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
3hr ago
Slurs are best modeled as verbal acts signaling that 1) I'm the kind of person who regards you that way 2) I'm allowed to feel that way and you don't have the power to stop me.
In that context, Nazi pretty well fits, in that calling someone a Nazi is a verbal act indicating that I don't have the power to stop you from calling me that.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3hr ago
An old Jewish Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven. He gets the chance to speak to God when he gets there. God tells the old Jew, you have a moment to speak to me directly is there anything you want to ask me or have me explain to you? The old Jew says actually I want to take this time to tell you a joke, I'm going to tell you my favorite Holocaust joke. He tells God the joke. God says, man, that's not funny. The old Jew says eh I guess you had to be there.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
Closest to one and two, but not three. Curving of course for living in rural Pennsylvania, hence the minor. I don't think we've ever donated more than casually in kind to any church. My family is religiously conflicted: my father was raised in a conservative religious cult and left it, my mother is Catholic. My father can't let go of the cult well enough to embrace or respect Catholicism, but neither will he pick anything else.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
I'm probs a minor aristocrat. On the basis that I've been to events hosted in spaces named for my family.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'm not really sure there exists a type of humor I don't think is funny because of the subject matter, though there exist many jokes I don't think are funny because of the execution and I suppose you could probably draw a through line that would separate some subject matter out (lazy ypipo jokes that are really about yuppies annoy me, I'm a little old for jokes where the punchline is just foul language). As a general rule I'm a free speech absolutist, and that includes attempts at humor by nature. There's probably a context here, if my priest made a Charlie Kirk assassination joke on the pulpit tomorrow morning I'd be offended.
I genuinely think everything is open for humor, if it makes people laugh it's funny. Please, make this thread your best effort to tell a joke that offends me, I could use a laugh today.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
"Dark Humor" guys when the joke isn't about women or niggers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I think we had this fight already last summer and no one around here is really interested in relitigating the question.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
In any case, it is hardly unsurprising for even extremely sophisticated, highly intelligent investors to be duped, seduced (platonically) by charismatic con men and adventurers for fortune, and Epstein was both.
Do we have other examples of billionaires signing over power of attorney to their finance guys?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's absolutely amazing to me that you quoted my question, then regurgitated the same talking points I said I wasn't convinced by. This explanation just papers over all the weird stuff by saying "IDK he was really charismatic or something."
But unless Epstein was literally the most charismatic man of all time, there's a lot of charismatic people out there, but Epstein's arrangements were extraordinary. There's no other examples I've ever seen of a billionaire handing over PoA to his finance guy, when it comes up the normal tone industry people use about it is that it's shocking and they never saw anyone else do that. Maybe Wexner was gay, but once again, we don't have any other examples of wealthy gay men getting conned at this scale by a man who, however handsome, didn't even live with Wexner and must have been much too busy to schtupp him very often.
You just pass over every extraordinary and weird aspect of Epstein's life by saying he was charismatic or gay. Ok, there are a lot of charismatic gay men out there, yet there's only one Epstein.
This reminds me a lot of Reza Aslan's biography of Jesus, Zealot, in that Aslan constantly used historical accounts of other Jewish messiahs and assumed Jesus must have been exactly the same as them. Except that, you know, Jesus was different. You can tell because his name and his likeness are everywhere, and the other Jewish messiahs are mostly only remembered in reference to Jesus.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.
There's a big difference between the ordinary JPM customer who has an account with $5,000 in it and who barely interacts with anyone at the bank, and a high net worth client who has private bankers and gets personal attention from higher ups.
Saying those are the same is like equating purchasing Nike shoes with being sponsored by Nike. Or wearing a Cartier watch with being provided a custom Cartier watch at reduced price for promotional reasons. If the Charlie Kirk assassin wears a suit from Polo, I don't know that anyone will notice.
JPM didn't just let Epstein open a checking account at a branch without anyone being aware of it. They extensively courted, discussed, facilitated Epstein's business at the bank.
I also don't think that we've ever gotten a really good explanation for where Epstein's money came from. @2rafa et al put it as "Epstein got an extraordinary deal with Les Wexner and got all his money from there and he didn't have any other clients and case closed." But no one ever puts Epstein in a class of similar people. To my knowledge, there is no class of similar people, there are no other cases that are remotely similar. No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason. No other billionaire signed power of attorney over to some guy. Despite a plethora of gay billionaires, no one ever signed everything over to his boy toy. So "Epstein got all his money from Les Wexner" isn't really a conversation ender to me, it's the start of another more interesting mystery.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Do go on!
The word Cravat comes from Croat, and the neck scarf comes from a scarf worn by regiments of Croatian light-cavalry mercenaries during the Thirty Years War, who were famously fierce fighters.
In 1660 a regiment of Croats arrived in France — a part of their singular costume excited the greatest admiration, and was immediately and generally imitated; this was a tour de cou, made (for the private soldiers) of common lace, and of muslin or silk for the officers; the ends were arranged en rosette, or ornamented with a button or tuft, which hung gracefully on the breast. This new arrangement, which confined the throat but very slightly, was at first termed a Croat, since corrupted to Cravat. The Cravats of the officers and people of rank were extremely fine, and the ends were embroidered or trimmed with broad lace; those for the lower classes were subsequently made of cloth or cotton, or at the best of black taffeta, plaited: Which was tied round the neck by two small strings.
-- Le Blanc, H., Esq. (1828). The art of tying the cravat: Demonstrated in sixteen lessons
The Croats were famously fierce fighters, mothers all the way to the early years of the 20th century would supposedly frighten their children with stories about the Croatians depredations at the sack of Magdeburg. Croat regiments for a time became a generic term for light cavalry, comparable to hussars, and many adopted the Croatian costume.
So an elite, famous, fierce military unit shows up in Paris. The fashionable men of Paris immediately cop their style, to imitate the masculine devil-may-care mystique of the mercenary. Soon the Cravat was de rigeur for formal dress. Charles II brought it back from exile on the continent, and it became part of English fashion. From there the cravat evolved into the bow tie and straight tie and I guess the bolo tie of today, and the once military cravat became the faggy ascot that a costume designer puts on a character to inform us that the character is some unspeakable mix of wealthy and homosexual.
I will say, a lightweight scarf is really a pretty functional piece of dress for a life outdoors. I'll occasionally wear one despite the aria di frociaggine if I'm on a long hike or a bike ride. Keeps the sun off your neck, keeps the chill off without too much weight while being easily adjusted. The Croats had it right.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's on a spectrum, right? Starts as Military, becomes try-hard, moves to normal, then to cosplay. I wore an m65 field jacket from the army navy store through most of boy scouts, and while it was military-coded no one thought I was pretending to have served in Vietnam. A modern camo version would look more like pretending; a WWI era military jacket more like cosplay. Then I suppose a tie has lost all association with Croatian mercenary light cavalry from the thirty years war.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Second, neither Kirk nor Patel have any military or law enforcement experience, so there's also the cringe multiplier of framing yourself as a kind of very online wannabe[] badass.
I wonder to what extent military slang and terminology and such like changes over time as it drifts into public use by non-soldiers. An in-joke starts as a status symbol telling others in the know that you had seen the elephant, then becomes known to the public and becomes a symbol to everyone, then begins to be used by members of the public to signal support, then drifts out of use with soldiers.
Kind of the same way about half of men's fashion starts with elite units in the military, then regular infantry units adopt the look from the elite units, then veterans continue to wear it as a symbol of service, then it just runs into civilian use.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
The reality is he's an Isma'ili muslim shown visions of paradise while under the influence in a castle in Persia, and the entire rest of his life is a series of ruses designed to throw us off the scent. But we won't be fooled! We know the Safavid-Ottoman conflict has moved to NYC, where else can the Isma'ili menace be found than in Utah?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Because we've never seen a mormon kid from Utah turn against the faith. Never.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
It means the flag the ship was sailing under was false.
So something like, he's not a tranny leftist, he's a rightist who wants to draw down wrath on tranny leftists.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Wow, extraordinarily bad timing between reading the morning paper and posting this, I guess.
ETA: Yeah, nvm. Bad timing delay between WSJ and posting.
So ummmm...I don't want to do too much Gribbling just yet, but is anyone finding it a little spooky that they don't have the shooter in custody yet? Are we adjusting our priors on what this looks like? The trans/antifa inscriptions are being walked back, which really confuses me because I don't understand how the detail could be wrong. Two different guys have been arrested and released. Now there's a picture of a person of interest, but that might not be the guy either?
There's of course conspiracy theories. This guy on Twitter said Charlie was worried about getting killed by Israel a month ago. Various leftists have called false flag, though that seems like macabre wishful thinking. There's been talk about internal rightist squabbling, but I don't put much stock in the idea that the Groypers have expert assassins on staff. Iran? But why would the IRGC hit Charlie Kirk and not claim responsibility for it?
It just feels odd in that my prior for the assassin was some kind of trans-something-or-other insane blue haired loser. I don't picture you they-them barista hitting a 200 yard shot and disappearing.
I suppose if the shooter gets caught in the next day or so, it'll all work out fine and I'll go back to sheepling. But it is definitely starting to feel weird, and if they don't have the shooter in custody this time next week...boy, I don't know.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
So the moral truth to this is that a father of two was killed, and regardless of why he was killed shooting people is bad mmmmkay.
How many fathers has Israel killed in its efforts to get the hostages back? If killing fathers of children is always bad, then surely Israel is bad! But of course, Israel is justified in killing those fathers of children, because they hit Israel first. You know what, this is sounding like the morality of a child.
You say not to fall into the leftist trap of "nuance." I say not to fall into the leftist trap of "Something bad happened to [person], therefore [person] must be correct about [ideological question]." That Charlie Kirk got shot doesn't make Charlie any more correct about anything today than he was on Tuesday, just as fag-bashing doesn't make gays correct, lynchings don't change IQ scores, and there's no tranny who could be murdered in such a way that it alters the basic contours of the trans debate.
I don't have to change with every tragedy. Reality certainly won't.
There's this odd tendency to confuse and conflate predictable human overreactions to and political exploitation of tragedies, with some kind of cosmic moral rule of the universe that needs to be followed. Israel was attacked, so Israel "must" respond, Israel has no choice. To ask Israel to consider the consequences of their actions, and how they fit into Israel's long term goals. It was always quite likely that Israel would, of course, make the wrong choices; this doesn't stop a debate club full of contrarians from Noticing the alternatives. Charlie Kirk has been shot tragically and publicly, and as a result we're likely to see a rushed and confused backlash against his perceived killers and in favor of his perceived positions. That this is likely to occur doesn't make it right, doesn't require me to march along in the parade.
Right is right, and wrong is wrong; individual tragedy doesn't change it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I'm not really concerned with the current regime of Qatar doing a face-heel turn against the United States. I don't think there is any practical way to do this.
What is more concerning is the possibility of the current regime in Qatar being fatally weakened, losing public confidence, and being replaced by a regime with more pride and less sense.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
sanity of Hamas's senior leadership
This always seems like kind of an iffy proposition to me. In that their principles are so alien to me that they automatically read as insane, yet they seem to be fully capable of rationally pursuing those principles and goals. There are postulates embedded in their math that make my worldview entirely incompatible with theirs.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Qatar hosts a US base, has been repeatedly publicly proclaimed as an ally by successive administrations, have Trump a PLANE, and only harbored the enemy leaders at this point because the United States told them to keep them around. Collaborator might actually be too mild.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Gabby Giffords was, you know, in Congress. And presumably knew many fellow congressmen personally, who had no interest in letting the issue drop. She also had the advantage of being a woman, and of being horrifically crippled rather than killed, which is I think worse. The results in 2012 were, I suppose, a Democratic bump but moderate in impact: they added two seats to their Senate majority and bit eight seats out of the Republican House majority. The equivalent impact towards R next year would add up to the R's holding 227 seats in the House, and 56 in the Senate. Which would improve the Republican position quite a bit when trying to corral the loony bin for budget bills, but it's not the death of the Democrats.
And four years later the Republicans would return with much extremer rhetoric and win the Presidency, House, and Senate in a huge upset.
Charlie Kirk's death is unfortunate, but it's not some kind of win-now button. If it were, we would have actually seen a false flag before.
As we're probably all aware by now, Israel bombed Doha, Qatar this week, in an attempt to assassinate Hamas' leadership resident in the city. There's some dispute over who exactly was killed in the attack, whether any non-Hamas people were hurt, etc. It appears to have been reasonably precise, any collateral damage is in count-on-one-hand territory. It's unclear what impact this will have on the ongoing conflict, or on Israeli relations with Qatar and more importantly with the United States. There's a LOT of conflicting stories out there about who knew what when, did the United States greenlight the attack and plan it, maybe even sending over a ceasefire proposal to bait them into meeting together; or the Israelis acted alone and Trump's team is furious at being left out of the loop.
What this does say is, Qatar has joined the ranks of countries that have no true sovereignty, and can be bombed at will by capable powers. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia; all have come to be considered failed states, where the United States and its allies, or Iran and its proxies, can bomb targets at will and the putative "governments" of such places will merely wring their hands and protest at the United Nations on the topic. Is Qatar now in danger of becoming another country that can be bombed at will? This would mark a major escalation. The countries previously treated as bombing ranges by the great powers were poor, backwards, weak; Qatar is small but it is oil-rich. By Human Development Index countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan were near the very bottom, while Qatar is around the level of Poland.
This represents something shocking, in that Qatar has been historically less hostile to Israel than the Arab average, and is a direct ally of the United States, hosting the largest US base in the middle east. Qatar was actually hosting the Hamas leadership at the quiet behest of the United States, to keep them coherent and on hand rather than chaotic and in Palestine or underground, and wanted to kick them out after 10/7 but was told not to by Israel's protector the United States. Despite all this cooperation, Qatar does not get to decide if Doha will be bombed today, Israel feels it can make that decision with impunity.
EDITED TO EMPHASIZE
Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani proposed expelling Hamas’s leaders from Doha during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken days after the terror group’s October 7 onslaught, two officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.The proposal was made in somewhat of a roundabout way during the emir’s opening remarks at an October 13 closed-door meeting in Doha with Blinken. Thani began by expressing his horror over Hamas’s attack in which some 1,200 people in Israel were slaughtered and another 253 were abducted into Gaza. He then asked whether it was time for the US to ask Qatar to expel the Hamas’s leaders, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When Blinken began his own remarks, he didn’t respond directly to the emir’s proposal but did go on to say that he thought it would be better for Qatar to use its contacts with Hamas — through the office it allowed the terror group to establish in Doha in 2012 at Washington’s behest — to mediate between the Gaza war parties to secure a hostage deal, the officials recalled. They added that the US secretary of state also clarified that it would not be “business as usual” for Hamas in Qatar once the conflict concludes.
Qatar was not harboring Hamas because they like Hamas, they are literally harboring Hamas at Israeli/US request.
The message is being taken in the Muslim world: collaboration will not save you. To quote from an apparently pro-Hamas substack post that popped up in my feed:
Trump directed his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to “inform the Qataris of the impending attack.” So the Qataris knew that America had greenlit an attack on their sovereign territory. They then either allowed the attack to proceed or were too powerless to stop an attack on their own soil. Either way, it reveals who is actually in control of the country with just over a quarter of a million citizens but enormous natural resources.
The Israeli bombing in Doha serves an important lesson: resisting Israeli barbarism is a high-risk, high-reward endevaour. Those who resist, as the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and the Yemenis have done, will undoubtedly suffer losses — but, most importantly, they will be able to look themselves in the eye with dignity. The collaborators, however, will not only be publicly humiliated but will ultimately be destroyed once they have outlived their usefulness. For the four Arab states that have normalised as part of the so-called Abraham Accords, the fate of Qatar should serve as an example.
So the question then arises: why did the Israelis commit such a brazen and criminal attack on a country aligned with their interests? The short answer is that they intended to send a stark message: they can bomb a country even when it is aligned with them. As if to erase any doubt about the message behind the attack on Qatar, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana posted a tweet — in Arabic, no less — with an attached video of the targeted building in flames, accompanied by a blunt caption: “This is a message to all of the Middle East.” Take note: the tweet makes no mention of the Hamas leadership in Doha; its sole focus is the Middle East.
This is the fairly reasonable interpretation being offered by the insane lunatic fringes, the excellent propaganda handed to the Islamists. Israel as of now claims power of life and death over the citizens of Qatar, they used it mostly righteously on this occasion, and they may continue to do so. Or they may not. And that is not for the Qataris to judge, they can only accept the decision. And this to a US ally. Is there a country in the middle east where they would not have launched such an attack? On principle, or merely because the cost/benefit wasn't there yet? Does Israel claim the right to kill any Arab anywhere in the Middle East? Or perhaps they would not blanche at killing Arabs in France or Germany.
This has been an uncomfortable question for me since the Bin Laden raids, but it feels more pressing than ever today:
Under what circumstances would you feel that a foreign drone strike targeting a terrorist living or operating in the United States was justified and acceptable?
Consider some examples of individuals considered terrorists who live openly in the United States.
Fethullah Gulen, purportedly behind a coup attempt in Turkey that lead to the deaths of hundreds, lived for years not a few hours from me. If the Turks had decided to bomb Saylorsburg, PA to get him, or did it today to get his successor, would that be acceptable?
I've personally been to events at which the Dalai Lama spoke. The ChiComms consider him a dangerous separatist terrorist. If they had bombed the college basketball stadium or the NYC auditorium at which I saw him speak, would that have been acceptable? What about Uyghur leader Anwar Turani? Or Guratpwat Singh Pannum the Sikh leader seeking to establish Khalistan?
Zelensky has traveled to the United States multiple times, if the Russians blew up his limo would that be acceptable? What about the reverse, if Ukrainian nationalist psychos had shot down Putin's plane over Alaska?
My own view is simple. None of these are acceptable to me, as a US citizen, even if I dislike some of these groups. The Schelling point of sovereignty is maintaining a legitimate monopoly on violence within the territory, if the United States gives that up it can never be gotten back. The United States, and the United States alone, gets to make the decision as to who enjoys the protection of our laws. No other country can assassinate or bomb its enemies on our soil, not if we remain a sovereign country. If it wishes to request their extradition, they may do so, but it is at our own pleasure that we will accede to or refuse such a demand. If any other country claims the right to kill on our soil, then the protection of our government is meaningless, what is to stop any other country from killing a citizen? The Schelling fence between non-citizen and citizen on our soil feels significantly weaker than the one between on our soil and not on our soil. We've already seen how the citizenship distinction can evaporate abroad.
I hope that Israel will be able to make amends with Qatar, and that this will not lead to further degradation of the political situation in the Middle East.
Type II fun. Burning through 30 hard bouldering problems, rolling hard in BJJ against a slightly better opponent, going for a brisk walk for 26.2 miles, rowing a hard 5k.
It's after times like that I am truly relaxed.
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