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
2d ago
BJJ Thoughts
— I’m coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I have a punchable face. I keep getting bruises. Sunday I had a good roll, but after I got home my wife looks at me and tells me I have a black eye. I think I caught either an elbow or an ankle to the face when passing someone’s guard, but whatever it was I barely noticed it in the moment so I’m not sure when it happened exactly. But this is the second time I’ve gotten a visible facial injury, and everyone was roasting me about it. I must just have one of those faces, I do kind of look like the bad guy in a romantic comedy who the female lead inevitably leaves for a local townie lumberjack with a heart of gold or something. I feel vaguely ridiculous walking around day to day with a shiner, though I’m glad I got into the gym again so I could show it off.
— The week before the 4th of July I was really down on my BJJ practice. A new guy showed up, L, a big strong black kid. We drilled together and he really didn’t seem to know anything about BJJ technique, so I went into the open mat portion of the class to roll with him feeling pretty good about it. Which meant I was quite surprised when he immediately fired off a beautiful, explosive single leg and slammed me, drove a shoulder into my jaw, and tried a series of clumsy guard passes and subs. I was able to get back to guard, and ultimately take his back as time ran out, but I was getting beat on pretty good most of the round before that, my jaw hurt eating after. And I got kind of down about it, feeling like, man it’s been seven months, and I’m still not really beating anyone who either knows a little and is bigger than me or anyone who knows more than me, I’m not making any progress, maybe it’s time to wind this experiment down, maybe jiu jitsu just isn’t for me. I wasn’t thinking of rage quitting, but maybe stepping back, fading out of it, prioritizing other things…then we had an open mat the morning of July 4th, and it went the complete opposite way. It was around two hours straight of rolling, and I got stomped by the upper belts as usual, but I finally got exactly what I was looking for. I rolled with a guy who had been going for a lot longer than I have, and who had typically beat up on me, and I got the takedown, landed in half guard and started working on a knee slice, he shoved his knee in to block me, and without thinking about it I wrapped his leg dropped back into a straight ankle lock and tapped him. One of the few times I’ve hit a leg lock successfully (more below). We restarted the round and I passed his guard and stayed in mount until the bell. Then I rolled with L again, and this time I was ready for him, he hit a single leg immediately and while he got me to the ground I caught him in half guard which I knew he wouldn’t penetrate easily, I hipped out and got him into closed guard, got him into a shoulder crunch sweep, and popped right to mount, it was the best sweep I’ve ever hit, his strength wasn’t as useful once I was in mount. Suddenly, I’m feeling good about BJJ, I’m excited to go into practice every day, I’m thinking about how to fill the holes in my game to keep progressing. I tell these anecdotes just because it’s amazing to me how I can swing so far in my assessment of my abilities in the course of just a few days. One loss and I'm sure I suck so bad I should think about quitting, one success over expectations and I'm loving it. So much has to do with the expectations: when I think I'm gonna lose I don't mind too much, but when I think I should win losing hurts. I should probably work on moving past that.
— In terms of moving forward with BJJ, I do feel like I’m finally approaching something like a style. When I first started, my strategy was nonexistent, entirely reactive, trying to survive what my opponent was trying to do, stalling and hoping he made a mistake, I got submissions or sweeps when I got lucky, and frequently I found myself in positions for which I had no answers at all and either flailed aimlessly or just tried to lose slowly. Now, I don’t necessarily win a lot, but in the vast majority of positions I do know what to work on, and have a move or two to attempt to hit. Which means I’m no longer just passively trying to survive and avoid my opponent’s efforts, I’m at least forcing them to react and defend, I’m not totally surrendering initiative. I have a few moves from open guard, from closed guard, from half guard, from side control, from mount. I still badly need to improve my game from back control in either direction, and work harder on sealing submissions up. But I think the biggest thing I need to work on now is seizing control of my own training and education. I am, by nature, a teacher’s pet and a rule follower. So I come into each class and I pay attention to each move that each coach teaches and try my best to follow instructions. Typically each coach tries to teach 2-3 moves around a theme or a position, and pretty often (depending on the day and the coach) there’s one or more moves that I look at and immediately go “I’m never gonna do that.” Either because the move involves too many too intricate dance steps, which I know I’m not going to execute; because it involves things I can’t do (front rolls into kimuras and chokes never work for me) or won’t do (throat posting/rape chokes, which I don't do because I have to think too hard about modulating pressure on my opponent to not hurt him during sparring, and that means I can't execute it live because I never practice it right); or because I already have a move I like better there. So if we’re working on three or four moves in a day, it’s often that I like one and two, but three and four I know right away don’t fit me. I think I need to work on being more willing to give up on moves that don’t fit how I roll quickly, and instead talk to my partner and use that time to drill the simpler moves that I might actually use day to day.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11d ago
By his description, everybody involved wanted to invade Iraq, but the dynamic that resulted in an invasion seemed to be that of the Abilene Paradox.
This doesn't really square with widely shared testimony from people like Richard Clarke, talking about the Pentagon meetings immediately after 9/11, like literally the next day:
I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.
On the morning of the 12th DOD's focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, without a state sponsor—Iraq must have been helping them. I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he had said in April, we must go after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the United States since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back.
By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the objectives of our response and "getting Iraq." Secretary Powell pushed back, urging a focus on al Qaeda. Relieved to have some support, I thanked Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage. "I thought I was missing something here," I vented. "Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response Evacuate the White House 31 would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor." Powell shook his head. "It's not over yet." Indeed, it was not. Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied.
Any stick will do to beat a dog. Dubya and his team intended to invade Iraq from the beginning, the GWOT and the absurd claims of ties to Bin Laden and the Axis of Evil and the invention of the WMD concept and the "welcome us as liberators" and madman theory and whatever else got thrown around at the time that I've since forgotten about; all that fundamentally didn't matter to the decision makers, they wanted to invade Iraq for mostly unrelated reasons. So for the rational planners further down the food chain, like the air force guys, the whole thing was confusing because the reasons they were getting for what they were doing were unrelated to the actual plan.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Those daycares exist all over the place. They're called Scout camps, of which there are hundreds; rock climbing gyms of which there are nearly one thousand and martial arts gyms of which there are over 40,000 most of which run various kids programs and make their money that way; more than one million kids play tackle football, mostly boys, while more than a million girls compete in horseback riding.
Everyone knows there are risks in those activities, yet place their kids in them anyway. Everyone who participated in them knows someone maimed or killed. But they're wildly popular.
I always found that focusing on principles more than technique helped me link things together better. The move of the day stuff sometimes lines up with what you need, but not often.
I absolutely agree, but that's how they teach at the school that's five minutes from my house. Even if the one ten miles from my house taught more in line with my pedagogical preferences, I'd value getting into the gym more often, which given my tight schedule I can do so much more often with the short travel.
What I want to start doing is focusing on, during open mat periods, doing more limited rolls with guys. Start in half guard and play "Pass/sweep" for a whole round. I should probably start studying outside of class, but I never end up having the time.
My own progress really took off when I started to focus on staying in and advancing the control position...Once you understand how to progress the position, submissions sort of fall out of the process. About a third of my subs now are unintentional, before I start chasing anything.
I'm definitely similar, I'm very much a station-to-station or move-the-chains kind player, depending which sports metaphor you prefer. If I'm in bottom mount I'm trying to get to bottom half, from bottom half I'm trying to sweep to get to closed guard, from closed guard I'm mostly trying to sweep but I'll grab a sub if it's offered, then I'm only trying to finish a sub if it's on offer when I'm in mount or side. Hell, depending who I'm rolling with I spend most of my time in mount or side control rapidly transitioning positions trying to stay on top. I just try and stay calm and stay in my game. If I don't lose too quickly in the takedown phase, I can normally get to half guard top or bottom and work from there.
Of course, part of this is just a matter of depth of experience, and just the luck of who shows up. Some days it's still just nothing but guys who kill me, because I'm not very good.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
This was what I suspected would result from your prior post on recomp. Losing weight first is definitely the right call, dropping the fat and then starting with a clean slate will be great for you. 3kg in a month is quite a bit, if I dropped 6kg I'd probably be at my ideal fighting weight.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I mean those are just completely different things.
In theory (if not usually in practice) one could have the right to free speech and free exercise of religion but not the right to freely move, choose one's own work, or make other contracts on one's own behalf.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Sure, I think of myself as a fairly honest person. But in my life I have shoplifted, perhaps three or four times, by accident or out of pure cussedness. Certainly if the owners of the store maintain a policy to trust people similarly situated to me, they will suffer additional losses over time compared to what they would if they sought a "zero shoplifting" policy. But they will probably lose more business than it's worth.
We aren't arguing that shoplifting isn't bad. We're arguing that some risk of shoplifting is better than no risk of shoplifting, because in order to achieve zero shoplifting, the convenience store must undermine it's own raison d'etre: convenience. Hence the optimal amount of shoplifting for a convenience store isn't zero. More shoplifting isn't better than less shoplifting, but as the amount asymptotically approaches zero there's a point where the security procedures become too much, where the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
We see this all around us. Self checkout leads to massively increased losses, but not enough to balance avoiding paying a cashier. EZ Pass and toll by plate on highways leads to significant lost revenue compared to toll booths, but reduced costs and increased traffic flow make it worth it. If I put on a pink polo shirt and a white baseball cap with a finance logo on it and throw my golf clubs in my truck and drive to a nice country club and walk out and start hitting balls on the range, no one will stop me, because staff can't constantly be harassing members and it's not worth the risk.
The optimal point isn't zero.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
12d ago
Let's talk socialism and the NYC mayoral race
Why?
The primary reason Zohran won in the primary is Andrew Cuomo, the secondary reason that he won in the primary is anti-Zionism and the anti-idpol populist backlash that comes when outside forces try to tell local people who to vote for.
Andrew Cuomo was the candidate the establishment and the financial industry rallied behind in the primary, despite the fact he hasn't lived in the city in years, was covered in scandal on his way to resigning from the governor's mansion, and really didn't have a great record as governor to run on to begin with. There was no good reason for Andrew Cuomo to run for mayor of NYC.
Then the campaign begins and they go after Zohran for his supposed anti-Semitism. Twitter was filled with jokes about Israelis speaking out on the NYC mayoral race from their bunkers in Tel Aviv, and Andrew Cuomo swears allegiance to Israel. Zohran's enemies successfully made the most interesting and present aspect of the race the question of supporting or opposing Israel.
What this tells us is that accusations of racism on IdPol lines are not going to be enough, going forward, to decide elections. The antisemitism stick has been wielded so carelessly, that even cowardly urban Democrats are no longer cringing under the whip.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I'm not sure in this context one is allowed to just say "thing is really bad" and not expect a conversation to ensue about deeper consequences of the policy decisions favored by such attitudes.
Certainly if you said stuff like "Not saying anything about BLM but wasn't (current year death of black person) terrible?" Or "Isn't what's happening to children in Gaza/Ukraine/Africa bad?" Or "It must be really sad being trans" in a post it would meet with much harsher critique.
I get your point, but "admit easily and feel empathy to all the supporting pathos arguments THEN argue about the policy after you've admitted it" is a bad strategy.
The punch line to all this? The author, Farha Khalidi, is an Onlyfans star!
I feel like Aella unleashed a sort of Rule 34 for gimmicks: there is no niche so stupid that some e-thot won't try to exploit it.
So it begs the question: what, exactly, is she advocating for?
She's advocating for money, from men, who will be charmed by her pretensions of intellectualism and pay to see her tits.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23d ago
Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.
Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?
I have so many layers of problems with this logic. Even starting by accepting that "the bible tells me so" is a good way to set up foreign policy, let's take a second and think through a few implications:
a) What kind of arrogant or ignorant person thinks that the verse can be interpreted simply and literally?
Ted Cruz says that in Genesis (well, he didn't know that, but that's where it is) God commands us to bless and aid Israel. But much of the Old Testament consists of God punishing Israel, often with foreign invasion and raiding. God is constantly using foreigners as a tool to punish Israel, especially when Israel is lead by a corrupt, selfish, venal, dishonest, cruel man who refuses to give up power at the appointed time. God seems to cause Israel to lose as often he causes them to win, to be honest as a genre-savvy gentile if I were living in Old-Testament-Superstition-Land, I'd probably stay out of it. God, to my knowledge, never punished anyone for ignoring Israel. God's blessing to Israel is as often the blessing of discipline as it is the blessing of good things, and I sure wouldn't want to get between the Father and the child he intends on spanking. Getting involved with how exactly God is seeking to bless Israel seems like a real Oracle of Delphi situation!
In fact, the one clear example where God blesses an outside nation for its aid of Israel would be...Cyrus the Great of Persia. So perhaps we can intuit that the Persians are a nation specially chosen of God to chastise and discipline Israel? It seems odd that Ted Cruz is so certain he knows God's will. But let's accept for the moment that we are obligated to help Israel:
b) Which Israel?
Is Israel its government? Is Israel the global diaspora of Jews? Is Israel the population within the borders of Israel, regardless of religion, provided they descend from Abraham? This might seem like trivia, but I'm pretty sure the verse that Ted Cruz is citing is Genesis 12:3 which reads in the ESV:
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Which of course brings up the question: Who the fuck is you? Frequently this is interpreted, and put up on billboards by Israel lobbyists, as "blessing Israel." (Where's your Sola Scriptura, Ted?) But God makes no mention of a state or government. The more natural interpretation of the phrase (leaving aside the new covenant that "you" is the Church, which is pretty obviously correct and righteous to me) would be all the descendants of Abraham are to be blessed. I would certainly offer no privilege to Abraham's descendants who have persisted in one type of religious error over another.
But let's accept that the state of Israel, as represented by its government, is what is to be blessed, let's consider:
c) Is it blessing someone to help them commit a sin?
Some years ago I was the best man in a very relgious Evangelical wedding. Before the ceremony, the pastor gathered up all the groomsmen, and we prayed and we put our hands on the groom, and the pastor told us that our obligation was not finished when he said I Do or when the tables were cleared up, that we had taken on an ongoing sacred obligation, to bless our friend, to bless his union, to come to his aid to keep his marriage together and to keep him on the straight and narrow. I said Amen.
Today, he called me, and told me that his wife is cheating on him, that he knows where she is the guy she is there with, that he's coming to my house because he needs a gun today so he can go kill them both.
Does my sacred vow to help him and bless him obligate me to give him the gun? Am I violating my oath if I ask him any questions other than "what caliber?" Ted Cruz would seem to say yes, you are obligated to bless him and that means helping him do whatever it is he wants to do. Ted would probably say "Do you need a ride?"
I would say that's an insane interpretation or friendship, and an even more insane interpretation of blessing. I would say that my obligation in this scenario is to restrain my friend, by physical force if necessary, to prevent him from committing a horrible life-ruining and soul-damning sin. I would say that my obligation extends so far as to warn his wife, to call our mutual friends and his pastor to help me talk him down, or even if no other means were available to call the police, to prevent him from committing murder. Friendship means protecting your friends, and that includes protecting them from committing mortal sins.
In my life, when I've had a friend who was in a really bad place, I've gone to his house with a bunch of friends and told him hey let me take your guns to store them for a few months, to keep you from doing anything you might not live to regret. That is what I think friendship is.
But ok, let's say I do give him the gun, that still doesn't answer...
d) Is it blessing someone to help them make a mistake?
Let's alter the hypothetical above: accepting ad arguendo that I am obligated to give my friend a gun to kill the man that cuckolded him and his cheating wife, what if my friend's wife cheated on him with JD Vance, and my friend has no realistic chance of taking my 1911 and getting past the Secret Service (ok that may be easier than previously thought...) and killing Vance. Am I still obligated to give him the gun?
This is where knowing the population of Iran is a useful piece of information. At least within an order of magnitude! It allows you to faithfully discharge your obligation to Bless Israel with, for example, wise counsel! If what Israel needs is advice, it doesn't help them to give them weapons to help them get themselves into trouble.
I just don't see how evangelical politicians can act like the bible command leads directly and easily to using bunker busters on Iran.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
Video game ass logic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10d ago
When do you hold the rank and file accountable for the policies they voted for, versus blaming elites?
Say what you like about Dubya, Lord knows I have, but he was the most sincerely religious president since at least 1920. He had support from virtually all protestant Christian religious groups and leaders across America. One has to do some of kind of two-step to place him and his actions and their consequences outside the conservative movement or Red Tribe more broadly.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13d ago
Specific random things, because most things are going to be covered by smarter guys than me:
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Plan one entrance to the house with no steps. Almost nobody does it, because it's difficult to handle the architecture/landscaping to make a ramp look good, but you totally can if you plan it from the start. Elderly people fall on steps all the time, and often hurt themselves. Also convenient for heavy stuff in general. If you plan for it now, you'll have it forever; if you have to rerig it later it will look bad, especially if it's at a time when you yourself are older/less capable.
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Anywhere water comes into your house will eventually leak. Plan for that now.
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That's a big house, think about how you're going to use the rooms. A lot of people end up with a big house with four rooms that are all variations on "couch and we watch TV in here;" or they all started as bedrooms and got adapted.
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Think of the repair guy. Don't put anything in a place where it will be difficult to extract when (not if, when) it needs to be serviced or replaced. Make it easy to reach the air handler, the water heater, the septic system, etc.
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Take pictures of the inside of all the walls before you close them up. Write notes and measurements. Store them in multiple places, hard copies, in the home, for the future.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
White people used to rule the world with an iron fist, we roamed the seas and dominated everything we saw. Then our culture changed over time, and despite our very similar genetics to our ancestors of a few hundred years ago, we have... the problems we have now.
Some white people roamed the seas and conquered, but most stayed home. Part of culture/context/circumstance isn't how talent is developed, it's also what talents are brought to the surface and become visible.
Consider a toy example: Puerto Rican baseball players
Until 1989, Puerto Rico was treated as a Latin American nation by Major League Baseball, teams signed players at 16 for cash (and typically they had under the table agreements with trainers before the players came of age). Young prospects in Latin American countries can start earning money at a young age, often getting support from trainers before turning 16 if they showed promise. This has lead to Caribbean countries producing disproportionate talent relative to their population, because kids are incentivized to focus on baseball from a young age.
By contrast, in the United States, players can't be signed for cash, they can only be drafted after graduating high school (or attending college) at 18. Players in the draft (historically) got less money than international players, and they got it at a later age.
After the change, Puerto Rico produced fewer MLB players, and according to some reports a lot of athletic poor kids switched to soccer, where they could be signed at a younger age.
Let's take this as a toy model. Assume that 100%, or near enough, kids will pursue the dominant sport. Soccer and Baseball are different enough that there's probably almost no crossover between athletes who could do either at a professional level, genetically they're going to be two distinct groups. Assume for our toy model that 2% of Puerto Rican kids have the freakish foot-dexterity and cardio to play Soccer professionally; and a separate 5% of Puerto Rican kids have the tremendous eyesight and hand-eye coordination to play Major League Baseball.
Under one MLB regime, Puerto Rico will produce MLB stars. Under a different regime, it will produce soccer stars. The 2% that are genetically built for soccer will be merely good athletes if they pursue baseball, and the 5% that are genetically suited for baseball will be merely good athletes if they pursue soccer. Puerto Rico's overall athleticism hasn't changed, the genetics haven't changed, but what aspects are highlighted have changed.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17d ago
I would bet on that being true, but not a complete explanation. I'd add:
A) Crime statistics don't capture all crime. A lot of stuff is never reported. Property crimes so minor that they don't merit the time because you know the cops won't do anything about it, like stuff stolen off your front porch or out of the back of a pickup truck. Scuffles that don't result in major injury. Things that happen to shitbirds while they are engaged in shitbird activities and would prefer not to involve the law. Sexual harassment or assault under gray circumstances. People observe or hear about those even if they aren't reported to police and it figures into their perceptions.
A1) Attempted crimes that don't rise to the level of being worth reporting or prosecuting. I see a guy hanging around my truck in the parking lot and yell hey can I help you and he runs off. The guy that follows my wife for a block or two so she goes into a store and he disappears. Those don't show up in statistics. This largely overlaps with what you are saying.
B) A lot of people are wildly paranoid, and will over-react to news reports of crimes. People will tell me that in a local small city "Two or three people get killed there every weekend;" if I look at the statistics 13 people were killed there in 2021, 9 in 2022, 17 in 2023, 4 in 2024. But that's enough that they can remember a story about a person getting shot, and it makes them start to worry about going downtown.
C) People who are victims of crime talk about it a lot, and typically write over anything they did to "deserve" it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15d ago
The Bell Curve Meme strikes again, cinema history edition!
I had long known of the Reddit midwit, clickbait anti-American, hipster propaganda factoid that Sergio Leone's seminal A Fistful of Dollars, the film which made Clint Eastwood a star, was nothing but an unlicensed ripoff of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. headlines tell us that Leone "ripped off" Kurosawa, or "Plagiarized" his movie. Notably, Kurosawa would get a 15% stake in Dollars after a lawsuit, and made more money off that 15% than he had off of Yojimbo. I'd long accepted this as a fact: the superior Japanese Samurai film was ripped off by the inferior Western cowboy movie!
But, then I started an audiobook of Dashiell Hammett's 1929 noir Red Harvest, one of his Continental Op books. And what is Red Harvest about? A Mercenary protagonist, middle aged and experienced, nameless, hired or co-opted by crooked criminal warlords in an oppressed town, who plays them off against each other to clean up Personville (Poisonville). It's Yojimbo! Kurosawa acknowledged the influence of another Hammett novel/film adaptation, The Glass Key, in his creation of Yojimbo, but when you read Red Harvest it's obvious that the plot is the same. Dollars might be Yojimbo in the Southwest, but Yojimbo in turn took Red Harvest out of the 1920s Southwest and moved it back in time and across the Pacific.
And it's interesting to me for a few reasons.
The universality of Western culture and globalization of culture earlier and earlier. I've said before that Don Quixote is the proper recipient of the title First Novel, in that it is the first book with a novelistic structure that everything afterward was influenced by, there is no author anywhere after 1945 writing novels who hadn't either read Cervantes or was influenced by people who had; where something like The Tale of Genji can't make a similar claim (though arguably one could make that claim about Genji for authors born after 1985 or so). Kurosawa is iconically Japanese, and iconically among westerners a sort of saint of foreign art film vs Hollywood schlock; but his ideas were often influenced by Western originators. Everything is much more intertwined than people would have you believe.
The way this claim has been used as a bludgeon by a certain kind of cinema hipster, to point to the originality and superiority of Kurosawa over the cowboy movies made in the West. How is that claim impacted by Kurosawa in turn taking Hammett's Noir and turning it into Samurai fare? Hammett in turn was original, in that he drew directly from his work with the Pinkerton's and his involvement in leftist politics for his inspirations. But is anyone really original? Dostoyevsky said that there were only two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. So at some level nothing is ever going to be original-original, that's not the nature of human culture. Not that I question the Kurosawa-Leone monetary settlement, hey he deserved it for the shot-for-shot remake, that was worth some money. But the cultural credit he receives, and the subsequent scorn heaped on the Westerns, seems excessive.
Just one of those clever factoids that's missing the "fact."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15d ago
Maybe Eric could scratch out a future riding on daddy's coattails like a populist version of Jeb Bush, but people like JD Vance and even still Ron Desantis are more well positioned to lead that movement.
The more interesting question to me is: would Eric or Don Jr. draw enough attention to fatally weaken another MAGA candidate and throw the race into confusion? Trumpism has always had multiple facets: some people like him because he's a fighter who wins for traditional conservative causes like reducing the size of government or abortion issues, others like him as an explicit repudiation of the prior GOP consensus on issues like foreign intervention and tariffs, still others just like Trump personally as a celebrity showman.
A TrumpSon run would almost certainly capture significant quantities of credibility on the third leg, and probably carry more credibility on the particular mix of traditional Republican policies and MAGA policies than most older line GOP candidates like Rubio or Desantis. A Trumpson run would also be ruinous to Vance, as it would rob Vance of the title of Heir.
Even if neither Eric nor Don Jr. can win, and I don't particularly think they can as they haven't thus far shown the kind of talent that would get them over the finish line, their run could still be important. Which is why they're NEVER going to say they aren't running: the threat of entering the race, even if only for a quixotic Connor Roy spoiler run, is leverage. And the Trump's are old-school moguls, they never let go of leverage*. So whether they actually plan to run or not, they'll hang the threat of a run over Vance and Desantis, and demand loyalty and service in exchange.
*I personally remain convinced that Trump's entire 2020 election theft bit was a clash of worldviews. In real estate, when you have a claim, even a weak claim, it represents leverage, and you can get your counterparty to negotiate and give you something for it. You never let it lapse for nothing. Trump thought he could cash out the vague election theft allegations for something from Biden's handlers; Biden's handlers don't think that way and wanted Trump gone so they weren't in the mood to play. In his efforts to hang onto the bit, Trump lost control of it, and wound up with a lot of things happening that did not benefit him at all.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18d ago
On the morning of November 11, 1918, World War I was effectively over. The armistice had been signed hours earlier, and at exactly 11:00 a.m., the guns were set to fall silent. The battlefield was already filled with soldiers – on both sides – who were simply waiting out the last few moments of a war that had consumed the world.
And yet, just one minute before peace, a single shot rang out. Henry Gunther, an American soldier, was dead. He became the last official casualty of the war, but his death wasn’t an act of heroism – it was something much more tragic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17d ago
Two Notes on Women in BJJ
I went up to New England to visit my in laws over the weekend. While there I visited a local BJJ gym three times. It was great to get a new flow, some new partners, some different tricks thrown at me and some more success with stuff I normally can't hit. But two funny things happened:
Sunday night, after too many cocktails, we were sitting around with some of her older family members and we were chatting about the new gym I had found up there. And I was trying to explain the sport, and naturally this turned into "Show us something on Mrs. Fivehour!" So I have her get on top of me on the ground, and slap me like she's throwing punches. Then, gently and smoothly, just to demonstrate not with any force or intent to harm, I swung her into closed guard, tied up her hands, and then went for the triangle choke. I never even fully locked the triangle, I was just bringing it around to lock it in casually when she tapped as hard as she could and let out a yelp. I untangled myself and she was flabbergasted "Holy shit I couldn't breathe, oh my God, wow, that was terrifying! How did you do that? You can just do that?" I'm not particularly good, and I certainly wasn't abusing my strength, I was just playing around; but I have pretty thick hamstrings and I often catch training partners earlier in a triangle before it is "technically" closed. Everyone laughed, we talked more about it, totally normal.
That night, we go to bed, to set the scene when we're in New England at her parent's house we sleep in Lucy and Ricky style single beds next to each other. She comes over to my bed and says, hey, FiveHour, can we snuggle? I was really freaked out when you choked me earlier. She said she's looking at me differently because she suddenly realized how easily I could kill her, that just for a second the air had been completely cut off and she was terrified. She said it was like when she saw our dog murder a rabbit, and she suddenly realized the dog was capable of that, that she'd never realized I could do that to her.
Now, Mrs. FiveHour is a very strong athletic woman. I shit you not, I have seen men on the motte or similar internet forums talk about their lifts when they're doing Starting Strength who were months in and still squatting less than her. And we lift together so she knows I can knock out deadlifts that are better than twice hers. But still, she wasn't ready for just how easy it was for me.
Point for those who claim that the male-female gender gap isn't sufficiently understood by most people.
On the other hand, Monday morning I went to the gym, and I rolled with everyone at the new gym, and I tried not to be overly aggressive because I was new. And at any gym, I basically never turn down a roll unless I'm injured. I do typically avoid the girls at my home gym, but mostly just by positioning myself away from them when everyone is pairing up, if they ask me to drill or roll I will. More of a Pence Rule thing than anything.
Well we were doing positional 2 minute rounds starting with one partner in front headlock position, and a nice young woman about eight inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter than me asked me to roll with her. I let her get the front headlock, and I probably let her get it in a little deeper before we started than I would have let a man. And I tried to avoid using any muscle or weight, just flowing through the moves and trying to use good technique, letting her work. And the little bitch managed to tap me out. I gave her too much slack and she hanged me with it. It's the first time I've been tapped by a woman, and for several seconds I couldn't believe it. She got me in a perfect front headlock strangle, and there was no way I was getting out of it without trying something desperate and more likely to injure someone than escape smoothly. And anyway, she had earned it, she had the strangle on tight, and I tapped. She was the only one to tap me that practice.
So on the other hand, that was humbling, a point for women in the battle of the sexes: there is a point at which a woman can submit me, if I'm not at least a little careful.
I've actually started, when rolling with partners who are much smaller/weaker/estrogenic, listening to one of the coaches and once we are in contact on the ground in guard, I'll close my eyes and try to flow roll without looking, trying to feel their bodyweight shifting and reacting to mine. I'm not sure if it has "helped," but it is a really neat experience.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14d ago
Listening to Ms. Clark, Ms. Zito said, changed her life. She started a Bible study group, cut down her drinking and stopped dating casually as she focused on finding a husband. She stopped using birth control, taking up a natural family planning method recommended on Ms. Clark's show, and became dubious about abortions and vaccines. She no longer identifies as a feminist.
To Rightists with daughters reading this: are you concerned that they might encounter "natural family planning" on the internet and really f*** up their life?
It's fascinating to me how this line has been misinterpreted throughout this thread.
Ms. Zito started focusing on finding a husband, and at the same time swtiched to natural family planning. This pretty strongly implies, if not outright states, that Ms. Zito is still at least considering making love to somebody, despite the lack of a Mrs. in front of her name. Otherwise, after all, she wouldn't need any plan at all. If she's currently celibate, she didn't "take up" a natural family planning method! You don't need any birth control when you're celibate until marriage! You just...don't fuck, any time, until you get married!
Isn't this a great example of Jugaad Ethics from the Right? Taking the junker of Abstinence Only sexual ethics, and hitching it to the strong horse of woo-woo affirmation feminism? You don't have to not have sex that would be too difficult, just time your cum properly (in ways your male partner will be completely unable to track!) and you're trad enough!
The entire article feels that way. A pastiche of traditional femininity.
This feels much closer to Female Dating Strategy and online Gold Digging subcultures, than it does to any kind of ordered idea of patriarchy. We're getting this weird amalgamation of right wing and left wing ideas, of patriarchy and mid-century modern freedom of choice.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Iran would never give the Arabs they sponsor that kind of independent power.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
12d ago
Most guys with jobs complain about their jobs, it is nonetheless easier to have a job than not to have one.
Leaving aside those who can get all the benefits of a job without one, but those are rare individuals.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
When you say new do you mean you've done it twice or do you mean you've been doing it for two months?
New things always lead to exhaustion, it's the nature of the body, and as they become old things they'll lead to less exhaustion.
So my advice would be to enjoy it while it lasts, the ecstacy of being truly drained by an activity is increasingly difficult to reach as you get better at your favorite activities.
Just in six months, it takes a half hour of straight rolling in BJJ to reach the level of exhaustion I used to hit in one round, and twenty minutes later I'm fine again, where when I started a morning class could ruin my whole day.
If you've been doing it for a while and you're still that exhausted, assess and address: sleep, hydration, increasing protein/carbs/calories, general stress, injuries/mobility, consider maybe the activity isn't for you. In more or less that order.
"We need scammers to get vigorous economic development" is such a weirdly cargo cult reading of that story.
I frequently stop at a local convenience store, and buy an Arizona diet iced green tea, which costs $1. The store is tiny, normally there is only the owner or his wife present, and when I walk in they're frequently making a sandwich at the counter, stocking something, etc. When they're somewhere else I wave the tea at them and the dollar bill, tell them I'll leave it by the register, and leave.
Now I could definitely steal the tea once, maybe twice. I could probably steal a candy bar or something a few times.
But I would definitely go there less if buying the tea took me three minutes longer.
Which would probably also reduce my purchase of higher profit items like Zyns and hoagies and ice cream at the store.
The way you get a high trust society is because when people trust each other, there's so little friction in economic transactions that you become so rich that the odd scam can be ignored, societally, without serious consequences.
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