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
4d ago
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 5 [1973]—Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, the Yankees starting left‐handed pitchers disclosed today details of an exchange of families. The pitchers, who have been the two closest friends on the team for several years, said they and their wives began discussing last July the possibility of an exchange and that they put it into effect at the end or last season in October. At this time, Peterson is living with Susanne Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 4 years old, and Reagan, 2, and they plan to be married as soon as they can divorce their spouses. That would be next October at the earliest, Peter son said.
Both pitchers, in separate interviews after the Yankees disclosed the basic details, stressed that there was nothing sordid about the situation and it wasn't a matter of wife‐swapping. “It wasn't a wife swap,” said Kekich, who married Susanne in 1965. “It was a life swap. We're not saying we're right and everyone else who thinks we're wrong are wrong. It's just the way we felt.” “It wasn't a sex thing,” Peterson emphasized. “It was not a cheap swap.”
The two Yankees and their wives began discussing the possible exchange last July 15 on what the pitchers said was a high plane and amid “a tremendous amount of affection and compatibility.” While remaining with their own families, they spent a lot of time together and individually —each player with the other's wife. There was such harmony, Peterson said, they even thought about having a double divorce and a double marriage and they discussed the possibility of dividing the children so that the older in each instance would go with the father and the younger with the mother.
From the 1973 NYT reporting on the swap
This article from New York magazine was where I first heard the story. Bronx Zoo indeed
Fond of long, introspective conversations, Kekich was drawn to the thoughtful Marilyn Peterson, while Fritz, always in the moment, paired off with Susanne, a former cheerleader and cross-country runner. Gradually it became apparent to all four that perhaps they were married to the wrong people. “By American standards, I had a good marriage,” Kekich said. “But I wanted a great marriage. I was idealistic, I guess.”
By their spring-training press conference, Kekich and Peterson were hardly speaking to each other. Much had happened in the interim. The couples did “swap lives,” moving in with each other’s spouses in the fall of 1972, with differing degrees of success. Peterson and Susanne Kekich were happy. Kekich and Marilyn Peterson were not. The physical attraction between Marilyn and himself was strong, Kekich would say, but since they were “born under the same sign, we sometimes butt heads. She and I are on a higher pitch in our emotions.” Kekich claimed everyone had agreed that if any of them were unhappy, the entire deal was off. Peterson said they had already tried that (the couples had attempted to reunite for a time) and it hadn’t worked. In a statement, Peterson said he and Susanne were both now “free people” with “free minds.” It would have been perfect if things worked out for everyone involved, “but I don’t feel guilty.”
Kekich cut a far more sunken figure. The terms of the swap dictated that the kids would stay with their mothers. But now Marilyn Peterson was taking her children to her parents’ home in Illinois. His daughters living with Susanne and Peterson, Kekich was alone. Calling himself “one of the biggest soul searchers around,” Kekich said he would break up his family only “for love far greater than any I have ever known.” Now he was “dubious” such a love existed.
Asked if he expected to be traded, Kekich said, “I’m here. We’re still teammates. I only want to be where Fritz is.” It was “the only way I can be sure of seeing my daughters.” This was not to be. After pitching fourteen innings for the Bombers in the ’73 season (walking fourteen batters), Kekich was dealt to the Cleveland Indians. Still a Yank, Peterson finished the season with a dismal 8-15 record and was also shipped out, to Cleveland, though by that time Kekich had already moved on, to Japan. Still, when it came to the Trade, Peterson was generally considered to be the winner. After all, he and Susanne are still married today, with children of their own. This result was predicted by Dr. Joyce Brothers, famed TV psychoanalyst. “It’s very rare that a four-way swap ever works,” Brothers said.
I don't think we have anything quite that wild today. I guess the Musklings count, but he at least has the decency to try to hide it. There's the WSJ article I read today about a house built to accommodate a rich gay throuple, but this is a little more than that isn't it?
Supposedly for years Affleck and Damon wanted to make a movie about it, out of pure hatred for the Yankees, but to my knowledge it never got off the ground.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
let's call it post-socialist bourgeois liberalism as The Way of Things.
I think the term you're looking for is Reaganism, Thatcherism, the Reagan-Thatcher consensus, or the Washington Consensus.
Some of it is a narrowing of the Overton window, but I think in other ways it's useful to see as a rising and receding of the tide, as a genuine improvement. For the divorced dad example: it was very common in the early years of no-fault divorce for dads to simply abandon their children after the divorce, and this was seen as fairly normal. Frasier is one example, another in James Clavell's Noble House (published 1981 and set in 1963) a character left his wife and kids and reflects with self satisfaction that they got "enough" money in the divorce that he doesn't need to be involved in their lives, the well researched portrayals in Mad Men are a contemporary example portraying the historical norm. This was normal, and not considered particularly noteworthy or blameworthy, divorce was considered bad but once it happened it was natural that the father would move on from the children. Today, we see that as bad, we see it as important that a divorced dad stay close with his kids, do his best to remain in their lives, or at the very least feel bad about it if he can't do those things.
I consider that to be actually good moral progress on the topic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I still haven’t seen a reasonable counter-argument to “learn from the Haredi”.
A big aspect of Haredi culture, and Amish/Mennonite/etc culture, is that people can leave. There's a big outer world to exit to.
I couldn't find good numbers for Haredim in particular. For Orthodox Jews in general, 67% of Orthodox Jews raised in Orthodoxy remain Orthodox as adults, and 94% remain Jews with the difference moving to more mainstream forms of Judaism. The best estimates I found for Haredi were casual, but guesses were around 5-20%, which aligns pretty closely with the Amish. Amish communities typically lose around 15% of their youth during Rumspringa. Amish communities probably land a little higher, a core anabaptist value is free choice, kids must choose to be baptized as adults even if they are raised their whole lives in the religion. The Haredi are more strict about retention, that's kind of their whole thing, so I'd imagine they land higher, but 5-10% seems realistic.
I'm more familiar with the Amish, they're really my people when it comes to weird high-TFR religious minorities, and I'd imagine it's easier for an Amish to move from the farm in Intercourse to Bernville or Kutztown and live a life that's not too dissimilar to the one they left in structure of work and values, just a little less restrictive. Compared to a Haredi who has to adapt to a really different lifestyle, but then they're urban oriented so maybe it's easier. I'd guess most Haredi just become Orthodox Jews, and most Orthodox leavers become reform Jews, etc.
Now, for most religions 80-95% retention would be brilliant work. Tradcaths and Evangelicals would be thrilled with those numbers. But it's not 100% and this creates important things to think about.
Much like private school numbers are often disputed because they simply expel problem students, who then have to attend public schools. Strict religious minorities shed their problem children, their overly independent women, their dreamers and disruptors. They maintain stability by expelling the problem kids.
For comparison, about 11% of Americans report having a substance abuse problem at some point in their lives, about 14% will go to jail for any period, about 5% will go to prison, somewhere between 6-14% will experience some form of homelessness, about 6% will be diagnosed with a Severe Mental Illness. Probably most of those numbers overlap.
The existence of a functional high-TFR minority does not serve as proof of concept for a functional high-TFR country.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I'm excited to watch the whole series.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
The debates we're having about diversity in the workforce and affirmative action date back in more or less their current form to the 1970s at least.
I'm reading Eig's biography of Mohammed Ali right now, and it's fascinating how there are a lot positions that got mainstream news media coverage in the 60s and 70s that we would consider utterly absurd today. Black Nationalism, earnest black people who really did publicly believe in black separatism, were given TV coverage and newspaper op-eds. Two Yankees pitchers traded families in the 70s. There were huge socialist and communist organizations with broad support from the 1900s to the 1980s in America.
Even just watching sitcoms from the 90s, you see a lot of less traditional values that are constantly thrown in your face. Frasier, which I love, stars a divorced dad who is totally absent in his son's life. And this is not presented as a crisis, it is at most a minor personal problem every ten episodes. We would never accept that today.
Wokeness might be a local peak of leftism in 2020, and over time we can argue that Cthulhu always swims left, but there have been in certain ways higher peaks, and post Reagan we are more conservative than we were before.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
NFL THREAD
The NFL season is wrapping up, with just three games remaining in the regular season. The playoff picture has taken shape, and we're left with a real question for maybe the first time this century:
Are there any actually good teams in the NFL? Who are they?
We've definitely got some bad teams this year, but there's no really clearly good teams. This century, there's always been a Brady-Belichek team, or a Mahomes-Reid team in the mix, or the Legion of Boom Seahawks, or Peyton Manning was somewhere around. There's always at least one team that combines playoff experience, quality coaching, a reliable star quarterback. This year, the only team that fits that dynamic are the Rams, who remain Super Bowl favorites but have lost Davante Adams for the rest of the year and just lost to the Seahawks. The Seahawks are pretty good, but I'm just not going to have a ton of faith in or fear of a team lead by /r/TheDarnold. It's not even a dislike thing, it's just I don't think he can do it in the playoffs.
And for the most part, that's pretty much it. Last year going into week 16, there were five teams with odds better than 8-1 to win the Super Bowl, plus the Lamar Jackson Ravens sitting just below that. This year, those two teams are the only teams better than 8-1 odds right now. The Broncos are next, but I'm not sure I rate them; Buffalo comes after that and they will likely have to play three road games to get there. The Pats seem to lack that third gear, who even are their receiving threats? Houston has a brutal defense, but lacks much in offense. The Baker Bucs are a perpetual feel good story for making it as far as they do, but they're not going all the way. The Packers looked like SB favorites, but they have scuffled and just lost their best player for the year. The Lions look tough, but might not even make the playoffs, and as much as everyone loves Kneecap-Biting Dan Campbell, his rough and tough coaching style seems to leave the team injured by January. Nobody is taking the Jags or the Niners all that seriously. I guess the Bears have the whole pope thing going for them?
Which brings me, of course, to my Birds. The Eagles have been frustratingly uneven this year, and WIP talk radio fans have been frustrated throughout the year. The returning super bowl champs have achieved essentially zero consistency on offense, despite returning every starter except their RG. They lead the league in three and outs, their star receiver is complaining on twitch, their all-time-great running back has looked pedestrian. The defense has been better, but not always good enough, with a few frustrating game-losing lapses. Somehow, despite making the playoffs a likely five years in a row, making two super bowls and winning one, there are still fans in Philadelphia who want to get rid of Sirianni and Hurts, the winningest coach/qb combo the team has ever had.
That said, looking at expectations going into the season, they are at worst sitting at the median. My hope for the team was that they would 1) win the NFC East, 2) win the games I attended. They'll achieve 1) as long as they win one of their remaining games, or if Dallas loses any of their remaining games. On 2), they're 2-1 so far, with the loss on some bad luck terrible calls. Going into the season, their O/U was 11.5 wins. They could still hit the over if they win out, but they're likely to end up at 11 wins. Right where they were expected. And while I never expected a repeat, they have decent odds at a deep playoff run. Looking at the NFC playoff field, who are they really scared of? They already beat the Rams, Packers, Lions, Bucs in the regular season; not always convincingly but they're certainly capable of doing it again. The Seahawks are good, but /r/TheDarnold in the playoffs is always going to be beatable. The Niners don't scare anyone. The Papal-backed Bears shellacked the Eagles in the regular season, but that's the only team I'd feel really worried facing in the NFC? And once you get the to the big game, well, anything could happen.
Not so much that the Birds are that good, just that every team could beat pretty much every other team this year. I don't think I'd feel any differently for any of the other good teams this year. If I were a Chargers fan or a Lions fan or Bills fan, I'd be feeling pretty much the same. I feel like there's five or six teams that are going into the playoffs feeling like there's not going to be a game they're going into with less than a 40% chance of winning. This is going to be an exciting year. This is the best year to go on a surprising run since, what, 1998? It could be anybody's year.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
My wife and I both like clothes, our minds were blown when we saw that people in the 1950s on average spent 10% of their income on clothing. Which would just be a mind-boggling amount for us to budget on clothes, how on earth would we spend $30,000 a year on clothing?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
wunderground.com has tens of millions of daily users, and it is named for the terrorist group The Weather Underground. It's an app that tells you the weather, it's not a rap group where you expect some edginess or weird politics.
Banana Republic has over 400 stores worldwide as the higher end brand for gap, and it's named for brutally repressive corrupt right wing Latin American dictatorships.
I don't think Kneecap is all that surprising in a world where Snoop Dogg, former crip, is a color commentary correspondent for the Olympics.
Ireland is also unique in Western Europe for being a state with a very recent myth of national liberation. In many ways, it's surprising that the IRA isn't more prominent in Irish culture.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I don't think you can assume that the cult will continue to function the same with a reduced emphasis on cult study and maintenance.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
That swim goal is amazing. I'm really curious to follow your progress on it.
Regarding your professional future, don't worry about where you start, worry about opportunities for progression. If you're an average mottizen you're smarter than the average bear, even if you start out at the bottom of the field you'll find yourself promoted in the long run.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Mentally Retarded was the standard terminology from roughly the 40s through the early 2000s. I don't know that the shortened retard was ever formally used, but it was a simple shorthand so I'm sure that it was used by professionals informally.
I don't think the euphemism treadmill applies to warrior/soldier though - the people talking about "warriors" think that both "warrior" and "soldier" are both strongly positive descriptions that you wouldn't want to euphemise.
It's the same dynamic, though with a different valence. The normal way we talk about the euphemism treadmill is that you have a perfectly good word for something (retard, negro, sodomite, secretary, rape victim) that acquires negative connotations over time because of the thing described, and a new euphemism is introduced to shed those negative connotations while still describing the thing (special needs, african american, homosexual, administrative assistant, rape survivor). In this case, it's not that soldier had negative connotations, it's that it had insufficiently positive connotations. Soldier was never a negative term, but chickenhawks needed an even more aggressively positive word. "Heroes" is often used for maximal positive connotations, but everyone knows it's stupid.
Warrior gets traction with these types because it pushes the positive connotations of soldier further, but eventually it will just take on the same connotations as soldier, and they'll need a new euphemism.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Let’s talk about Bob Dylan. My personal favorite of his is Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts, but for my money, his song that will continue to describe the human condition for as long as there are humans is Gotta Serve Somebody.
Are you me? Blood on the Tracks is my favorite album, and I just did a Gotta Serve Somebody post.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Marriage as a family institution will be totally destroyed. Every marriage will be a sham marriage.
Is this the case in the military where they already do this?
Lots of young recruits marry a girl who they would otherwise just date, because you get an increased housing allowance and she gets covered on the healthcare and on the chance he dies overseas she gets serious widow's benefits. Military marriages are notorious for problems, but not I think for being shams.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Which means that I need to quickly figure out an excuse as to why I can't go today. Guess I'm still out of sorts from the flu? Didn't get enough sleep last night? Feels bad, but I'll be able to live with it better than with showing up and getting trashed because I'm in just that bad a shape.
I've been fighting off a series of colds for a month now. It really interferes with things.
Politically my BJJ gym is kind of opposite of my rock climbing gym experiences.
Climbing gyms are self-consciously aggressively blue tribe, but secretly conservative because of the naturally white, elitist, nature of the sport. Serious outdoor sports cannot by nature be really inclusive. They can be friendly, welcoming, but ultimately the nature of the sport is that it revolves around travel to remote locations, the more remote the better, the more difficult to reach the better. No rock climber likes crowds. Rock climbing forwards the myth of complete gender equality (to be fair, rock climbing comes closer than any other real sport), and does its best to promote women's climbing, but if you're going to climb a 5.10 and she only climbs 5.9, sorry. Rock climbing gyms circa 2020 loved to do BLM stuff, often to distasteful extents, but they're all lily white. There are probably more socialists than Republicans in your average gym, but the nature of any workout is that it makes you conservative, correlates your personal development with your personal effort.
My BJJ gym, by contrast, is self-consciously red tribe, but actually very inclusive. It's full of serious Christians, gun nuts, cops, divorced dads, off color jokes, and a full understanding that the women are playing along but in a different class. But, it's also the United Colors of Benneton. The owner is Puerto Rican, the Monday coach that gave him his black belt is white, the Thursday instructor (whose classes I mostly avoid because the moves are too complicated for me) is black, the weekend coaches are two puerto ricans one a doctor and the other a truck driver during the week, the other black belts are bearded white guys. Racist jokes are occasional, but the rules aren't enforced by anyone glaring at you or shaming you, but if you cross a line you risk a bad round with Andre. Gay jokes are constant (how do you even do BJJ without gay jokes), and to my knowledge we don't have any gay guys, but if one joined and played the game, I don't think anyone would really care.
I actually explained this to a friend of my wife's who runs the local LGBTQWERTY youth center, that if she wants to help trans kids who are looking for an athletic outlet, send them to our BJJ gym instead of telling them to join the track team. As long as they don't enter a comp, which 80% of people never do anyway, they'll just be them around the gym, nobody is going to bother them. I'd just understand that if I roll with Pat that I roll harder than I would with a woman, but not as hard as I would with a teenage boy. This is already an adjustment we're all making constantly to accommodate size or experience differences. As long as you show up and try, there's not going to be any hatred.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I don't really know, I haven't overly examined the question, I'm just quoting a history professor I had in undergrad.
There were politicians at the time who thought it was necessary to ensure that there would be no conflict between the Atlantic empires.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
To be clear: we are totally capable of gating benefits behind legal marriage, and it would increase the marriage rate to do so. To a large extent, even if it leads to lots of fake marriages and quick divorces, it would probably still lead to a net increase in good marriages.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
The criticism of the Five Power Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 is that it didn't prevent WWII, the defense of the treaty is that it prevented the Anglo-American War that would have broken out in 1927.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Welcome the euphemism treadmill. Erasing the moron-retard distinction is bad because it makes it harder to talk accurately and precisely about intellectual capabilities.
Warrior euphemism talk started, as I recall seeing it, with the cringey Wounded Warrior Project stuff, though I'm sure it has earlier roots.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I don't really get quibbling over definitions, Warrior isn't bad because it's fascist, it's bad because it's cringe. "I'm a warrior because I pray in the company cafeteria" is cringey, dude no one cares.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I don't know anything about this for certain, but the debate below has me asking a question:
When we were in the age of assassination or the days of rage or the years of lead or whatever, how many ordinary murders got swept up in the statistics? How many cases were assumed to political, which later turned out to be quotidian? How many people tried to use political cover to get away with personal crimes?
Probably impossible to know. But it seems like, if I were Nick Reiner, and I weren't a drugged out shell of a human being and were capable of planning, smearing "Political Piggie!" or "Free Palestine!" or "Groyper Power!" on the walls in my parents blood might have taken the cops off my track for at least a minute.
I prefer to just try a bunch of things, find something I'm effortlessly good at, and aura farm there
This is just the same point I'm making, but with the valence reversed: You start out feeling good, and you keep feeling good. You get better, no doubt, unless you pick a really stupid hobby with no depth. But at first, you feel good because you are effortlessly succeeding, and isn't that nice to succeed without effort? And then, as you get better, you feel good because you are getting better. Your net self esteem barely changes, even if your talent level improves.
12/2025 FiveHour could absolutely manhandle 12/2024 FiveHour on the mat. I can tell because I dominate the big strong novices that join now. A 6'2" strapping blonde college kid just joined the gym a little before Thanksgiving, and I ran into him for the first time at the Thanksgiving open mat. I don't give new guys too much slack when I first roll with them anymore, got surprised and embarrassed too many times by guys I thought were new who had previously experience, so I tapped him twice pretty quickly with my A game. Arm drag to back take to RNC, then back to the feet snapdown to ankle pick to side control to americana. That all took about a minute and a half. I took a breath and realized that he was really new, and I shouldn't be a dick, and instead work some stuff that I don't normally hit and only take subs on a silver platter. So I laid down and let him work from standing, let him get me in bottom half and bottom side and bottom mount. I still tapped him three more times, just taking stuff that was so obvious and easy I couldn't let it go without making an even bigger fool of him. After, he tells me my guard is "terrifying, I never know what's going to happen."
And that round feels good for a minute or so, it's a huge sense of victory to win a round, even a meaningless open mat in rural PA on Thanksgiving morning. Last year this time I would have been euphoric about that performance, when barely ever hit any subs on anybody. Now, I shrug, I'm still frustrated by some of my performance that day. Because earlier in the open mat I rolled with Chad and while I held him in half guard he dominated me with head pressure all round; and Big John still stumps me and what's the point of my Jiu Jitsu if I can't beat somebody bigger than me? The standard I expect myself to reach has changed.
BJJ is probably also a bad fit for my neuroticism, in that I too quickly (for my own mental well being) recategorize guys from "peer" to "he's smaller/weaker/newer, I shouldn't be a dick to him."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
Yes. It's pretty universal that a consequence that is immediate, certain, and in cash achieves more in motivation than a consequence that is vague, eventual, socially consequent.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
I'd like to try to convince you it won't, but it would. You're younger than me, so maybe less so. I've had multiple months in the past year where I really couldn't run. Once in the spring with a niggling knee injury, then again in the fall with a torn hip flexor. Both recovered, but I couldn't run at all during that period. Partially what got me started on cycling this past summer, running kept aggravating something from BJJ, buy cycling was lower impact. I'm curious if that will hold up in the second year of cycling.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
I feel the same way right now. Brothers 🤝🏻
I think injuries suck the most in the NFL, because you're sitting around with 52 guys that could win a Super Bowl and you're missing the one you need.
Though, of course, the Eagles won behind Nick Foles, so stranger things have happened.
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