Blueberry
16hr ago
First the viral book-tok hit „A little life“. There are good ling rants about it on reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/g7ctg9/why_a_little_life_is_not_worth_reading
A girl I’m subscribed to made a half hour-long video about it. I saw Antoni from Queer Eye wear t-shirts with the characters’ names on them on the show. … A Little Life has been on my mind every single day for over two weeks now. At first, this was because I was in the middle of the story and was immersed in what was going on, anticipating where it would go. Then, it was because I’d finished it and was consumed by how devastating it was. Now, it’s because I’m genuinely angry that I let myself get so emotionally invested in a book that is in actuality terrible in every sense of the word.
Spoiler: This bestseller is practically emotional torture porn about a gay friend group and the gay protagonist who is sexually exploited (of course as a child also by monks) and how he collects traumatic experiences until he suffers so much that he can’t bear it anymore and suicides himself. I am terrible unfair here, but sometimes I think women have a strangely dark place in them and like to read about fucked up stuff (also why true crime podcasts are predominantly consumed by women). Bonus point: All books by the female author are about suffering homosexual men which weirds me out as a strange kink.
Then there is a fiction book with the plot that all women one day lay down on Earth (planking) in a silent strike instead of working in underpaid jobs / doing unpaid care work.
A book about a grand story of an immigrant family and the unwelcoming discriminating experiences they make over the decades in the host country full of Nazis. Though that was a little bit a submarine: The true theme was how the parents impose their backward rural-muslim culture on their kids which fucks them up. in the end an unknown trans kid which was adopted away shows up.
Then there is a non-fiction book about how in current times one can’t just live privately anymore, but must be personally involved politically against the new far right in europe.
Blueberry
22hr ago
A few if my friends started a book club last year. But their taste, and the current book market even more!, is decidedly feminist/leftist.
Any counterweight recommendations? Nothing too controversial/radical to not scare the normies though.
Blueberry
13d ago
I even asked the allknowing AI, but it also didn’t know and rambled about him being probably used symbolically, as he was in an Ivy League but did not pursue an academic career?
Blueberry
1mo ago
pig and poke
Pig in the poke (poke == sack)
Wiki:
"Starting in the 19th century, this idiom [buying a pig in a poke] was explained as a confidence trick where a farmer would substitute a cat for a suckling pig when bringing it to market. When the buyer discovered the deception, he was said to "let the cat out of the bag", that is, to learn of something unfortunate prematurely,[3] hence the expression "letting the cat out of the bag",[4] meaning to reveal that which is secret.[5] The French idiom acheter (un) chat en poche and the Dutch een kat in de zak kopen and also the German die Katze im Sack kaufen (all: to buy a cat in a bag) refer to an actual scam of this nature, as do many other European equivalents, while the English expression refers to the appearance of the trick.[5] The English idiom "sold a pup" refers to a similar con.[6] Other variations include "buy a fish in water" (Arabic), "buy a cow on another mountain" (Chinese), "buy in a closed box" (Italian) and "buy a cat instead of a hare" (Iberian languages).
Blueberry
1mo ago
Countries with maternal laws/customs have even lower fertility than the US though. The modern/western society didn't find an answer aside from going back to past patriarchy vs sci-fi solutions.
Blueberry
2mo ago
That is a good question, but in my experience such disingenuous motivated reasonings are always discounted with an eye roll. Intuitively I would say only another ingroup-member (who also wants the ingroup to succeeed) can credibly criticize the ingroup.
Blueberry
2mo ago
I watched a video and the first YT comment was an epiphany about the Residential/Commercial/Industrial zoning in Sim City:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WNe9C866I2s
American zoning is even weirder than what I thought, discovering that the zoning from Sim City was not a weird oversimplification for the sake of gameplay but actually based on the USA was a shock.
Not just bikes:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ
Blueberry
2mo ago
As a European I am confused: Do Americans not have stores and supermarkets near them?
I always sort of wonder what functions as the katechon in the world after 1945. This is Schmitt’s 1947 diary. ‘I believe in the katechons, for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and find it meaningful. The katechon needs to be named for every epoch for the past 1948 years.’ The way I interpret this is that sotto voce, Schmitt is saying he has no idea what the katechon is. And maybe, the New Dealers are running the whole planet. Then of course, 1949 the Soviets get the bomb, and my sort of provisional answer is that the katechon for 40 years, from ’49 to ’89, is anti-communism. Which is in some ways is somewhat violent, not purely Christian but very, very powerful. I’ve argued that the katechon, or something like this, is necessary but not sufficient. And I want to finish by stressing where one goes wrong with it. If we forget its essential role, which is to restrain the antichrist, the antichrist might even present himself or itself or herself as the katechon, or hijack the katechon. This is almost a memetic version. A similarity between the antichrist and the katechon, they’re both sort of political figures. The katechon is tied in with empire and politics. If the antichrist is going to take over the world, you need something very powerful to stop it.
The katechon, the restrainer of the antichrist, must be both really powerful to prevent the antichrist, but that means there is also the danger that it IS the antichrist. I have a soft spot for theology and think it is fun to think about such mindbenders and finding real world examples. I guess Thiel was nerd sniped here.
The general point seems to be that Thiel would like to avoid anything which is too powerful, which is a globalist one-world-government. Which makes sense in a not-all-eggs-in-one-basket way.
I laughed about the juxtaposition of Francis Bacon and juvenile japanese Manga:
In his second lecture, Thiel also explores the idea of the antichrist through four works of literature – Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Alan Moore’s Watchmen graphic novel and Eiichiro Oda’s manga series One Piece.
I laughed out loud about this:
Thiel says he is “very pro-JD Vance”. But he has some concerns about his allegiance to the pope. “The place that I would worry about is that he’s too close to the pope. And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the pope. I hope there are a lot more. It’s the Caesar-Papist fusion that I always worry about. By the way, I’ve given him this feedback over time.
I don’t know how wooey Vance is, he comes off as relatively grounded, but Thiel giving the unsolicited advice to not get too close to the pope must have been an absurd scene (and suspiciously what I would have expected the antichrist to say).
Blueberry
2mo ago
No insight and likely a strong aversion to receiving treatment. Untreated schizophrenia tends to worsen. He's quite young, we don't know how bad it'll eventually
What can be done here?
Blueberry
3mo ago
It is easy to find counter the argument. You can eat a Big Mac in Jakarta, but that doesn't mean there are a lot of US-American migrants in Indonesia. Most places who make Lasagna are not operated by Italians. There are good sushi places in Budapest, even though there is no big japanese diaspora in Hungary. It just means Sushi is delicious.
Blueberry
3mo ago
But regarding Kirk:
[x] Shooter hits their target
[ ] coherent manifesto
[ ] unadorned weaponry (the ammo counts too?)
[x] captured alive
Blueberry
3mo ago
There is kind of annoying stuff in them, but I liked both books in the trilogy.
There is an internet theory that Patrick Rothfuss "father was his shadow writer. It’s Pats idea and world building, but his dad was the one who actually wrote it. After TNOTW and TWMF, Pat wanted to prove to himself that he could continue to write the books from now on. So he wrote TSROST all by himself. But he knew it wasn’t written the same and as the others. That’s why he says people won’t like the book because he knows it didn’t have the same feel as before."
Blueberry
3mo ago
I don't know why he didn't take the name of his spouse. Though maybe Glezman is not the best political name too.
Blueberry
3mo ago
I know the partner is apparently an AnCap follower of Jordan Peterson
Wait, what?
Blueberry
3mo ago
On X they post pictures from him as a kid with lots of guns and his conservative mormon family. The internet fried his brain but I can't say if in the antifa or far-right direction....
Blueberry
3mo ago
There is this famous graph of consumer price changes in the last 20 years:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg
Massively cheaper: Technology like software, computers, big hd televisions.
More or less same: Material consumer products like furniture or clothing
More expensive: Food and Housing
Massively more expensive: Services like childcare, college, hospital services
that new iPhone will cost more regardless
That is extreme nitpicking, but this is not true. iPhones do cost basically the same over decades for the the base model, and the pro models even got cheaper:
https://i.redd.it/fo16m7rgh4nb1.png
The launch price of the iPhone 6S in 2015 was $650. Inflation-adjusted that had the buying power of $885.01 today. And 10 years later now the new iPhone 17 costs only $799 (exactly the same price price as the iPhone 12 five years ago).
Blueberry
3mo ago
There was also this from the author:
kept seeing people tw RED HOOD #1 for suicide, and for the life of me I could not figure out why until I remembered it opens with a bunch of cops shooting themselves. i just don't really consider them people.
Blueberry
3mo ago
There's some funny nutpicking
Jezebel at monday: "We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk"
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-charlie-kirk#
For the “POWERFUL HEX SPELL,” I had to provide Kirk’s date of birth for “accuracy.” The witch performed the hex, but her response was unsettling: “I just completed your spell, and it was successful. You will see the first results within 2–3 weeks. However, I did notice disturbances… negative energy not only from you, but projected at you. Likely from toxic family members, co-workers, or new acquaintances.”
Also the kids and their relationship with each other.
If the kids are told: Imagine growing up knowing your dad is consciously not in your life and instead just an aquaintance, because he truly loves only your half siblings. Conversely knowing your dad has somewhere another child which he is caring for … what example does that set?
If the kids are not told: High chance they will find out anyway (ancestry dna tests) later in life about the half sibling.
Disclaimer: I dont have experience with patchwork families, maybe it works.
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