Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
Is there any great work that would be improved by the addition of choice, by the addition of alternate possibilities? Would Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates be better if there were a possibility of Socrates simply... not dying? If Callicles’s warning to Socrates, that his devotion to the “effeminate” subject of philosophy would be his downfall, might not come to pass? If Socrates might be able to eloquently defend himself at trial and avoid conviction? If he might escape from prison before his execution?
Maybe I'm missing this in another comment, but that actually is how Plato's account goes. He wrote a dialogue called the Crito, wherein a wealthy friend visits Socrates in prison with an escape plan, and Socrates explains why he chooses not to escape.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
I've seen a bunch of Uzbeks doing "We're from Uzbekistan, of course we [X]", and it's quite sweet, they're generally wholesome and outward-looking people who aren't really connected to meme culture so it comes off as earnest instead of cringe.
Bartender_Venator
15d ago
There are also many literary comparisons (often unfavorable ones) to Joseph Roth.
I'm surprised they're unfavourable. Roth's novels are wonderful, but they're novels, not the same thing, and while I enjoy Roth's personal nonfiction a lot, Zweig is obviously better at that.
Bartender_Venator
16d ago
It's a beautiful book. I recommend Joseph Roth, if you haven't read him, for similar treatment of that subject matter (from a slightly different class position, less elite than Zweig).
Bartender_Venator
21d ago
Yeah, true that a lot of people with polisci degrees don't end up in politics, just in generic white-collar world. You do actually have to be able to climb those status hierarchies to make it worthwhile entering them. But my experience of DC libs is that they're big on "successful liberals live like conservatives". The end goal is absolutely 2.3 kids on a leafy street in NoVA/Maryland (paid for by Joe Taxpayer, you're welcome).
I guess if I had to pick a particularly marriage-minded demographic it'd be non-engineers in tech. Normie values and ability to get a partner young, tech-adjacent salaries. Lawyers, too, the ones who don't give up their 20s to the biglaw grind. Stability, I think, is very important, and the modern economy doesn't provide it in that many places.
Bartender_Venator
21d ago
Telling men to pursue fun degrees (creative writing, film, political science, etc.) rather than lucrative ones is like telling them to wear makeup and wait to be asked out by women. It's a fundamental denial of reality. Those who follow such advice will generally have drastically reduced romantic success. Their prospects will be fewer, worse, and less happy to marry them than they would have been otherwise.
Generally agree with your post, but this is quite STEMbrained. If you pursue a degree which makes you more interesting and fun to be around, requires developing social skills, and gives you a status hierarchy to climb, you will absolutely have more romantic prospects than if you were just grinding for money. Your future house probably won't be as nice, of course. To take political science as an example, if you're a reasonably-put-together, educated man who can bring himself to tolerate libs, DC is one of the easiest dating scenes in the world, full of attractive women looking for commitment but happy to hook up. The real downside is that these careers and status hierarchies encourage a prolonged adolescence of sleeping with all the easily available women rather than committing to one (and really, everyone ends up losing - if you want to climb a status hierarchy in creative fields, politics, etc., a good woman in your corner will do far more for your success than just the motivation to look good to girls).
On the topic of marriage and kids, I don't notice a particular difference in career paths between the young people I know who are getting married and having kids and those who aren't, except that there seems to be a gulf in fertility and age of marriage between the ones who went to state schools and the ones who went to "elite" colleges.
Bartender_Venator
23d ago
It depends what you mean by "better". A lot of older black folks look back on it wistfully given the current state of the country (I've had them joke to me about asking if they can vote for de Klerk), but for young black south africans the general attitude is that opportunity for aspiration is worth the price.
The real problem with apartheid is just that it didn't work very well. It was a bureaucratic mess dominated by a small group of hardline Afrikaner Calvinists who wished they could repress whites as much as they repressed blacks. The army was stronger than Rhodesia's in terms of size and equipment, but far less well-run and well-led. The "deep state" acted with complete lawlessness, dabbling in everything from illegal medical experiments to rhino poaching. The government blocked the introduction of TV until 1976, in large part for religious reasons. The system's fundamental contradiction between the desire for separation and the need for cheap black labour created a class of displaced single male labourers who would then become the foundation of modern townships. The racial classifications in mixed cities made no sense - Japanese were white, Chinese were coloured, Muslims were coloured unless they were Turks, in which case they were white, and god help you if some bureaucrat decided to screw with your classification. Generally, things ran on Kafka's playbook with a side of hypocrisy.
Now, could apartheid have worked if it had been set up properly from the beginning by some visionary genius and run efficiently? Yes, I suspect so, given the example of Rhodesia only folding to external pressure, or the possibility of simply jettisoning the "bantustans" as genuinely separate countries (though once SA was addicted to cheap labour, that became impossible). Did apartheid deliver many extremely valuable things, like basic safety, that SA no longer does? Largely yes. Could actually existing apartheid have survived, even without sanctions, without ending up collapsing into a race war? Only, in the long run, by becoming a genuinely totalitarian police state with all that implied - and, ultimately, that would have been a sad fate for a country founded by some of Europe's most freedom-loving children.
Could be a regional/linguistic thing, I haven't been up north to the more Afrikaans parts in quite some time, and most of the Afrikaners I know in the Cape are very Anglicized. Imo it would come across as either pretentious or trying to make some political point if a native English-speaking South African put emphasis on the Afrikaans pronunciation (for a foreigner, of course, it's just "ah, you actually know about South Africa!" South Africans, black and white, tend to be quite happy when people know them as more than a caricature - I've been asked by Westerners more than once "Oh, South Africa? Where's that?")
Bartender_Venator
24d ago
So, the ANC has gone back and forth between the two, and there were always cliques moving in and out of the main Xhosa/Zulu power structures within the party. Money united governing factions just as much as tribe. Ramaphosa represents a mildly Xhosa-slanted compromise with moderate/business-friendlier Zulu factions, but there is definitely fear among Zulus that the old Mbeki way of doing things will come back (Ramaphosa is somewhat corrupt - he definitely pays bribes to get things done - but there's a general sense among business-friendly people that he's corrupt in the interests of the country. Mbeki wasn't as blatantly corrupt as Zuma, but he had some awful people, notable for AIDS denialism contributing to SA's horrific HIV/AIDS problem). It's not quite a Zulu/Xhosa crackup of the ANC yet, particularly because the MK is so Zuma-centric and nobody knows where it will go yet. Educated and better-off Zulus are often embarrassed by Zuma representing them, for obvious reasons, and South Africa has a long history of splinter parties which go nowhere. I'd speculate this is more likely going to be a split among Zulus between Zuma loyalists and those remaining with the ANC, which could well spell a decrease in tribal jockeying within the ANC rather than Xhosa dominance. Worth noting that Zuma seems to have significantly greater ability to organize street violence than the ANC, which is a potentially massive wild card. Johannesburg is iirc the largest city in the world without a natural water source, northern SA's economy is dependent on mining exports, and Joburg's lifeline to the coast runs through the Zulu regions...
Bartender_Venator
24d ago
From a South African: great writeup. A couple minor points:
- "uh-par-theid" is a valid English pronunciation. "uh-par-tate" is the Afrikaans pronunciation, but even Afrikaans speakers (those without strong accents) will say apar-theid when speaking English.
- The Zulu/Xhosa divide is extremely important, probably more than any other ethnic division in terms of determining backroom politics, given that it dominated ANC internal politics after Mandela. Mbeki's corruption/nepotism crew were nicknamed the "Xhosa Nostra" ("Xhosa" = "Khosa"), and when Zuma came to power the Zulu faction of the ANC saw it as their turn to eat. MK is essentially those parts of that faction who were kicked from the ANC trying to do their own thing. Ramaphosa, the current president, represents something of a compromise (he's from a small tribe, the Venda, not under either umbrella), but leaning towards the comparatively moderate and business-friendly Xhosa faction.
- Both the IFP and VF+ may sound good now, but they were essentially forced into sanity by irrelevance - both started out as very immoderate parties. Back in the 90s there were very real concerns the IFP would start a civil war in the name of Zulu nationalism, and the original Freedom Front were a hard-right Afrikaans group descended from the pro-Apartheid opposition to de Klerk. Their brands are so tarnished that, realistically, they will stay very small.
- The DA has done a surprisingly good job on the ground in the Western Cape - their main problem, apart from the central government, is that South Africa's problems are so intractable nobody can live up to campaign promises. Secession is far more popular than comparable movements elsewhere, and also imo a very good idea, but the basic issue is that there's very little organization or money behind it compared to the DA. This may well change if the DA fails or is forced into coalition with the ANC and therefore has to take responsibility for ANC failures. Western Cape opposition is, organizationally and financially, dominated by Respectable White People - but I find their impeccably liberal opinions can quickly change to secession talk after a few glasses of wine.
Bartender_Venator
26d ago
What concerns me is that a lot of these women hide their issues from a shrink, and only open up to a flirtatious yet good at getting people to talk guy like me.
Yep, that sounds familiar. The Scots have, though, for better or for worse, much less of a culture of hiding dysfunction (I'm sure you've seen the photos of Glasgow nightlife). If you're working for the NHS you're likely to be dealing with serious cases whose immediate and undeniable problems will take up the vast majority of your bandwidth - the cases I touched were generally horror stories and I was just a volunteer. So, uh, at least the neuroses of the genteel are likely to be more of an issue on dating apps than at work.
Here's hoping that Scottish girls are notably less psychotic on average
Scottish girls in my experience have extraordinarily high variance. You seem to be good at spotting the dysfunctional ones, and they get extremely dysfunctional, but the remainder of the dating pool are extremely sensible and down-to-earth while remaining endearing. Chance of meeting the latter is significantly higher in the countryside, set your radius wide and learn to enjoy a scenic drive. (Also, Highland Scots drive like particularly suicidal third worlders, so you'll be well-prepared for them)
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
This post generally makes sense, but I think you're overestimating Sotomayor's health. She's had paramedics called for diabetic episodes before, and from the claims of some of her former clerks she doesn't do the best job of controlling her blood sugar levels. We can't know anything for sure about this, of course, and apparently she travels with a medic, but "top-tier medical care" only works if you comply with it properly...
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
He's still kicking. Recently hiked up a mountain to prepare.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
It has separate stories each season, but, like True Detective, Season 1 is generally considered to be the best. Definitely the most iconic with the No Country For Old Men inspiration. Season 2 is also great, and Season 3 divides opinion more but is worth watching. Season 4, as far as I know, was considered pretty bad, but I've heard positive things about 5. Would strongly recommend starting from s01.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
This is 100% right; it's the same with soccer in other countries. Add to that that the best media for a given team is usually fan-created, free/crowdfunded, multi-media, and updated daily, and something like Sports Illustrated can't compete. The Athletic tried to combine the two formats by getting the best journalists specialized in popular teams and making it easy to filter for your teams, but my subjective impression is that it's declining in quality or at least putting on a more clickbait front to get signups (they were, relatively recently, bought by our good friends at the NYT).
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Just finished The Glory of The Empire. Very interesting book - it's an entirely fabricated alternate history of a Rome-like empire, set in our history (e.g. it's full of citations to people like Toynbee, Bertrand Russell, TS Eliot, etc. writing about the Empire). It's got a real feeling of plausibility, like you're reading the kind of mythicized histories people used to actually write about the cultures, loves, battles, and deaths of great men and cities. It gets more into spirituality and religion as the book goes on, but never fully woo. Would recommend to fellow history autists.
Bartender_Venator
5mo ago
Mike Solana has a newsletter also called The White Pill which is a roundup of positive tech/innovation news
Bartender_Venator
5mo ago
Podcasts I've enjoyed in rough order of when I remember listening to them:
- History of Rome
- Revolutions
- History of Byzantium
- When Diplomacy Fails (shout out to their Thirty Years War megaseries)
- A Japanese history podcast I can't remember/find, but it seems like other good podcasts about the Sengoku Jidai have come out since then
- The Hellenistic Age
- The History of Egypt Podcast
- The Timur Podcast
- Reconquista (have not tried the main History of the Crusades podcast, but Reconquista is good)
- The Cost of Glory (newish, but imo the best current history podcast)
- Russians With Attitude's history podcasts
- The Bailey
Kings and Generals and Historia Civilis are good for youtube channels. Johannes Niederhauser is pretty active on YouTube iirc, but I don't know how much guys like him, Michael Millerman, etc. do real stuff rather than teasers for their courses.
Bartender_Venator
7mo ago
Sports provide tremendous value as a source of community and social opportunity for fans. I've met some of my best friends through football - even if it added no other value to my life, paying the minor fees involved would be worth it. What's surprising about speedrunning is that it's incredible talent and dedication being put into a prestige race among communities which are mostly tiny and fully-online, and that it's talent that's more transferable to something useful. The physical and tactical talent a top athlete has could maybe be parlayed into being an effective soldier or a good oilfield worker, but that's not a loss to society comparable to having these speedrunning guys optimizing time on Sonic 2000 instead of optimizing some useful process. I guess the equivalent would be that a professional sportsman would be wasted in the Middle Ages when he could have become a knight instead. (And, indeed, some of the greatest knights, like William Marshal, started out as effectively their era's equivalent of pro athletes)
Bartender_Venator
7mo ago
create public trophies for rivalries that are displayed in stadiums prominently after rivalry match wins, and the absence of which is displayed after losses.
I think this is a thing in MLS? I don't know if they have actual trophies, but they have various trophy-style names for derby games.
Anyway, I'm sorry, but to make a league season really matter you have to do it like (football) football: since American sports will never add promotion/relegation, make championships a knockout tournament that runs alongside the league, and is determined by placement in last year's league. You can even do what football does and have a secondary cup for those who don't qualify for the main ones, so worse teams have a shot at a second-string trophy (West Ham won a third-string trophy last year and it was genuinely a huge moment for them).
Bartender_Venator
8mo ago
For better or for worse he's basically a typical TPOT/Vibecamp-sphere guy.
Bartender_Venator
8mo ago
From my experience there, I'd be sure to simply guess all the Texan cities I could think of connected to the energy industry. Lubbock, for instance, isn't in reasonable driving distance from anything except oil, but that's enough to get a lot of people there.
Glutton for punishment, huh?
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