FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10hr ago
I've recently finished:
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger. Continuing my journey through Junger, I enjoyed the book but felt like I didn't understand it as deeply as I should have, it just felt like Animal Farm to me. If anyone who knows more could link me an explainer I'd love it, I feel like there is a lot of depth I'm not hitting.
Coup d'Etat by Edward Luttwak. Deeply disappointing, I like Luttwak and this is positioned as his best and most fun work, it was mostly pretty banal advice and analysis. Not bad, just not earth shattering.It's presented as a handbook for how to launch a coup, and it does have interesting views on what is a coup versus a revolution etc. It's inherently a "fun" book as a practical manual, and an easy read. I got a later reprinting that contained some updating to talk about later incidents, I think that might have made the book weaker, if you want to read this I'd recommend trying to find the original version.
JFK Jr. An Intimate Oral Biography An oral history of JFK Jr's life, as told by his friends and those who knew him. My wife wanted to read it so we read it together. I have OPNIONS on JFK Jr. now, which I think I will share soon.
The Sun Also Rises: I love Hemingway, and finally got to this one. A brilliant examination of masculinity, while also being a really fun book. If you haven't read it, you should.
To Have and to Have Not: I was on a Hemingway kick, so I picked this up at our library's annual book sale. This one is...not a masterpiece. It's a fine enough little noir set in the Keys, but...it feels kinda flat compared to Hemingway's best works like For Whom the Bell Tolls or The Undefeated. The lead is a classic Hemingway Hero without any of the conflict or interest, and just kinda floats through. I'll also say that while I'm normally not offended by racism or language, especially where period accurate, this one kinda feels over the top. Blacks are only referred to as niggers, both in the abstract and to their faces, while chinese are chinks and to be betrayed and murdered for no apparent reason as a matter of course. IDK, just didn't hit for me.
Currently, I'm kind of in the middle of:
Band of Brothers I have a personal connection to the subject so I've always meant to read it, finally started it the other day while bored and motored through half of it...only to find that the libgen copy I had gotten was only half the book. oops. Gotta find a real copy now.
I'm planning to start Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola. I've been Evola-Curious, and this seemed like a good place to start. And then on the flip side I've been listening to a lot of Daryl Cooper and he talked so much about how evil Eldridge Cleaver was that I downloaded Soul on Ice just to see what all the fuss was about. I'm also looking to read more by Ernst Junger, after enjoying Storm of Steel and Marble Cliffs, if anyone has any other recommendations. I'm probably going to start Hemingways Over the River as I picked that up at the book sale as well. I remain in the middle of Infinite Jest as part of a book club with a friend of mine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10hr ago
Kilts become A Thing in at least some blue tribe cities by 2050. Sneered at by minorities and the red tribe.
I'll do you one better: Kilts become a thing in the Blue Tribe by 2030, and by 2050 the kilts that came into fashion in 2040 are Red coded, the ones like that are "Youth Pastor Kilts" and show that you are hopelessly out of date in NYC or whatever. There's a type of skinny jean today that I would have been scared to wear in seventh grade for fear of being called a faggot, and that when I see them today it's a lame real estate agent or something.
My predictions:
We're going to see a surge of neo-religious sex cults over the next ten to twenty years, as the friction between wanting sex and getting sex reaches levels possibly never before seen in human history, and both male and female adherents will be happy to turn their consent and loyalty over to some new Manson or Jim Jones in exchange for being given permission to just get laid.
Major legislation on electric bikes is going to become necessary in the United States, either at the state level becoming standard across most states or at the federal level. I'm noticing a huge surge in biking in my area, as electrical assist bikes make it easier to get up hills. At the beach I started seeing a ton of electric bikes though, and a few electric adult tricycles. People are going to get themselves hurt, and it's going to result in legislation.
The USMNT will continue to protest that the NEXT world cup cycle is "our year" through at least two more times that the US hosts the world cup before ever making the final four.
Washington DC will go into a near full death spiral as a city over the next decade-plus. It will be 2040 before anyone considers living there again.
In imitation of Ronald Reagan, within five years the US will take part in a Panama or Grenada type tomato-can war to prove something or other. It won't go as planned, first as tragedy second as farce.
An NFL team will be accused of using AI for major coaching decisions this season. It will never be exactly clear the extent to which AI was used, and the results will ultimately be mixed.
There's a reductio ad in either direction right?
On the one hand, replacing every American with a higher-IQ Chinese or Indian person might raise the GDP by 15%, but it's weird to say to say it would be good for "America."
On the other, admitting Jensen Huang to the country obviously benefits America, even if it dilutes the pool of Americans. 1/333000000 dilution, versus a roughly $500 estimated increase in GDP per capita.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
What do you think of "gym muscles"? Referring here to the idea that musculature bought in the gym is less effective than muscles bought by manual labor.
In day to day life, much like discourse around "forms of intelligence:" if someone tells me that they are strong but not with "gym muscles" then I know they aren't actually all that strong at all. Most discourse around "Gym Muscles" is pure cope, the person accused of having "gym muscles" is normally stronger than the accuser. A fat powerlifting champ mostly recognizes the bodybuilder curl-monkey as a fellow lifter and rarely needs to insult him, it's the newbie redditor #StrongLifts5x5 who wants to tear the other guy down to build himself up because he recognizes there isn't much to back up his own pride. ((Though, to be kind, the ego is so difficult to navigate in that early-intermediate level when one is dedicating all kinds of time to something that one is still factually bad at))
In the same way that when someone starts talking about "types of intelligence" I'm pretty sure they don't have any type of intelligence I'm interested in. If someone tells me they aren't "book smart" but they are "street smart" they typically aren't street smart either, at best they have some degree of low level native-guide knowledge that they value higher than it is. If someone tells me they don't test well, but they have great artistic intelligence, their creative output normally sucks. Etc.
Now, factually, at some level if you do all kinds of manual labor tasks you will be better relative to your muscle mass at all kinds of manual labor tasks than you will be at bench press, and if you bench press all the time you will better at bench press relative to your muscle mass than you will be at manual labor tasks. We perceive this as confusing because we think of labor as a "stupid" task, and sports and fitness as more intelligent tasks: anyone can use a shovel, but only some people can lift weights. When really using a shovel properly, hard, throughout a day, is a much more complicated physical task than the bench press is. Experience completing labor tasks will add to your ability in those tasks, no different from any athletic specialization.
So IDK, I'm a gym bro for life.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Yeah, I like bookstores and libraries. I want to hang out in bookstores and libraries. I don't want to download new books, I want to browse and buy them in person.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
At some level though what OP is positing is equally mixed: libs believed that torture was bad, that it wasn't useful (delivered no usable Intel), and that even if it did it would still not be worth the compromise in morals. The degree to which the middle term is driven by motivated reasoning is the battleground.
Similarly, anti immigration folks claim immigration is net negative in every way, pro immigration folks tell me it's positive in every way. The degree to which motivated reasoning, or per op simple dishonesty, is present is the battleground.
I don't think the broad mass of conservatives are motivated purely by economic concerns. That isn't contradicted by somebody popping up and saying well actually me personally... And even you yourself admit that some of it is cultural for you, so once again we're in the battleground.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Can you elaborate on this bit? I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
I'm far from a Puritan, but there's a certain tenant who recently moved into a rental house we own. They have a teenage daughter, she's thing and reasonably good looking, and she dresses in ways that make me want to avoid standing too close to her. Gossamer thin tank tops worn without a bra, which barely cover her stomach, and shorts so short I'd be arrested for wearing them.
I'm not aroused by her in any way that's above normal or disturbs me, nor am I particularly ashamed by any feeling of arousal I might have. But in any conversation beyond a few minutes, I'm filled with a sense that I don't want to be seen talking to her. Perhaps this is an overactive superego, a feminist or Catholic panopticon living in my brain, but I don't want to be seen chatting with a girl who looks like that. I have an inner sense that the image of me talking to a teenage girl dressed like that is inappropriate, and I'd prefer not be near her.
She's perfectly pleasant, if essentially uninteresting, to talk to; but immediately after I tell her whatever it is I need to tell her I cut the conversation short if no one else is present and go about some other business until her parents arrive, even if I have to invent some pretext to be inspecting or doing something else. I simply don't want to be seen by anyone to be chatting with a teenage girl dressed in that way, call it an extension to the Pence Rule.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Actually, many rural republicans I know do self identify as people who don't need to or just don't go to a doctor. But that's more a matter of stupidity in those cases.
At no point am I arguing that rural healthcare won't be harmed, I'm arguing that they don't think it will be.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
There's two separate questions in there.
-
Are they in the Taker class?
-
Do they perceive and identify themselves as being in the Taker class?
Broke trailer trash generally abhor trailer trash, which they perceive as their neighbors rather than themselves. "I'm poor because I have to support all these people on welfare," "I'm a hard-working man, if I could, and my disability payments would be higher if it weren't for all the immigrants we're supporting..." "I'm just a drinker, he does meth," "I only do a little meth I'm not an addict like that guy over there," "I wouldn't be on the meth if it weren't for trying to compete with illegal immigrants..." There's various degrees of magical thinking involved in excusing one's own temporary circumstances, such as "Rural areas really produce things while urban gdp is fake and gay" or "Once you throw the bums off welfare and the immigrants out, I'll make more money and I won't need Medicaid." I do not think many GOP voters perceive themselves as takers, even if they mathematically are.
I do not think a significant number of Republican voters believe that bad things (for them) will result from Trump's policies and are willing to suffer for them. You can tell because Trump doesn't talk that way, more or less ever. They think that the policies Trump is pursuing will result in the instant improvement of their lives.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I'm not addressing every single person who holds a position. People think things for many reasons!
Surely you can recognize that there exist some anti-immigration individuals who would not care if the GDP went up if it meant the Great Replacement occurred.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Insufficient resolution in your maps. The rural Republican counties that are pointed to as examples of Republicans voting against their economic self interest don't consist of 100% Medicaid users, they consist of a class of Medicaid users and a class of non-Medicaid users.
The latter class votes Republican because they hate the former class and want them thrown off Medicaid. This isn't poor people voting to throw themselves off Medicaid, it's contractors voting to throw addicts off of welfare.
Empathy and charity are easier at a distance. Racial Diversity is correlated with racist attitudes in the general public; this is equally true of economic diversity.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Every life has intrinsic value.
Yet, Christianity honors the martyrs who refused to renounce God even in the face of death.
There is a value above life in this view. There are forms of continuing human civilization that would not be worth it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The third is more general throughout the interminable arguments about US immigration, where a common conservative argument against open borders is that allowing anyone in who wants to come in would cause US society to worsen, including, at the limits, just destroying the country altogether. And one common sentiment, though rarely stated explicitly, among progressives who reject this argument, has been something along the lines of, "If open borders would destroy the USA, then so be it; at least we didn't discriminate against foreigners along the way." This happened to explicitly be my own position for a while, before I decided I was selfish enough to want to keep some of the benefits of USA society for myself in the future.
This is just as often reversed on immigration, though.
Lib: We need immigrants for economic growth, to bring in young productive people to support social security programs, to do jobs that are otherwise difficult to fill. Immigration makes America stronger!
Con: What does American economic growth matter if it doesn't benefit Americans? I'd rather see the American economy grow or collapse on the strength of Americans, than sell out my country to foreigners to get stronger.
Purity is typically a conservative basis for morality in Moral Foundations Theory. Refusal to compromise on one's beliefs is the essence of having beliefs, of having principles. Life for the sake of life is the philosophy of bacteria, the life has to mean something, be something.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Wherefore do you need a corpse to present publicly at all? You presumably have been telling everyone for years that he suffered from a disfiguring illness which lead to his reclusiveness, he sure as hell wouldn't want an open-casket. Unfortunately in his disfiguring illness he turned to a lot of weird woo-woo spirit healing, and there are no medical records for several years because he refused to see a doctor. We're talking about billionaire local feudal lords here, the death certificate comes from the [Family Name] Building at the local hospital, paying off a mortician is the least of the concerns.
Keep in mind that the only cheated party is the government. All members of the family are presumably on-side, the hospital suffers no harm (in fact, under the new will, they're getting a new surgery wing!), the mortician suffers no harm. Even the local government suffers no harm. Only the Federal Government is concerned, and there's not actually much nexus for them to check if someone is alive.
Bonus Question: A 3 year old corpse of a 40 year old man. This is obvious if you think about the corpse of a young woman from the perspective of a necrophiliac.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Something I feel has been under-discussed so far:
Estate planning, and assisted suicide as a tax avoidance tool.
Estate tax rates have been a classic political football for decades, with policy shifting radically between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want higher exemptions, so that the tax starts at a bigger estate, and lower rates; Democrats want lower exemptions and higher rates. Republicans cry crocodile tears about family farms forced to sell; Democrats whinge about billionaire feudal dynasties. Each administration has made moves towards eliminating, or raising, the estate tax; often unsuccessfully but always attempted. It's reasonable for any wealthy American to be concerned about major changes in the estate tax system, they come around every decade or so, following party politics.
I've often joked that a particularly wealthy family I know would Weekend at Bernie's their patriarch if he died during a bad (Democrat) period for the estate tax, as one could reasonably hold out for another five to eight years and expect a better (Republican) estate tax law to pass. They could drive him around to various places where he could be "seen" in the window of the family Escalade with heavily tinted windows, and just keep it in the family until it was time to "declare" his death publicly and pay the taxes.
But with assisted suicide, new options open up.
It's November 2032. JD Vance has lost in a landslide to AOC, the Republican party having been crippled by a "True MAGA" independent run by Donald Trump Jr who claimed that Vance's administration had betrayed his father's legacy. AOC and her fillibuster-proof Democratic majority plan to increase the estate tax to a punitive 95% on all estates over $50mm. Does a 95 year old multi-billionaire decide to take a one-way vacation to Switzerland to avoid the tax? Do his children pressure him to take the trip? It's Succession supercharged. When death is a taxable event, you choose death at a convenient time for taxes.
But, for that matter, if suicide vacations become routine, then that makes for quite an opportunity for fraud, right? Ok, I don't want to get hit with the AOC taxes when I die, but I'm only 80 I've got years left to live, what to do? Well, Switzerland might be out, but Columbia allows MAID. ((I'll note I'm probably engaging in gross American racist stereotyping here)) I travel to Columbia, pay to obtain a death certificate from a MAID clinic to send back to the USA with the kids, and then I start a new life in Costa Rica, where my kids will send me cash to support my Jimmy Buffet lifestyle.
I lived there, I'm aware. But a very large municipality still isn't a state, and a very large mayor isn't a governor.
And more to the point, the election is weird, you have a corrupt incumbent, a joke goofball Republican, and a weirdo carpetbagger independent all running. Mamdani's primary win, and ultimate general election win, aren't indicators of anything in a place with a normal field of candidates. It's relevant that it's a municipal election in that you rarely see state level elections that odd and shambolic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I don't understand how a totally shambolic municipal election has become so nationally prominent.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
Ukraine is a little different: I can instead choose to leave the occupied areas and walk to unoccupied Ukraine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
Yeah I'm totally lost when people talk about inner cities as anarchic wastelands... They're mostly just poor and dirty at worst.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
Anyone up for a motte fantasy football league? I know we have some NFL fans, and we all love making bets and predictions.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
My wackiest theory is that when a drug like semaglutide comes out that essentially everyone wants, the government should be able to nationalize the patent for licensing, and in exchange the drug developer gets a one-time Get Out of Liability Free Card, where if they have a drug go wrong they can just get out of Liability for it.
This would lower drug prices, improve drug availability, and encourage labs that are producing good products to take risks; all things we want to do.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
I'm more interested in the raw numbers of dead Russians, plus the severe life-ruining casualties on top of that. Maybe it's been a very bad year so far, but I haven't gotten that impression, across the course of the war that's gonna be something like half a million dead so far out of about 30 million Russian men between 14-45?
Ukraine is probably in even worse shape, though it says something if Trump is repeating pro Ukraine fake news these days.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
Is it inexcusably awful that I think we should be utilizing the "wants to and is approved to die" demographic for experiments like that?
Fuck it, harness them up and toss them off a bridge. Let them drive dangerous car races, or play airsoft with live ammunition. See if it alters their feelings about death.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
I would say that in my own life, 5% of deaths "could have been timed better" sounds about right. Not necessarily a case of some exotic terminal illness, but cascading old age concerns. There's a clear point of no return, I could see someone pulling the trigger on it.
A cult feels a lot like a "committed affectionate relationship" to people who are vulnerable to or already in a cult.
And, for that matter, a lot of cults have used assigning or controlling partnerships that are otherwise "normal" as a method of control. In our future cult of incels and femcels, zoomers incapable of forming relationships will submit to the will of the Master, who will assign them a fellow initiate as a partner, on pain of having the partner revoked if you misbehave. Which, after all, isn't that far from a normal religion anyway.
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