Ex_Nihilo
10mo ago
Not sarcasm; I really do think your response was fantastic. I tend to overenthusiastically react to good points that I hadn't considered before.
That thought was not to say that cocaine is a viable, more productive alternative to gaming, but simply that, if even one of the most dangerously addictive substances on Earth has the potential to leave more of a positive impact on the progress of one's work, that's a pretty good indicator of where video games should sit on the hierarchy.
Ex_Nihilo
11mo ago
I think that part of the reason so many of us have difficulty with self-controlled weight loss is the rarity of examples like your uncle; that's an incredible story that can serve as a powerful "carrot" for many who know him. 90% of adulthoods are descents into overfed and underactive lives, so I imagine many people lack the evidence that such a transformation is even possible.
Human Biodiversity is the Foundation of the Woke Civic Religion
I enjoy a long Sunday walk ("Just like Dickens and Beethoven," I think to myself as I stare at my own reflection in the local duck pond), mostly as a primed canvas for whatever thoughts pass my way. Today, I was captivated (or captured) by the concept of "Native Americans;" a term we apply as a gift of copium to once-enormous numbers of Russo-Asians who, a long time ago in a biome far far away, happened to be curious about where that land bridge led. In Canada and ANZAC territory, they are called "First Nations" or "Aborigines," again applying a Cracker Jack prize term to groups of people whose claim to fame, whose founding mythology, whose justification for sanctity in our modern era is.... getting there first and doing nothing about it.
The irony is especially delicious in that the "Indigenous" term is exclusively applied to those who wandered the farthest from their native lands, and that "Sacred Native Land" is a term applied exclusively to the territory where the "Indigenous," at least as far as the story goes, just happened to stop wandering for an unspecified period of time. The brouhaha over Mt. Rushmore and Indian Reservations and all the rest of it has about as much sanctity as Richard Nixon claiming the Sea of Tranquility or the North Pole as Ancient Sacred Nixonian Lands.
Yet, for once in my life, my thoughts today were not captured by Futile Fury (my natural emotional resting state nowadays), but instead by the mere concept of... "us." For all of its hilarious hypocrisies and unaware self-satire, I believe that the Woke Civic Religion's lasting legacy will be a potent dissolution of any concept of "the human race;" a term which, for a 1990s schoolboy at least, evokes images of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" music videos, children's books about the Summer Olympics, and felt cutouts of the world's children - all of which required the paints, inks, and dyes of every skin tone and every form of native dress known to man.
If the past is any sort of indicator of the future, the de facto leaders of the WCR (aka angry young women and their social hostages in Washington) will eventually clarify and codify the currently uncomfortable contradictions within their worldview concerning the treatment of races as something akin to various "species" or "tiers" or "sanctities" of human being. This new dictum will most likely appear for the first time in a viral TikTok from the mouth of a vaguely-transish black person who teaches one or all of the social studies at an exurban public elementary school. And I predict that the WCR will, while publicly reviling the concept of HBD-RedEdition as the mindset of an IncelFascist, reveal HBD-BlueEdition.
It will not be a sensational revelation; it will have its real origin sewn, in the now-trademark Actually1984 manner of the WCR, deep into the goldfish memory of the populace, such that, by its second week of existence, HBD-Blue will appear to have AlwaysBeenThere.
Because, without HBD-Blue, the Indigenous are just "us," and the Black Trans Women are just "us," and the Asians we need to StopHating are just "us," and suddenly no one is special and everything is an accident of history and, worst of all, that blood relative you hate who DefinitelyVotedForTrump... is "us" too. The WCR wholly relies, in the only part of its identity that has any foundation at all, on an unshaken belief in the metamorphosis of humanity into the Twelve Tribes of InThisHouseWeBelieve.
Over the land bridge, Humans became Indigenous.
In darkest Africa, Humans became BlackandBrownBodies.
Through the vast deserts of the Middle East, Humans became Asians.
Hidden in a university dorm, or a Lower East Side nightclub, or a San Francisco bathhouse, Humans became TransLives.
And over the straits of the Bosphorus, on papyrus rafts across the Mediterranean, or rock hopping around Gibraltar, Humans remained Humans, a crime for which we will pay with our blood and our bounty until the children are standing on the same number of boxes, and then onward still, until the poor whites of West Virginia or Florida or Alabama retreat to the swamps and caves and outlying trash heaps, and then onward still, until their offspring view the homosexual as purity and the heterosexual as filth, and then onward still, and then onward still.
And then, just when the BaBBs have been reeled in to the precipice of the doorframe of power, HBD-Blue will be at its most useful. For only then will the BIPOC and the Activist, the Queer and the Ally, who always believed themselves to be the greatest servants in the Master's House, come to realize that they are merely the last lines in our modern remix of "First they came for the... but I was not a..."
And there will be new reservations for these new Indigenous, these muted urban aborigines who, just like the Cree and the Mohawk and the Nez Perce, once thought they ruled their land, only to realize that, an ocean away, another species had harnessed thunder.
So the question… how does it really end? When are the scales balanced, the veils torn, the doors open?
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
I played against Amy on Jeopardy! before anyone knew who she was (I thought I was going to play against Amodio). Seeing her in the makeup chair from behind, I thought she was an old woman, with the strand of pearls and cardigan and wiry hair. Once I heard her voice, I thought it was pretty obvious that she was trans.
Even dumber than the Ladies Nights at your gym, Jeopardy! hails Schneider as their best-ever female contestant.
Yes, you're definitely on to something there. It's not that I don't enjoy meeting women with enthusiasm and knowledge of the game, it's just not the time and place (which now seems like the most taboo of ideas).
But there's something else happening there too. In 2022, women are, generally speaking, the enforcers of Woke Morality and, therefore, The Fun Police. This morning the BBC panel were rhapsodizing on how the World Cup needs to be about unity, diversity, equality, etc... and very much downplaying the competitive and nationalist aspects, both of which now seem verboten to glorify. So on a bigger level, it is ironically as if women in sports act as the executioners of real diversity, substituting it for a puritan globalhomo ideological version of Soylent: all the nutrients in controlled amounts with no variety, ever.
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
Just finished Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals, an astounding collection of prophetic essays from the early 90s that now ranks as one of the best books I’ve ever read. I anticipate I will re-read it frequently.
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
I’m fascinated by the female propensity to watch ads, to the extent that nearly half of all commercials during sporting events are aimed toward women. What’s going on there?
It's true, I have no analog to the cover of a factory nor to victims of a murderous regime, but I am the only unrepentant member of my race and gender in my department. Time and again I have seen that glint in the eyes of students (male and female) who see me as the last vestige of intellectual masculinity (not that I embody that in any definitive way, but given the environment, I might as well be Tolkien himself), someone who is proud of the Western world and the European legacy (in parts) and who maintains a spine in a world of competitive cuckoldry.
Without sounding too vain, I'm reminded of the Jordan Peterson phenomenon with young men finally finding shelter from a world that hates them. I think about where I and many others would be without 12 Rules for Life and feel the imperative of being the only lighthouse on a rocky shore.
But then again, maybe I am actually doing all of them a disservice by deceiving them into thinking this could be worth their time, deserving of their effort, a reason to be hopeful. Perhaps without me, accelerationism would take over and students who would otherwise "grin and bear it" would leave academia. Or perhaps I have deceived myself, and I truthfully do not alter the confidence and futures of students. Any of the above is possible.
What I want to do is alter the ideological temperature of the department, and I very much understand the impulsive scoff I often hear in reaction to that. But the fact of the matter is I've already seen results in small ways; students thinking about issues from two sides, contemplating perspectives they never would have had reason to consider before. So that vision is still there... essentially, I suppose I quixotically believe in academic reformation with the idealistic chaos of a Disney or Luther. I expect to have visions of the devil within the semester.
Ex_Nihilo
30d ago
I think this is my favorite comment I’ve yet read on this forum. You totally and succinctly understand that almost orgasmic feeling of relief when finding that one new piece of art that isn’t completely pathetic.
Great post.
“Thot,” in my understanding, is much more complex than “slut” or “easy” or “loose” - it carries a subtle gentlemanly warning that the woman in question is a honey-/thirst-trap whose attractiveness and/or complexity (and/or complexion) is only profile-deep.
Ex_Nihilo
4mo ago
the issue wasn’t politicized at all
Quixotically LARPing the American Culture War is Canada’s national pastime.
Ex_Nihilo
5mo ago
Probably not the answer you're looking for, but I'm reminded of the great Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton. Payton was notorious for a stubborn, enduring discipline rooted in sky-high self-determination and -esteem, even refusing medical treatment in the face of life-threatening cancer and all the little problems that led up to it (he died at 46); there are definitely continent-sized holes in that methodology. All the same, seeing as you're past the "accepting the legitimacy of modern medicine" phase and into the "mindset and self-discipline" phase, there might be something of use to you in a "fuck it" attitude toward your own capacity for feeling "up for it" or not. Here's how Payton summed up his mantra:
Never die easy. Why run out of bounds and die easy? Make that linebacker pay. It carries into all facets of your life. It’s okay to lose, to die, but don’t die without trying, without giving it your best.
Substitute the football terms for just getting yourself to the office and sitting in your chair, even if that's all that happens. I'm also reminded of a (perhaps more apropos) quote from Fiddler on the Roof lyricist Sheldon Harnick:
Inspiration is the act of drawing up the chair to the writing desk.
And if all else fails, there's no shame in stocking 24-packs of Monster in the fridge. Do whatever you have to do to "get yourself there," then start critically analyzing what's necessary to maintain that level of focus and what's superfluous or harmful.
As @ulyssesword suggests, this is a common trope in country music of the 20th century, with a few new entries still popping up from time to time. From the oldest songs like “Knoxville Girl,” “Long Black Veil,” and “Under the Weeping Willow” to relatively modern entries like “You Can Let Go Now, Daddy,” “Wasted,” and even Taylor Swift’s “Love Story;” I imagine that country, as America’s only commercial genre with direct ties to folk song, produced these “twist” ballads in a continued tradition of the European songs you mention.
As an aside, Contemporary Christian Music (as a frequent imitator and proximate neighbor of country music) also produces twist ballads with songs like Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Cinderella,” Michael W. Smith’s “This Is Your Time,” and the mega-hit “Butterfly Kisses” (which contains the common “daughter song” trope of Verse 1 - Birth/Childhood, Verse 2 - Adulthood/College, Verse 3 - Wedding… the trope occasionally branches into Verse 4 - Death).
Ex_Nihilo
8mo ago
I’ll throw in “Joey Freshwater,” Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin’s coed-chasing alter ego.
Ex_Nihilo
8mo ago
Mouth-to-mouth is unusual, but cheek kisses are very common in Southern European countries when a player is substituted off after an extraordinary performance, not unlike the ass slapping on the sidelines of NFL games.
Ex_Nihilo
9mo ago
Completely agree. He revolutionized his and all other - by way of gesamtkunstwerk - art forms. He was as much a renaissance man as there’s ever been, and the power of his vision (and his ability to execute that vision) is rivaled by a sparing handful of aspirational entrepreneurs: Ford, Disney, Jobs/Gates, Musk. His pamphlet on Jewish Music is an overblown non-scandal due to its later admirers; his views were absolutely standard for his day - more charitable even, in parts.
Ex_Nihilo
9mo ago
This is still the case for me in my thirties. The idea of being 55 and well-established, or 70 and retired, or 80 and physically worn, are impossible to tangibly imagine.
Ex_Nihilo
11mo ago
If it’s any comfort, most people pick up this tic simply by being immersed in leftist academic or professional environments, not necessarily by being a leftist themselves. Compared to some of the other answers in this thread, the rhetorical “right?” is a sort of “hidden indicator,” not necessarily a conscious change of vocabulary.
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
Honestly? I have to know who wins the Champions League this year. And the next. And whether Haaland becomes a true rival to Mbappé. And what the coaching career of Will Still looks like. And how good Endrick becomes. And if the USMNT will ever win a World Cup. And whether I’ll get that interview with Carlos Valderrama. And what that opportunity will lead to. And whether my work will be produced at a high level. And what that achievement might mean for finding love, simple happiness, and stature in my industry.
And when Michigan State will win the Big Ten again.
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
“If they’re unashamed, let us also be so.”
A tungsten turn of phrase if I ever saw one; small but dense, concise but wielding the kind of power that changes the course of a nation’s history.
Ex_Nihilo
1yr ago
Thank you for sharing that. It's surprisingly heartening to hear of others in similar situations.
To draw from the example of Dietrich himself, the Bonhoeffer is more outwardly counteractive than the Schindler from the very beginning:
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Forming and/or joining groups and associations meant to oppose the oppressive ideology, with a particular concentration on reforming the thought processes of schoolchildren and young adults.
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Constantly plotting with sympathetic colleagues about how to strike the seat of power at the opportune time.
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Leaving academia (as Bonhoeffer did) as a countercultural statement.
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Signing one's own name to inflammatory documents and incriminating papers.
I also generally operate on your concept of balance; not being seen to advocate for the dominant ideology while building up just enough evidence in my favor that would give pause to any Inquisitional tribunal with suspicions that I am against them. I intend to live to see the end of this war, and to have had a hand in deciding its victor.
You're right; that's a misleading sentence. I've edited it.
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