One of EA's main tenets is that the traditional hyperfocus on overhead costs of charities is unhelpful as a measure of actual efficacy. If you want smart, driven people to do good work in allocating resources, paying them something like market rate is advisable. Otherwise, you're selecting on something other than merely talent for the job.
Yes, but the problem is that if you are giving them good salaries, you are selecting for the ability to tell good stories to donors in exchange for money. There's a reason why charities have tended to be suspicious of such structures: they have no in-built market correction so they're easy to turn into guilt-tripping sinecures. (GiveWell is fine but it's like a regulatory body and is straightforwardly capturable, so doesn't count.) That's why charities have traditionally relied on a combination of:
- scions of wealth
- wives of wealthy men
- men who've made their money and want to give back to the community (or, cynically, to barter wealth for influence)
Since none of them need money. Of course, this still biases charities towards sounding good rather than doing good, but that's really really hard to avoid.
Corvos
1d ago
AFAIK the number of places for non-ethnically-Japanese is capped at 10% to maintain the character of the sport.
Hmm. How about this:
Someone once said that every genius needs a translator. A mind that thinks of new ideas often has a perspective too different from ordinary people to be able to communicate that idea to them.
Returning to cisheteronormativity (which is even worse when typing on a phone), it is not the case that somebody was idly musing and accidentally summoned Cthulhu into being.
The word’s creators were not normal people. They were mostly gay activists and Marxists who for various reasons wished to tear down both the concept and the existence of normality.
Their particular position allowed them to conceive of the word ‘ cisheteronormativity’ because they were already living the opposite of it, but that word remains an infohazard. Even hearing it summons a conceptual shadow into peoples’ heads because cis and hetero (and normal) are words with known opposites. To hear cis is to understand that transness exists, to hear hetero is to know that homoness exists. You don’t even necessarily know what they mean yet, but now you ‘understand’ that they do exist and you want to find out more. You also need to find out more, because the word is fashionable and you want to be able to use it. The construction also suggests expertise and knowledge because of the way we treat Greek roots, of course.
It’s as if we started talking about homo-morphic societies. It instantly summons a concept of heteromorphic societies, waiting to be filled.
In short, peoples’ complaint is broadly that academia has being creating, popularising and lending authority to infohazards. Granting that there is some chicken-and-eggness, it remains an escalating cycle. And I do not believe that the people who invented ‘to problematise’ as a verb are doing this on accident.
You could YesChad and say you approve of cisheteronormativity but you now have to fight about it, and that battle will be fought on the plain of words and definitions and identities, where everything is slippery and nothing is ultimately defensible.
Think of the famous dialogue from Life of Brian:
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: crying
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
In the real world, men cannot have babies. But in the free-floating world of words and dignity, men can have the right to have babies, and good luck suggesting otherwise. Once you concede this argument, you will find it unacceptable to point out that men in real life can’t have babies because you are now infringing their commonly accepted rights.
In this way academia has been midwife, facilitator and enforcer of vast and IMO largely negative trends in our society, and is attracting opprobrium accordingly.
But cisheteronormativity doesn't refer to that, not precisely. By the act of naming, by the deliberate use of 'cis' and 'hetero' which are nouns with explicit opposites 'trans' and 'homo', it posits cisheteronormativity as one of many options, it refers to 'the pervasive societal assumption that everyone is cisgender and heterosexual, and that these are the only acceptable or natural ways to be, despite the wrongness of this fact as indicated by the existence of this word'.
I know that one can go down the rabbit-hole on this kind of reasoning, but there's still something to it. Real cisheteronormative societies don't have a word for cisheteronormativity in the same way that fish don't have a word for water. That's why they're cisheteronormative! And nobody would understand it if you tried to explain it to them, they would say, 'Well yeah, men sleep with women and make kids, that's how it works. Even people who bugger sheep know that. What's wrong with you?' The cisheteronormative word for 'cisheteronormative' is 'normal'.
A society where people use 'cisheteronormativity' in conversation is simply not the same as one where people don't. The creation of the word cisheteronormative innately destroys cisheteronormativity.
Corvos
2d ago
I would guess they thought that weed would make them more relaxed and therefore more capable. Like the Ballmer Peak but with a different drug. I have no experience so can't say if it's plausible.
Corvos
2d ago
The original flights had to work, right? They were America's way of showing superiority to the Russians and to Communism. Now that it's just another tour of service, albeit an unusual one, I'm not surprised standards have been relaxed.
Corvos
2d ago
The idea is that naming something does not equal creating it. The thing was already there, you just named it.
However, that's not always the case, I think. Articulating an idea can bring it into being (this is why 'meme theory' treats ideas as organisms) and the way you articulate it significantly affects how it goes on to be perceived and thought about.
Corvos
3d ago
Right? And from the sound of your other messages it sounds like you’re ready to take on Stormveil.
Good hunting!
Corvos
4d ago
The same was true of Jimmy Saville:
The BBC allowed all manner of creative swearing and graphic insults to air during The Thick Of It.
But there was just one line in all of the scripts that made executives so nervous they insisted it be censored, creator Armando Iannucci has revealed.
The excised line, spoken by Peter Capaldi’s fiercely foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker was: 'That's inevitable. It's as inevitable as what they'll find in Jimmy Savile's basement after he's dead.'
'The BBC lawyers said you can't say that,’ Iannucci told an audience in Melbourne
Although Savile died in 2011, between seres three and four, the extent of his sexual abuse of children only began to emerge in September the following year, a month before the final episode aired.
Everybody in TV knew. And were performatively shocked later on, of course.
Corvos
4d ago
Every time you use the art, it should send a wave of energy for maybe 5 metres. I think with a shorter buildup time if you chain them.
You can apply/remove/shift the ashes of war whenever you want to, but you can only have the ash applied to one weapon at a time. Ashes of war can be duplicated if you find the right item though.
Corvos
4d ago
You can find the Sacred Blade ash of war in Limgrave. It’ll give you faith scaling and a medium range slash/wave attack for 19fp.
Corvos
5d ago
My area is broadly split between the locals who bought houses before the price jumped and the non-doms who bought the houses with oil money. The non-doms follow rhythms I don’t quite know but I believe they aren’t here all the time, they come for the fashionable seasons.
This particular block of apartments is aimed at upper-level workers seconded for a few months from places like Dubai. English people wouldn’t and couldn’t pay the premium, they’d either buy or go somewhere more affordable.
I would love to get a drink if you’re up for it. Possibly other Motte Londoners might be interested, or they might prefer to preserve OpSec. Let’s PM to arrange?
Corvos
5d ago
Is this actually true? I thought it tasted different in the UK but I assumed it was just a vibe thing.
Corvos
5d ago
Remember that one culture-war flashpoint is the fact that the vast majority of asylum seekers are getting sent to the places that are too poor and too lacking in political power to refuse them. People are pissed. If there's one thing the English still believe in, it's in everyone doing their part.
Corvos
5d ago
It's not something I make a habit of. I felt the information was broadly public knowledge.
Corvos
5d ago
The first he will gladly tell you about at length and the second is not something he cares to hide.
I'm glad you enjoyed your weekend, and this is an excellent write-up. You have a good eye and have now possibly seen more of 2025 London than I have.
I think a huge amount of the cost growth in central London is due to non-doms on semi-annual migration paths. For complicated reasons I am staying in a nice block of flats there temporarily and I check the parcel collection regularly for a delivery that I am expecting; I have never seen an English or even a European name on the parcels.
I suspect also that there was a pent-up suspicion that London could tolerate higher prices and that COVID provided the excuse to let 'er rip and see the limits of what the market would tolerate. As a result locals seem to have mostly accepted that pubs and meals out are a treat and not a lifestyle, and go maybe once a week while penny-pinching the rest of the time. This may skew prices and (God I hope) they may come down as the market decides it prefers regular attendance to spiky high profits.
I've come to appreciate Wetherspoons
I love Wetherspoons. It's got a reputation for being uncouth but a pub is somewhere you go to eat, drink, and have fun with friends. Why argue when someone wants to make that as cheap and pleasant and convenient as possible? Plus they buy a lot of surprisingly nice buildings to put their pubs in.
Corvos
6d ago
Mr. BurdensomeCount, who is currently banned. Famous for his loathing of the British underclass and well-padded opinion of himself.
Corvos
6d ago
Stormveil Castle is a beef gate. The fact that you get pasted when you try and go through the lower gate is a sign that you need to do more exploring - there are at least two areas other than Limgrave to explore from your position, try playing around.
What did you do for the late game? I'm a bit stuck: winged spear + (erdtree seal + lightning spear). VIG: 22, Mind: 22, Stamina: 20. Str: 16. Dex: 16. Faith: 45.
It did pretty well as a high damage-output glass cannon in the early/mid game but just doesn't seem to have the stopping power it used to once I get to
Corvos
6d ago
This sounds very likely.
Why divorce and remarry to a woman your age when he is surely wealthy enough to enjoy the company of endless 20 year old models? I suspect because he enjoys her company and they have fun together
And it's probably bloody difficult for a billionaire to find someone they feel genuinely comfortable with.
I’m afraid I have to second this. I had a friend who married such a girl in another Asian country. He believed that she had retired and that since he was now providing for her she would not be tempted back into old habits that she clearly disliked.
It was not so. The habits of decades don’t fade so easily - she chafed at the lack of power she had as the demure receiver of her husband’s money and turned to prostitution to fund a secret drug habit and (I suspect) to get back some agency in her life. Then he lost his job and things blew up completely.
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