EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
This is a government that has literally over a decade of practice in collecting taxes, performing policing, and running a judiciary against essentially a partially very hostile civilian population. They are really good at it. The idea that the police or judiciary are going to collapse is nonsensical. This really only ever happens when e.g. police are displaced by another powerful force - either literal revolutionaries (in which case taking over tax and police duties in particular is very visible and obvious), gangs (like Haiti, or some villages or neighborhoods in Mexico maybe), or foreign powers (literal invasions, UN forces, etc). There basically are zero exceptions.
The modern era actually makes revolution significantly harder, not easier, because we have so many bureaucratic tools to administer (or, worst case, defer) typical state functions. In theory, total breakdowns can still happen if a country is widely illiterate with extensive fraud, bribery, local power structures, and poorly maintained central identification regimes (e.g. Afghanistan), but Iran is not even remotely like that. IIRC, their literacy rate is actually very high.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Honestly, it seems to me Iran probably will just send all of its troops on leave for a while if it hasn't already; no point concentrating themselves in flimsy barracks, packed all nice and tight, they obviously wouldn't do this, and they aren't really needed anywhere except maybe a little bit on the coast (no one seriously expects a ground invasion, so why bother planning for it?). I really don't think the IRGC will lose much more than infrastructure, and reading between the lines, any major leadership that wasn't killed probably cannot be killed, otherwise we'd have a lot more high-profile "X is dead" annoucements
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Iran's president, largely powerless during this conflict, apologized and then there was such outcry that he repeated the same type of statement the exact next day taking back the apology. Many people missed this piece of news, and that's a shame, because it says actually quite a lot. So you'd be forgiven for reading a bit too much into it.
Re: mines, ISW says about 10 mines have been laid so far... however, WSJ reports: "Iran primarily sets mines using frogmen on small boats that resemble ordinary fishing vessels, an informal maritime militia of dinghies that is virtually impossible to identify and eliminate". It's also worth noting that you don't actually need many mines to close traffic, just the threat is a big deal and it's fundamentally pretty tricky to get high reliability in terms of "did you really get ALL the mines?"
Re: China, I said this earlier in the week but basically the next few years is a bit of a window where the US hasn't finished fully developing (or critically, deploying) some of the higher-tech or higher-volume clever ideas that they've started working on, since we didn't really get serious about anti-China development until, like, around 2018 or so, planning-wise. US military innovation is generally seen to be pretty good, but it IS quite slow. Troops and assets didn't even start meaningfully shifting to Asia until like, 3 years ago!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Previously, the US had a - not stellar, but decent - claim at being the country (one of very few) that would at least try to do the good thing, even if it sometimes went against their interests. Frankly, I think that's a good reputation to have! Both internationally, but also domestically when it comes to trust. And personally, I quite liked being able to tell some of my extremist leftist friends that they were far too over-critical about the US military. It's becoming much more difficult to say that every year, and I might stop saying it soon.
And beyond that, I don't think the people who go "isn't it good that the military is more responsible than before to who won the election" fully realize the extent that certain kinds of actions by the military, even if facially democratic, undermine the very real, quite impressive, and somewhat delicate set of agreements that undermine the uniquely stable US civil-military relationship. See here for the best treatment of this idea I've seen.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Okay, honestly I felt primed to dislike it, but ended up reading basically the whole thing (I skipped the second half of the disclaimers). And you know what? I thought it was valuable.
Certainly there were things that I disagreed with, contradicted other points to varying degrees from mild to significant, and I think I only spotted a small handful of typos and one or two spots where I think you meant to paste in something else (or were debating doing so), but didn't. BTW, if you want, typos I found: there's an "egrerious" instead of "egregious", "bannable offensives" instead of "offenses", extra "be" in "for women to be have", "(Greater Male Variability Hypothesis)" has parentheses for no reason, all should be findable with Ctrl-F. There's one other misspelling but I can't find it again.
I liked it more than I thought. For some of them, it was good to put a name on, and get some specificity for, a slippery concept. I'm not sure how much it might genuinely accomplish your goals. But I think it might be of use, maybe ironically, as a sort of softer intro to some men who aren't fully aware of the ways in which life can be unfair to them. Despite the inherent bias or risk of a gish gallop approach, of course, in a set of complaints like this. But even so, geez it is hard to avoid the temptation to make it into a comparison game. I know your whole deal is that it's fine to consider men's problems without dismissing those of women, however, on some level if things are unfair for both genders then it kind of implies that, well, that's just life and society, it's tough, rather than assess that there's something deeply wrong and eminently fixable.
A few that stood out: I think there truly isn't very much patience with teaching men to be better at their emotions and recognizing that they frankly just don't have enough experience with it, that's a good point. And worse get judged when they try to develop it clumsily. And yes, men really cannot demonstrate emotional extremes very easily, with no easy "default" setting, but some of that is so similar to women (e.g. you say confident but not arrogant, vulnerable but not burdensome: but see passive doormat vs, if too assertive, bitchy, and well dressed but not overly so vs being a slob or dressing for attention, women's style standards are universally higher) that it's hard not to say anything other than, well, there are a LOT of traits where moderation is desired, but the specifics can be very gender-specific. Can we really teach men to be better effectively though, without the input of women? The advice and criticism of women toward men especially in the emotional realm you seem to depict as flawed and harmful, so I'm not quite sure what you think the way forward is there.
I did not expect and was surprised to encounter an argument in favor of insults, bullying, and conflict among boys, but that's some food for thought I might come around to. The bigger picture about the importance and even necessity of probing boundaries though, that's true. More specifically in my life, I've been a substitute teacher a good number of times. Middle school is so interesting. Annoying quite often of course as well. I've heard anecdotally the male subs get more respect than the women do, though obviously I cannot test that. That's a bit of a sexist benefit, but it's definitely true that they are a bit starved for role models, and social media hasn't really helped in that regard. The flashy external stuff is popular and easily accessible, but the depth of character and deciding on your moral fiber, that usually requires some kind of extended proximity to someone you know and ideally can get advice from. Social media simply does not offer that. I should note here that despite the many ways in which school represses the natural inclinations of boys (as a sub, I do try to let things go a little bit more than most, but this can backfire pretty easily since boys are ALWAYS boundary testing at that age) it's statistically the case that far more girls find themselves lonely and socially isolated during school. Anyways, the upshot of this is that although in principle I agree that boys need a few more outlets or educational styles/opportunities catered to them, it's a really hard problem to solve. Because being loud IS annoying, if you let the kids throw things at each other they WILL and that's annoying to others too, tacitly allowing fights is a hard sell, etc.
I really liked the love vs respect paradigm, it is indeed true that while women can demand respect, and that's upheld as pretty great, men cannot demand love, and usually a lack is cast as a personal failure rather than a circumstance (or the fault of those around them being too cold). Although, it must be said, the lack of respect can also be pretty crushing to men. Still, the notion that women are inherently worth something, but a man must prove his worth, or affirmatively demonstrate they aren't evil, is pretty damaging when you get right down to it. I've seen that quite a lot, to be frank. Plus the bit about how men often feel rejected because of their personality, and this creates a major self-worth issue. And yes, the agentic expectations of men for men can frequently lead to self blame in virtually every area of life. Men need to learn to fail more gracefully. But they also need to know that failure does not actually affect inherent worth. Is that possible to consistently teach? Who knows! But loving family and religion tend to help at least a bit.
Along those lines I'd say that for some of these, I think you run a little counter to your goals in the sense that many are honestly a male-imposed standard on other males, and didn't really originate in feminism at all. Such as the teaching that men are to be judged primarily by their output, I'm sure some of it is rooted in various feminism-adjacent philosophies, but is bragging about a fast car really about the women it's supposed to attract? Not so much. Who is responsible for the weak market for strong male leads with emotional journeys? Uh, men. The primary audience and the directors and the writers, quite often enough. Etc.
I'm not quite sure where I was going with this, but those were my reactions. I was definitely moved by a few. More relevant to my life, I happen to not only be in the midst of some degree of personal struggle myself with purpose, lack of success, etc. but have a somewhat man-hating younger lesbian sister (of a more well-meaning yet nevertheless "women are better than men and that's not sexism" variety), and also a younger brother (though close in age) who decided a few months ago he wanted to be non-binary, they/them, and called by a different name too (a female one).
The latter is a culmination of a few things. He's (and I really can't think of him any other way than him, truth be told, although I'm more than willing to play the name and pronoun game) worn skirts to church just for reactions, experimented with painted nails and such, big into the indie music scene, and is now at school in Europe doing an avant garde music masters program. Over Christmas, when he made this known, it seemed to me that this was mostly rooted in masculinity having way too much baggage for him. That it was seen to be negative, the typically masculine traits were kind of bad, he felt a bit too effeminate for the label, etc. Declined to talk about what that meant sexually in any detail beyond a vague "pansexual" label (though I strongly suspect this does not in fact include men, gay or no). Feels a lot of animus towards his religious upbringing too, so that's a factor - but you know what? Sure, my mom's cried a fair amount over it. But our parents have been nothing but supportive or at least, understanding and respectful, trying to focus on the love being unconditional kind of thing. Frankly, I think this really frustrated him, as it's way easier to make villains.
I'm not sure when or if we'll ever broach the subject again soon (I do feel a bit lost about it overall) but it might be possible that some of these points could be a springboard for discussion with one or both of them. I'm pretty curious at least whether my brother would identify with some of the "feminine man" parts or not, at least.
Do you have a similar mini-pitch for the actual (affirmative) message, what the book is actually supposed to accomplish, and offer as an alternative to the two poles creating a quagmire? You wrote a lot about the problems, but what's the solution, or perhaps the definition of 'good' masculinity? Or maybe it's not that kind of book. Is then the book just about the suffering of men and validating that, or perhaps poking the holes in the current paradigm so that an affirmative new paradigm can take root (later)?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Eh, no, not at all. Virtually all of these POS systems let the business choose exactly what appears on them. Now, there DO exist defaults that some owners will use, but customization is the norm.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I think there's really two ways to think about Marxism: one is the obvious motivation of his works. But secondly, I think Marx did a lot to establish a sort of almost historical framework for the economic and political progression of human progress that others have adopted in various forms.
Plainly, Marx was wrong about the precise progression of political and economic realities. He was maybe wrong about treating class as a distinct and supremely strong force, or at least, it's complicated. But I think he was right in the general sense that (excessive, internal) financialization is a very strong, and probably harmful, force. And, again in a general sense, the idea that maybe this system of 'capitalism' is inherently in a state of almost entropic decline, where production runs into natural limits and the insatiated demand growth often distorts into rent-seeking and monopolization, is a pretty interesting one.
I definitely agree that he was wrong about things magically reversing and becoming better as the natural and inevitable result of the system's evolution. However, you can still use the term "late stage capitalism" if you buy the narrative about the trajectory of things, even if you (maybe strongly!) disagree about what happens in the "next stage". And in fact, it seems to me that at least in America, communism (under the lens of: let's seize things for the lower class and take it for ourselves, and redistribute it centrally) is 100% dead in the water. A kind of semi-democratic socialism however (let's seize some of the things, especially from the rich, and then distribute it centrally - and it's okay because we outnumber them) is very much alive. I do consider those different things, and the latter is what even young idiots (many of whom might defend communism reflexively) really want, even if they aren't able to articulate it very well. They don't actually want communism, not when you ask them straight. And really, they aren't even all that revolutionary in a classic sense, even if they say they want to burn down the system: by revealed preference they simply don't.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I think it's both people are moving less, and it's more disruptive to move. You'd think that it would be less disruptive because of zoom, etc. but plainly zoom is not a substitute for in-person stuff. No, it's that once someone moves the lower social opportunities in daily life mean that it's much harder to hit that "critical mass" of friendship (or, especially, some bare minimum threshold), which means that people who do move, end up more lonely than previously.
So perception-wise, "difficult moves" are more salient while previously "successful moves" didn't occasion much comment. Thus, you notice more moves precisely because they are so disruptive. At least that's my theory.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
This is interesting to me. For one, as a particularly close comparison, some deeper Mormon doctrine teaches that God created the entire world spiritually before He created it physically, and holds that at least some of God's power is sourced from His more complete understanding of the laws of the universe (physical and otherwise). Basically, very similar to the mirror idea. It's really fascinating where Spinoza seems to take this idea instead. It also reminds me a little bit of that one "Psychocybernetics" book, where it's claimed perception leads to power, and action is guided by your (accurate?) self-image. I think in both cases, it seems there is broad agreement that most of what you need to be happy and satisfied and strong comes mostly from rejecting bad beliefs and finding more accurate ones - although I don't know enough about philosophy to say if this is really all that unique, it certainly appeals to me. I have long felt that a surprising amount of human behavior and attitude is related to how much control one feels they have (the perception of control though, to be clear, not necessarily actual control). Although in my case, I tend to think that some degree of humility is necessary as clearly our own agency and life's circumstances will always have some limits we will come very clearly up against.
I'm curious as to how it followed that Spinoza claims that humility is an evil emotion? Is the implication that humility is a false pretense, and thus an inaccurate way of viewing the world, or something else like it being wholly extrinsic to our actual selves? Or is it more about the control and power point, where humility is too closely related to a sort of passivity and acceptance of one's fate being imposed on them?
(It's interesting that you instantly highlight animals as a connection, or maybe that was original to Spinoza; that wouldn't really have occurred to me as immediately related. We Mormons also have a follow-on belief that animals do have spirits, and that killing animals without need is immoral. With that said the more practical implications of this are not really all that commonly expressed beyond a recommendation, rarely followed, that it is good to eat meat only sparingly. That is not to say that we were ever encouraged to be vegetarian or never eat domesticated animals, that's more famously the Seventh Day Adventists)
Just as a nitpick/sidebar, it's "vice versa", it's Latin and apparently you can pronounce it two ways, both acceptable: as it looks (two separate words, "vyse ver-suh") or as "vy-suh ver-suh" because the e would be pronounced alone in Latin, this is considered slightly more fancy. "Vy-see ver-see" or any variant thereof, flat wrong. I pronounce it the first way because a) it's more accessible and doesn't make me feel as silly, and b) the alleged Latin way to pronounce it is like, wrong. It's the academic Latin reconstruction, so effectively modern, not even the ecclesiastical one, and certainly not the original Roman one, so might as well just go whole hog and use a modern English pronunciation.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Inception, Ocean's 11, Rogue One, Now You See Me, there are definitely a few that pull of a flawless plan either in full or for at least 10-15 uninterrupted minutes of screen time. There's also at least one "perfect heist" type movies where the meat of the story takes place after the money gets stolen according to plan, but for the life of me I can't remember the name. Most of these are emotionally a kind of "competence porn" (although that phrase usually seems to be used to describe books, for which "things go according to plans" is actually decently common in my experience).
Or, occasionally, it's because the actual plan is just a little too complicated to explain purely visually. And actually, if you saw this quote recently, it may be trending this way even if the explanation isn't required at all:
Matt Damon Says Netflix Wants Movies to Restate the ‘Plot Three or Four Times in the Dialogue’ Because Viewers are on ‘Their Phones While They’re Watching’
But overall, yeah, it's a fair and usually correct point you make.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I kind of think of Starship Troopers in the same vein as Fight Club. They are both obviously parodies, and as a matter of actual fact are both intended to be parodies, but accidentally make strong enough points (or present them convincingly enough) in a few respects that some people will watch them and interpret them straight anyways. I would say more but this is the Fun thread :)
So, there are the original 3 which are far different in feel, almost feels like a different series. And then there's a small gap, and then starting with Rogue Nation you have another set of 5 (clustered a bit plotwise as a set of 3 and then a final set of 2), and now they're basically done (at least, with Tom Cruise as lead). They're at times gimmicky especially plotwise, quality is variable, but they are in my opinion all quite fun, solid popcorn movies. Fallout in particular, I think even standalone, is actually one of the best action films of the 2010s, in terms of the fights and visuals. So if you're interested, start with Ghost Protocol, if you're just curious, maybe try Fallout directly.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5d ago
I think you would really like Snowpiercer if you haven't seen it. Also, @FtttG if you want foreign but don't mind zombies, Train to Busan is pretty fun.
TENET is absolutely moronic in its plot but is a fun movie visually and action wise. Inception too I think makes that list even though it's not intrinsically an action movie, yeah? Well, maybe not. Not sure.
I'm curious how y'all feel about the modern set of Mission Impossibles. I feel like in a lot of ways them (and maybe the Fast and Furious movies, to a worse and lesser extent, plus maybe marvel if you stretch) are the inheritors of the movie niche the 80's type action movies inhabited, even though vibe-wise and spiritually they are plainly very different.
I don't know if I've seen it specifically mentioned, but there's also the dynamic of how after you leave high school, socialization becomes much more elective rather than obligatory. High school is notable because although you still have some decent latitude in terms of who you spend your time with, you are still surrounded by the same set of people every day, forced into constant, recurring proximity. However as soon as college hits, boom all of that reliable, predictable, forced social interaction suddenly dissolves. If housed in freshman dorm housing, you might have some lesser version of it, but even so there are so many activities to do, everyone is in different classes as you, bigger universities mean that until you get into a major you probably won't see the same people over and over, etc. And not everyone makes that jump. If you go straight into the workforce, it's probably even more stark. And yes, I think it's far worse for men due to the somewhat weaker social bonds and the type of friendship patterns involved, even if statistically women are more likely to be lonely than men (well, at least I know this is absolutely true in middle and high school, but I'm not totally sure about the next 10 year bracket - if I were to guess, I'd say male loneliness doesn't spike higher until sometime in the mid to late 30s). In that sense, I'd say the concept probably has some roots in reality (or a common fear/insecurity people have).
With all that said, in the contexts I've usually heard it, it's usually either a derogatory term to a (usually blue collar, but sometimes narcissistic white collar) guy who no one can stand in the workplace. Or if it's someone you personally knew, I think it's more along the lines of "that guy was an asshole then (but popular), and he's still an asshole now (and I think he's only fake popular)". I don't think it requires him to be a midwit necessarily, but it's said in animus more often than not.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5d ago
They are still useful. However you must sort by "new" and not the default recommendation! This is a much more random sample. As always, the 2-4 star reviews are also very useful. The main thing I wish they would include is whether or not the place solicits reviews. This is doubly true for non-restaurant reviews, which are by far the lowest reliability.
Also, it's more useful to think of the reviews in "bands", or relative to others, rather than a point estimate. A 4.6 restaurant is going to be meaningfully better than a 4.1 restaurant nearly 100% of the time. But a 4.4 vs a 4.2? I wouldn't ever make a decision based mostly on that.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5d ago
It's pretty funny that the culture war thread has 0 comments yet still almost a thousand views. Like guys, you can see there's zero comments, what did you expect to see?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
"The market can stay irrational longer than you stay solvent" is definitely the investing phrase of the decade.
IMO the fault really lies in the American populace for weighting the specific political agenda of candidates higher than an assessment of their character, personal judgement, and trustworthiness. And here, Trump specifically for being an easily convinced idiot. But "congressmen can't visit foreign countries and bring back advice for the president" has literally never been forbidden, and it would be silly to do so, and impossible to draw a rational line about what kind of advice/exactly which countries/etc.
Edit: of course, if you just want to badmouth and shame Graham for doing this, have at it and I encourage it, that's fine.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Makes part of me want to dust off my half-finished effortpost about the larger theoretical justifications for secession/revolution. It's actually a pretty diverse set of belief systems.
However you're right, generally speaking that's the US approach in terms of its political heritage, so a reasonable default. The Confederacy tried to pull that card, but the Northerners (rightly, IMO) said that OK, fine, even if you think that the North is breaking the slavery-compact part of the Constitution (not even a 'fundamental right'), you were mostly whiny losers about it (leaving when Lincoln gets elected and before he even does anything) instead of trying to exhaust all reasonable options first (what the Declaration of Independence was claiming the colonies had done).
Now whether you think the OG Founders were exaggerating when they claimed that their revolution was the only, reluctantly embraced option or not is a separate issue :)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
It's probably not mentioned because at least going by the one picture, this is like 30 people. Size of protests matter. You can pretty easily get 30 people to show up at a protest over a pretty stupid issue, especially in NYC
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
I mean I get the argument on pragmatic grounds, but in theory the political process (i.e. the democratic part of government) is specifically entrusted with deciding who to go to war against and how. So on that level it's nonsensical to say opposing (non-democratic!) decisions about going to war isn't or shouldn't be allowed.
In other words, there's an okay argument you can make that it would be nice if people supported the war effort even if they oppose the war, but upgrading that to people ought to support the war effort even if they oppose the war is an argument that's at least out of sync with the Constitution and our history. Morally sure, you can still say that, everyone can have their opinion.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure if this kind of thing went to court, the typical Executive latitude over foreign affairs probably isn't enough for actual treason convictions. You need a Congressional statute to work off of. Maybe not a full declaration of war, though a really pedantic judge might say so for the most direct "treason" charges, but something that they've put out. Now, given, a few of these Congressional bills do devolve some judgement to the Executive, but I could easily see even the current conservative court make a ruling against it being enough for treason based on the Major Questions doctrine. After all, it's quite literally not (inherently) the President's job (normally) to decide who is an enemy and who is not. I think for this reason, the administration is probably a little wary of actually bringing treason or similar charges against certain people supporting certain groups, because legally some of them are not slam dunks and can even backfire. Funnily enough, there's a parallel for why the president of the Confederacy didn't end up getting prosecuted at the end of the day even though he was jailed - lawyers were at least a little worried that awkward questions would be asked in court about the legality of secession.
Now, politically that's a different story. And I can't remember the exact incidents off the top of my head, but Trump has thrown around the "treason" word already in at least several cases where the word obviously does not apply, so I don't consider him representative at all.
With that said, getting shunned by people for helping enemies/evil people is already part of modern politics to some extent. See not only Hamas supporters, but also BDS types shunning pro-Israel people, to give the obvious example. But rhetoric is free and part of free speech. Personally though I'd put a strong line between "persona non grata in society" and "we run them out of town".
In terms of enforcement, usually the line is "material support". That is, sending money or physical stuff to questionable groups or people. Again, congressional statute regulates these penalties and where the lines are, for the most part. In some cases, you're even forbidden to send money to a Hamas member for humanitarian purposes (because they might then use the freed budget to support military action, I think this was in the news recently).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Usually oil supply is pretty elastic, but most of the quickest and largest elasticity comes from the exact spots that are currently blocked up, if I'm not mistaken.
Except (Sen. Chris Murphy, D-CT):
You are right that Hegseth agrees with Trump:
So, missiles and missile production, fairly straightforward and measurable. Naval "destruction", less. Other miscellaneous infrastructure, obviously not a goal. Deny nuclear weapons? See briefing. It IS, don't get me wrong, a goal, but the only method is: 'hope Iran gives up and negotiates at some point'. That's it. That's the whole strategy. That's kind of a shit strategy, unless we're going to go all WW2 Japan and drop nukes on civilian centers, or some other type of total war shit. (And as mentioned upthread, mutually assured oil production destruction is an option but an insanely bad one)
In other words, there IS a strategic plan but the ACTUAL (tactical) plans we have don't match the grand strategy. At all. IMO, that's enough to fairly claim that there isn't a [real/authentic] plan (functionally speaking).
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