Crowstep
6mo ago
Do they know that he actually was a cuckold?
I agree that it was occasionally hilarious though. The line about the English having boats had the whole cinema laughing.
Thomas-Alexandre was briefly shown in the film as I remember, but I think the actor was full blooded African rather than biracial, which would have been more accurate.
Josephine's maid was also afro-Caribbean, which is plausible since she grew up on Martinique.
But yeah, there were a few other Africans that were thrown in awkwardly. My suspicion is that Scott did the absolute bare minimum to keep the diversity-mongers happy, which is all we can expect from him I guess.
Incidentally, Oppenheimer has a similar 'bare minimum' moment where the camera lingers on the face of an African woman inexplicably attending a 1930s physics class in the Netherlands before never showing her again.
Crowstep
6mo ago
If you've ever used Amazon then you have benefitted from Bezos' success. You've benefitted from the consumer surplus generated by Amazon's existence. Whether that is from cheaper goods, faster delivery, greater choice, more convenience, the fact that you've used the website demonstrates that you've derived value from doing so relative to what else was available. The same goes for any other company that you've ever interacted with.
And if everyone's jobs get replaced by AI without any financial recompense, then nobody will have any money to spend on these companies that have done the job-replacing. They would need to compete with eachother for what small purchasing power remains, which means lowering prices to near-zero. This is easy enough when your labour costs have been reduced to zero by the AI that took everyone's jobs.
AI represents a potential increase in productivity, and increasing productivity is literally what economic growth is. From the industrial revolution to now, increasing productivity is why we were able to escape the zero-sum world that existed before.
Whether it destroys the world is another thing, of course.
Crowstep
6mo ago
How exactly are the coastal PMC types going to get rich in a way that doesn't enrich the rest of us?
If AGI can manufacture goods much more cheaply, then that means cheap goods for everyone. If AGI can provide services for zero to low cost, that means cheap or free services for everyone.
While there are situations where individuals can get rich at the expense of the masses through rent-seeking (I'm thinking someone like Carlos Slim monopolising Mexican telecoms) the overwhelming majority of billionaires got that way by providing something useful to the masses. Elon Musk sold luxury electric cars, Jeff Bezos provided an online retail experience far superior to anything that came before it, Steve Jobs sold consumer-friendly, well-designed electronics.
If Sam Altman ends up a trillionaire, how exactly could that leave the rest of us poorer?
Crowstep
6mo ago
I started giving this high-carb, low-fat, low-protein diet a go. I started losing weight almost immediately, but found myself feeling anxious/depressed after a couple of weeks (I think from lack of fat). At the moment I'm trying to up my fat intake but keep BCAAs (specifically isoleucine and valine) low to see if I can keep losing the weight.
Crowstep
6mo ago
What's happening is linguistic evolution, in real time.
Old English used to have an extensive case system, which changed to the limited form that we currently have. The use of 'me' is the example you gave is just a continuation of that evolution. There's nothing wrong with 'me and John got a burger' because it sounds perfectly fine to native speakers. And if it sounds right, it is right. Language is formed by consensus. 'Me got a burger' sounds wrong, so it is wrong. But if enough people said it, it would become correct.
In English, a bunch of historic linguists tried to make the language work in the same way Latin does, leading to absurd rules like 'you can't end a sentence with a proposition'. Real languages laugh at prescriptivists' petty rules.
Crowstep
6mo ago
I'm finding the negative responses to Milei ironic. Sure, he's a loose cannon, but does Argentina really need another five years of Peronismo? Argentina was once richer than France, Germany and Spain, now it's poorer than Turkey and Mexico. It's heartening to finally see the Argentines reject the economic populism that has served them so poorly for decades.
Crowstep
6mo ago
I guess you're asking three questions here:
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Why has service gotten worse? - Has it? In a measurable way? It's plausible that a tight labour market and some cost-saving measures put in place have made service worse in some sectors, but it would help if you could be more specific.
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Why is everything expensive? - Assuming you're from the US, incomes (inflation-adjusted) have either decreased by 4.7% or increased by 3% between 2019 and 2022. However, wealth is up significantly. This article is worth reading.
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Why is everything smaller now? - Do you mean consumer goods? Shrinkflation for food is definitely a thing, but it's just a manifestation of regular inflation. Over the long term, food costs are static, which with growing incomes means food is getting cheaper in real terms. Again, can you be more specific? Houses are getting bigger while households shrink. TVs are obviously getting bigger. Cars are getting bigger.
Crowstep
6mo ago
The purpose of the Israeli war is to get Hamas out of power, not to kill an equal number of Gazans as the number of Israelis who died in the initial attack. The goal isn't revenge, it's regime change.
A ceasefire just means that Hamas gets another few years to oppress the Gazans before trying for another massacre.
Crowstep
6mo ago
Refugee is just a modern euphemism for illegal immigrant. Hence why thousands of Albanian men who wash up on the southern shore of England are called 'refugees' by the open border crowd.
Crowstep
6mo ago
That's true, but that was confounded by their gigantic age gap. Plus, I can't imagine the average person thinking better of a prostitute version of Anna who just slept with him for pay.
Crowstep
6mo ago
I'm perfectly happy to discuss the issue itself, I just think that such discussions are much more fruitful when everyone avoids using loaded language.
For example, if I'm arguing against someone who opposes abortion being legal, I'm not going to go along with them using the term 'baby-murder' in place of abortion.
You probably don't think of 'selling her body' as being equivalent, but I think that just demonstrates how successful the activist framing has been. It implies that prostitution is a type of slavery, which it (usually) isn't.
After all, I would argue that a woman who marries a man for his money (to a first approximation, most women who have ever existed) is 'selling her body' to a much greater degree than a prostitute, who is merely renting it. And yet the wife is held in much higher esteem than the jezebel.
Crowstep
6mo ago
'Selling her body' is a terribly misleading metaphor. Chattel slavery involves the selling of bodies, prostitution is more like selling labour for a fixed period. Of course, people use the 'selling her body' metaphor on purpose to frame the practice in a maximally negative way.
If our hypothetical 14 year old girl was selling her body, surely that would mean that Epstein owns her body after the transaction? If he doesn't, then he hasn't 'bought' anything.
Crowstep
6mo ago
It's definitely something I've noticed. I think there are three reasons. Firstly, we put more weight on our spouses as our main/only social outlet. People had more friends in the past, so marriage was able to fill a different niche.
Plus, since cohabitation and marriage have become uncoupled, getting married is more of a symbolic choice. Therefore it's more necessary to emphasise how suited the couple are too each other.
Finally, in the past, most couples didn't write their own vows, they just used the traditional church vows. And the lord doesn't care about you 'marrying your best friend'.
Crowstep
6mo ago
My metric for judging demographic swaps is how much it breaks the universe the adaptation is set in. For example:
Retelling a Shakespeare play, but setting it in the context of 13th century Chinese court politics. Sounds fun.
House of the Dragon: One of the Valyrian clans is inexplicably African, but otherwise genetics works as it would be expected to. Tolerable, but it would have made more sense to have that clan be merchant lords from the Summer Isles.
Rings of Power: Every race (in the sense Tolkein used it) is inexplicably multiracial. Children don't inherit phenotype from their parents. Commoners use racial slurs about elves having pointy ears but pointedly ignore their complexion. Parts of middle earth where the people are canonically swarthy have the same clunky racial mix as everywhere else. Bad.
Netflix's Cleopatra: Cleopatra, a real historical person who was Greek and looked like this, becomes YAS SLAY AFRICAN QUEEN! Terrible
Crowstep
7mo ago
My theory is that Thunberg files the same psychological niche as the Holy Maid of Kent and other similar mediaeval characters. A strident young woman with visions of the future, scolding us to repent our sins. Thankfully the worst that could happen to Greta is if she gets cancelled on Twitter rather than being beheaded for treason.
Crowstep
7mo ago
I wonder if part of the strategy is just making (remaining) Gaza even more densely populated. We know urban living reduces birth rates. A more densely populated strip should spend up the birth rate decline.
Crowstep
7mo ago
I've been thinking that something like this would work as a solution for the Israelis. Once Gaza is an independent state, Israel can justifiably fortify their side of the border as much as they like. After all, their neighbour is aggressing them. Nobody can accuse them of apartheid (with regards to Gaza) since they have no obligation to allow foreign citizens to enter their territory at all. If the government of Gaza attacks them, they can justifiably use force to defend themselves. Egypt can take refugees without being accused of being complicit in Israeli ethnic cleansing of the strip.
I mean, it's not as if Gaza has any religious significance (like Jerusalem), strategic significance (like the Golan Heights) or economic significance (like Tel Aviv). An Israel without Gaza is an Israel with 2 millions fewer Arabs and nothing of value lost.
Crowstep
7mo ago
Is there a college in your city? That seems like the obvious place to meet early-20s women.
Otherwise, you need to go where the young women are. Ioper's post below has a lot of good suggestions but you'll know your own city better. I recommend partner dancing classes to every guy who asks this question so that's worth a shot if you think you'd enjoy it.
Crowstep
7mo ago
Just an update to the disagreement I had with my girlfriend that I mentioned in last week's thread. Apparently it wasn't a huge deal to her, because after that first argument, she didn't bring it up again. Pretty much the best outcome I could have hoped for.
Crowstep
7mo ago
Your comment makes me think of an incident when I was at university. A girl came up to me in a bar, stood right in front of me smiling and said hi. I said hello and then stood there staring, like an idiot.
In retrospect, she was hitting on me, but I was so taken aback with that kind of approach that I didn't really know what to do.
I wouldn't say she had a bad time, although she probably hoped for a more graceful response than the one I gave her...
Crowstep
7mo ago
My girlfriend is pretty sanguine about it, but then she has wide hips and intends to be as drugged as they'll let her be.
The women in my family have narrow hips so they all had/are having ceasarians, and none of them seem to be worried about that.
Crowstep
7mo ago
The only other conflict in our relationship is that she doesn't like one of my hobbies (I'm into partner dancing, and she gets jealous of me dancing with other women). Politics has certainly never been an issue.
Her response was telling though. She seemed to see this belief as different from other kinds of belief. My other political beliefs are just politics, but this is being a good person. Kind of a textbook example of why I dislike identity politics, it makes everything personal.
Incidentally, she did bring up our future kids. She asked me how I would respond if one of our children came out as non-binary. I answered that I would expect nonbinary identity labels to have fallen out of fashion by the time our kids are teenagers (edit: apparently the term already peaked a couple of years ago)
I think I'm probably going to just not bring it up and hope that she forgets about it. I barely know one of the guys in question, and I've never met the other. If she presses the matter, I'll probably just concede and then avoid talking about them.
For kids, O Little Town of Bethlehem is a good one.
I personally like In the Bleak Midwinter, but it is a bit...bleak.
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