FruitfulLemonyLemons
No bio...
User ID: 370
FruitfulLemonyLemons
4mo ago
Appreciate the sanity check everyone, my apologies for polluting this space
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
I was in college and, at least there anyway, the "we deserved it" talk was immediate, I almost want to say same day. It certainly was not the universal or even the majority opinion but it was sizable and loud.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
If there is anything even resembling a good point in Osama's essay, it will have to be re-litigated in the minds of the young. There is no way around this. You've [speaking to what I presume to be the modal reader here, not necessarily you specifically] done this yourself, you've gone through phases of reading, with the excitement of the forbidden and of "waking up", extremely contrarian takes on established history.
Dangerous times, obviously, if the kids decide to throw all their chips in with Team Osama. But my guess is this is a phase, like reading Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto and thinking at first "hmm, ok, I'm following the reasoning." The kids' enthusiasm will probably be tempered by their own meta-contrarians in due time. The circle of life.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
It's darkly funny that we are going to get to see an empirical test of the power over narrative-shaping that the Jews have been accused of having by the far right.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Maybe a cringe question but is there a place on the Internet that's like whitepills for nerds?
Like /r/wholesomememes is way too normie (and often even openly political, like "my side of this issue won, yay wholesomeness")
And I don't know what /r/whitepill, /r/whitepills/, and /r/thewhitepill were supposed to be but they're all private lmao
Basically just want a place where people worried about some form of doom (whether from WW3, internal takeover of USA, AI, what have you) share well reasoned arguments against doom and why WAGMI
Because my mind is so so biased toward doom, I think it would be healthy to spend a little time in such a place.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
Weird question. When I was in 4th grade, in the early 90s, we did a multi-day segment on AIDS, where they just went and scared the shit out of us.
So in my 20s any time I did something remotely risky, I'd freak out and go to the doctor. And they'd always ask if I was gay. And when I said no they seemed like they stopped taking seriously the possibility that I contracted it.
And looking back on it it finally just hit me. Was the whole program I went through in 4th grade a massive psyop aimed to stop gays from being stigmatized?
If so I feel honestly betrayed. It feels extremely wrong to use children in that way, even if the end seems like a good one.
The alt-right, with its emphasis on race and replacement, is fringe and represents a small fraction of Republicans.
The anti-Trump "moderate" Republicans poll poorly in primaries, and Trump's approval rating remains sky high among Republicans.
What do the above two assertions say?
They say two things.
-
Trump is not alt-right, never was.
-
There is a massive swath of Trump-loving voters who are off the radar of the media by being neither fashy-racist nor anti-Trump "moderates".
[Jerry Seinfeld voice] Who are these people?
I'll tell you who they are. They are the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Or wherever they are now. I grew up with them, they are my people. I listened to Rush in his final year, and listened to his callers, and the vibe of his following (which was massive) was the same as I remember it. On median: They are hardcore Trump supporters. Yet they find the emphasis on race of both the left and the fringe right distasteful. In fact they itch for national unity and an end to civil strife and they saw in Trump the best hope for unity. The whole idea of Trump being divisive they saw as media propaganda, e.g. to them Trump's stance against illegal immigration is in fact about illegal immigration and not secretly about "brown people". In their eyes Trump had the back of anybody with a Social Security card. They think Hitler was, in fact, evil af and love to relate their parents' or grandparents' stories about kicking his ass.
They have an essentially Reaganite attitude toward American politics. They see taxation as fundamentally a seizure of the productive elements of society and while they see it necessary they think it should always be done with great solemnity and respect for the taxed, whose sweat fuels all government projects. They saw Trump as the obvious candidate for anybody into Reaganite politics and are beyond infuriated that the left's propaganda painted them as Hitlerian for wanting the obvious best candidate for policy positions that had nothing to do with race.
Etc etc.
I don't know where this crowd is at now. But if anybody deserves to be called "silent majority" (if only among Republicans) it's them. Not that they were silent on Rush's show, "ignored" may be a better term for them, ignored by media and its focus on the battle between crazy fascist racists and the nice wholesome Cheney family.
I really think there's a massive, massive amount of these people and yet I don't hear these particular opinions being expressed basically anywhere.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
I wouldn't be so sure, IIRC there was another case where drugs seemed obvious but a court found it was murder
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
'banned' as in I kinda wish something would coerce me in this way because the thought of this being my vocation for the rest of my life is starting to feel pretty bleak. Really my post could have been reworded as something like "What are some options for a middle aged IT person who wants to change careers?" and just have people throw out ideas of "what I can be when I grow up" that aren't too ridiculous to choose as a middle aged man.
Like I know what I don't want but I don't know what I do.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Apparently he has a lot of experience with Jeffrey Epstein. Like a lot a lot.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Suppose you are a 40 year old software engineer making 120k/year, and you somehow magically get banned for life from practicing the profession. You have decent savings to live off of for a bit and to supplement a smaller income for a while. What would you do? If you're so inclined, be specific and like narrate out a life plan.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
the guy Musk responded to fired off a series of tweets distancing himself from antisemites and racists
So did Musk himself if you look at his replies page shortly after that tweet.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
Polymarket has the odds at 1 to 3, for whatever that's worth.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Does listening count? Currently listening to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, Darryl Cooper's ~25 hour long podcast on the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict. About 5 hours to go. It's really good. It does sometimes feel like it gets bogged down in detail but if you like detail then that might be a bonus. And it certainly answers the "what is these people's deal anyway" question for both sides of the conflict. Probably biggest highlight for this space is at one point he mentions Scott's essay Meditations on Moloch.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
Ground invasion -> Hezbollah -> USA -> Iran -> more shit idk until it's Armageddon
I admit not being exactly rational here (part of what I meant by "worried") that's why I'm asking this space
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
What do you guys think are the chances this becomes WW3? ngl I'm starting to get a little worried
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
I have no idea where these insane SWE salaries reported by everybody are, outside of a few specific cities. Never seen it anywhere near me, if it's here there must be some secret to finding it that I'm not aware of.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Yeah honestly the politics that turns me off is the aggressive stuff, I may actually enjoy a bunch of people who think the adults are in charge and there's no major foreseeable reason to worry. Thanks for the tip
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Religions have clergy and laity. It's the clergy's job to study theology and know what's True, and it's the laity's job to trust the clergy and follow their lead. This archetypal form is so baked into human social programming that you're gonna be hard pressed to supplant it. So secular replacements for religion are bound to follow it.
"Boooring, muh everything's a religion." Rationalism doesn't try to be a religion, you say? Well I'm sure the clergy understands that but tell that to the laity. No actually the laity believe that too and recite it. But at the end of the day they follow the archetypal form. They will call themselves Rationalists but they have jobs and hobbies and lives (as is right and proper for laity of any religion—this is not a dunk) and so they will trust the EYs and the Scotts and the other clergy to do the actual work. The actual thinking. The actual application of Bayesian reasoning. Etc. For their part they simply have faith that they have found the True epistemology and that they follow the lead of trustworthy workers of Truth.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Trumpists of The Motte, what do you think of Harmeet Dhillon and her challenge for the RNC chair?
I find it strange that this isn't talked about much in Trump circles. I don't know much about Dhillon but she defends Trump and worked on Kari Lake's election challenge, so it sounds like she's on the team. Trumpists complain all the time about the uselessness of the Republican party, seems like winning the top spot would be massive. Long-term, maybe even better than getting Trump in office or Lake in office. Transforming the two party system so that one of the parties is an America First party.
But I don't know much about her beyond this so maybe Trump circles are right to not be talking about or seeming much to care about this, for reasons I don't understand.
What do you think?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
What does "affordable housing" mean in America? I tried looking at the wiki article and it's absolutely massive and I feel like it's almost designed to obscure what is probably a simple answer. When some new building is going up and you hear somebody praise it, "oh, it's going to be Affordable", what is going on? Is it subsidized? Something else?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Ok but what about Mr. Poopybutthole?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
A couple guys on Twitter have entered into a million dollar bet on whether the dollar will hyperinflate within 90 days.
Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"
But in one day I saw the following two things:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610
Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.
And this:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245
Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.
My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.
Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:
Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?
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