? Nobody has any concern for the welfare of children when it collides with the needs/wants/whims of women. If a woman's right to drink smoke and snort as much as she wants while pregnant is inviolable, I don't see how a man's right to stay home and play video games shouldn't also be etched in sapphire.
I am pretty sure there are laws under which women who abuse drugs and cause their children to be born addicted, or with birth defects, can be charged, though that's another hard to enforce law. If you want to make it illegal for a woman to drink, smoke or do any drugs at all while pregnant, I think it's impractical, but let's say I agree in theory. The point of child support laws is not to make sure men and women are being "punished" equally, it's to provide for children. "Well, if we cared about children, we should do this also!" Okay, if I agree in theory but also acknowledge we can't/won't do that, what now? Fuck them kids because it's unfair to men? Some things are unfair for biological reasons (where a lot of these conversations wind up, usually about the time the proposal that a man should be able to disavow any responsibility or obligation for children he fathers emerges).
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Okay, initially I wrote a rather harsher response, because the combination of projection ("You are being snide! You are responding with Nuh-uhs!") and the old "emotional investment" gambit (a low class tactic usually seen in forums where going to straight to ad hominems is the norm - "Huh huh you are arguing with me, you must be emotional about this! Like a woman!") annoyed me. However, from your lengthier reply I think you are arguing in good faith and deserve a kinder response. So, just to make a few points in order:
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If you are referring to Revolutionary France, that was more than 200 years ago. 200 years was your criteria, hence my confusion.
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A common tactic I see, usually from Christians, is to accuse atheism of being responsible for the mass atrocities of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al, when the defining feature of communist dictatorships was communism. State enforced prohibitions or control of religion are just one aspect of communism. It's not the atheism that is their ideological driving force, it's the Marxism. (Indeed, I would argue China never really became "atheist" in a real sense. They just replaced Confucianism with Maoism.)
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I still disagree about Rome and the Weimar Republic, and I think you haven't really brought much evidence to bear that "control of women" was the defining or even most significant failure leading to their collapse. Even you back down a bit from that proposition, merely citing it as a contributing factor.
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Yes, I am kind of personally invested in my society not collapsing, but I don't think I am just ignoring evidence that it is. I just think we are on a long slow decline for a lot of reasons, not a rapid collapse that is happening because of modern hypergamy and male avarice.
To address your broader meta point: no, I am not going to accuse you of being personally misogynistic. But anyone proposing something like "Women must be controlled or their sexuality will destroy society" has to grapple with the essential misogyny of that position. You can bite the bullet and say "Yes, for the good of the species, women must be treated as property." You can propose social guardrails (like Christianity) that hopefully will constrain them in a less brutal fashion. You can argue against the premise (I am far from sold on it). Or you can go full blackpill and say "Who cares what women feel, they aren't even people." (Not hyperbole, that is more or less the position we have actually seen a handful of people take here over the years.) But a lot of this talk about how women being able to choose and the feminization of society seems to just complete lack any empathy at all for the position of a (female) person being told to accept a society where she has little or no say in who gets to fuck her and when and whether she will be impregnated. That's stating it in its bluntest terms, but it's hard to dismiss the hysteria of of women wearing Handmaid's Tale cosplay at protests when they can actually see men who really are proposing what they fear. For those who are honest and say "Yes chad" to that, okay, points for being forthright about it, but you don't get to sneer at feminist arguments anymore, because they are actually right about your intentions.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
"Now, sure, every time in the last 200 years that a nation declared itself as enlightened atheists guided by pure reason they immediately proceeded with the worst atrocities yet visited upon man, but hey, what's religion got to do with anything?"
Which non-communist countries would these be? Because I think the single unifying trait you are ignoring here is communism.
You're better than this response, not least of all because your challenges were answered and you missed it in your haste to throw down the "tl;dr lol."
My response was not "tl;dr lol." You did not answer my challenges, you just keep insisting that Rome and China and the Weimar republic all fell for reasons they did not.
Avarice is self-evidently ruinous. Caprice was explained at the top:
Sure, but I could name a bunch of other ruinous traits also easily found in most countries in decline. This argument is specifically about whether it's control of women (or lack thereof) that is a unifying thread. You mentioned automation. I could mention that and a host of other economic, technological, and tribal concerns that probably figure much more prominently in any potential societal collapse than the "mistake" of letting women have sexual agency.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
A child support order is going to say, throughout, "for the support of the child" and among other things will typically specify that support will end when the child turns 18, etc. If we have to black out every mention of "child" then I suppose it might be hard to figure out what the purpose of the order is.
What elements would you point to in order to refute the competing hypothesis that the primary function of the policy is actually mother support?
The fact that the support ends when the child reaches age of majority, and that the calculation of support is based on the child's needs, not the mother's. ("Mother support" is called alimony, and as I mentioned already, it's awarded rarely nowadays, usually only in a marriage of long standing where one spouse has substantially depended on the other and has no ready means of earning income once separated.)
I am guessing your grievance is that the mother (or, more rarely, father) is given $X per month in child support and nothing really prevents her or him from spending it on heroin or lotto tickets. True except inasmuch as failure to care for the child would be subject to court oversight and in extreme cases loss of custody, but if Mom puts all the child support in the same pot of money as her other sources of income (let's assume she has a job, which most often she does) - how would you prefer to make sure she does not personally benefit from the child support? Suppose you think she's spending too much money on clothes for herself. But she can always say "The child support money is what paid for the food Child ate and the Child's clothes, I bought my clothes with the other money." You could argue that without the child support she wouldn't have been able to afford to buy clothes for herself. While true, the point of child support is that children add expenses. If she weren't taking care of the child she could afford to buy clothes for herself.
I have also had this argument about a hundred times. It always boils down to a desire to be punitive and/or bail on financial obligations, almost always rooted in a sense of bitterness and injustice, not actual concern for the welfare of any children in question.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
That was an impressive screed, but you haven't connected a single thing to "male avarice" and female emancipation. And you're doing exactly what you claimed you aren't, telling a just so story about how Christianity is the only ideology that somehow avoids the failure mode of every other civilization.
Are we in the End Times? I've been hearing that in one form or another since I was a kid. A pity that we (or at least I) am too old to see it through or I would put up money on you being wrong.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Yes, he gets divorced.
This is not what actually happens to any man (or the vast majority of men- I question whether it's even a statistically significant number of men) who get divorced.
Spousal support is rare but not non-existent
You mean "pretty rare"? I.e., exactly what I said in the post you are replying to but framing it as a rebuttal?
but child support is very high and doesn't have to be spent on the children. If his income goes up he has to pay more; if it goes down he still has to pay the same.
"Pretty high" is subjective and depends entirely on how much obligation you think a parent has to provide for their offspring. No, there isn't an itemized accounting for every dollar of child support because household expenses are too fungible, but child support is calculated based on the expected expenses of a child and the income of the parents.
Unsurprisingly, the non custodial parent often thinks any amount is too high. Child support can be adjusted up or down. A judge has to approve increasing it, it doesn't happen automatically if income goes up. And it can be decreased too based on life circumstances , though judges tend to take a dim view of the tactic of taking a lower paying job to decrease child support.
Which is irrelevant, as they were still demanded to have been paying it. And if they get caught, they have their wages garnished down to subsistence or less, they lose their driver's licenses, professional licenses, go to jail for contempt for indefinite periods, etc.
It's relevant when you are claiming child support as an injustice, which it is not. In any case, even the most onerous child support does not reach the level of "taking most of his assets and future earnings."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
It isn't, and I propose a moratorium on this type of argumentation.
If you think my post broke any rules you are free to report it, and I will as usual let another mod adjudicate it. But no, we will not be declaring a moratorium on "types of argumentation" someone dislikes. For example, a type of argumentation I dislike is the "Nuh uh" (e.g. "It isn't").
Note how the poster actually references how societies gave concrete examples of why their strictures were necessary,
"Societies" did no such thing. The poster gave examples of why he thinks such strictures evolved. Some of which I don't even disagree with. (Speaking of not even reading the post you're replying to.)
Do you actually know anything about the circumstances under which a man can "lose most of his assets and future income" in a divorce? It is not common. In fact alimony is pretty rare nowadays (and almost never close to "most" of his assets and future income), child support is to support the children, and the number of men paying "unreasonable" child support (however you define that) is exceeded by the number of men not actually paying their child support. The worse case scenario you will usually see is an equal distribution state where a spouse can claim 50% of marital assets, even those he or she didn't bring into the marriage. (This can and sometimes is the man who benefits, though usually it's the woman.) And not all states do a 50/50 split like that.
You guys seriously need to update your notions of how divorce works from the 1960s, or the 19th century.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Every society everywhere on Earth for all history up to the 20th century exerted sufficient intrasocietal controls on male avarice and female caprice or else it collapsed.
You know, I see this argument quite often: "Every society ever did things in the traditional (read: my preferred) way, because the Ancient Wisdom of Our Ancestors told us this was how things should be. Societies that failed to do this collapsed!"
Can you actually point to any societies that collapsed as a result of, say, not exerting "sufficient intrasocietal controls on male avarice and female caprice"?
Most "collapsing societies" either did so over a long period of stagnation (Rome, several Chinese dynasties, the Soviet Union) or they did so very abruptly as a result of war or invasion. I can't think of any that did so because they were too libertine and failed to control their menfolk and womenfolk.
This is a just so story.
Your other arguments, about "deep biotruths," are likewise just so stories. Now it is possible (and likely, to my mind) that our current social mores are detrimental to human happiness, that the much-discussed imbalance in sexual relationships in the modern world is harmful to society and putting additional stresses on it (though if we do "collapse," I maintain that "women being whores and alpha-widows and a few chads forcing other men into inceldom" will be like reason #57 on the list), and you can certainly make a good argument that, as you say, "sex doesn't mean anything, it can be just for fun" is not true and not a good principle to encourage.
But whenever I see someone pull out the "Societies collapse if they don't control their females!" argument, I never see any actual evidence of this, just vague handwaving (and the waving is never in the direction of actual societies that do "control" their females - I mean, most Muslim societies are not collapsing right now, but they are not exactly what I'd consider a healthy model in any way, least of all in their sexual relations). Reminds me very much of KulakRevolt's current schtick where he argues that the deep wisdom of his ancestors tells him that worshipping Odin was the best way to ensure the survival of his race and Christianity is a destructive pussification cult. It's entertaining to read, but does anyone not just looking for a reason to dump on Christians (and pussy concepts like mercy and forgiveness and coexistence) actually take it seriously or think it's based on research or even actual inductive reasoning? So it is with arguments about how the Sexual Revolution was a revolt against "deep biotruth" and/or the ancient knowledge of our ancestors (who believed in humors, nature gods, ghosts, aether, a four or five element model of the universe, and so on-this is not a flippant reference to superstition, but pointing out that they made up just so stories to justify their own preferences and to explain things they didn't actually have the ability to investigate or test).
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
Agreed, but I'd also say, unless you are having some other severe marital dysfunction going on, if your wife is saying no all the time, wouldn't you want to... have a conversation about this? Figure out what's going on? As opposed to just "asserting your rights."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
DreadJimming is just as destructive when women do it.
Yes, but I disagree with his framing (and yours) that women are just tee-hee frivorce-raping hapless men with the power of the state.
It's harder than MRAs would have you believe for a wife to just casually strip-mine an ex, even with no-fault divorce.
If you want to restore a stable equilibrium between the sexes, it's not by listening to people who, frankly, hate the other sex.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
I agree that a dead bedroom is a problem, and no one should be expected to live with that. But the "sex is an obligation and marital rape doesn't exist" guys don't seem to acknowledge a wife's right to say no ever.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
That was part of the religious rules, yes. Before the modern concept of martial "rape", a man was entitled to take his marital rights from his wife. Consent didn't enter into it; she gave consent when she agreed to marry him, and such was irrevocable.
Every time you DreadJimmers bring this up, I wonder what your model of a marital relationship is like. It's obviously not one where you and your wife actually love one another. So if your wife is not in the mood, or she's injured or sick, or you've just had a raging fight, or you're drunk and stinking and gross her out, you believe in the Good Old Days she'd just have to spread 'em anyway, no recourse, and if she resists, you could beat her until she stops resisting, and that is the past you want to return to?
The term is "internalized misogyny" or "the Patriarchy." It's very common, though it's never framed (overtly) as being the women's fault. But the implication is often that they are defecting, selling out for male approval.
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