FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
4mo ago
But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display.
This sounds about on par with the original, which pretty much invented the conception of vampires as monstrous hideous bloodsuckers (as opposed to the more urbane, charming Béla Lugosi type).
Every year, this guy who runs the Infinite Scroll Substack compiles a "Worst Tweet of the Year" bracket. He selects 64 of the most insane/offensive/preposterous tweets of the year, subdivides them into four categories and has people vote on which are the worst. The best 32 get through to the next round, and so on. Check it out, there's some gold in there.
What I found slightly disappointing was that, social desirability bias being what it is, whenever an offensive tweet was paired against an insane one, people tended to vote for the offensive one to signal that they disagreed with it, even if the insane one is clearly orders of magnitude more bonkers than the offensive one. Of course some dude saying that the age of consent should be 13 is gross and disgusting, but tweets expressing that sentiment are a dime a dozen, and pale in comparison to the woman who confidently asserted that it's impossible to sail across any ocean. Like, I don't even know how I'd even start going about trying to rebut that.
FtttG
4mo ago
This is correct. Running a marathon is essentially incompatible with doing a keto diet. Throughout the marathon, all the runners will be doing their damnedest to guzzle as much glucose and isotonic drinks as they can stomach without puking and/or shitting themselves. Hitting the wall is the point in the marathon at which you've exhausted your supply of carbs and must burn fat instead, at which keeping to any kind of reasonable pace is effectively impossible.
FtttG
4mo ago
I can't imagine many of the actual contributors to the magazine are happy to have their bylines on a publication that thinks men and women are equally good at sports.
Funnily enough, I was rereading this Hanania post yesterday, and he touches on the curious observation that many academics working in hard, rigorous disciplines don't seem to be that embarrassed to be working in the same profession (or even in the same university) as the woo peddlers in the assorted _____ Studies departments. Of course people who are visibly, publicly embarrassed about this phenomenon exist, but they seem far from the majority of people working in these fields. Hanania has an interesting theory as to why.
FtttG
4mo ago
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
A few years ago I read On Love by Alain de Botton and liked it a lot. Now I kind of feel like he was using this as a crib sheet.
FtttG
4mo ago
Having heard it cited as an influence by everyone from Oliver Stone to Steven Soderbergh, I finally got around to watching Z (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film)) tonight. Its reputation is well-deserved. The ending felt like a punch in the stomach, particularly given that the preceding film was more light-hearted and blackly comic than you'd expect, given the subject matter.
FtttG
4mo ago
And has this "reflection" had any actionable results in who you actually have dated or had sex with? That is to say, have you been asked out by someone you were attracted to, but you refused the invitation on the grounds that it would be inappropriate for reasons pertaining specifically to identity characteristics (as opposed to e.g. you're their boss)?
FtttG
4mo ago
You're unlikely to ever become a great musician (and by extension artist) without a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft. But a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft is no guarantee of becoming a great artist, and will probably drive you mad and destroy your life.
Echoing other people in the thread that I think your use of the term "we" is rather misleading - I don't think you or any other left-leaning person really believes that they need to "do the work" of deconstructing their own sexual or romantic preferences. To quote myself:
Of course, the way this is framed is that heterosexual males are simply conditioned to think they find women of a healthy weight more attractive than overweight or obese women, and if we were able to remove the "toxic beauty standards" propagated by social media and the fashion and entertainment industries, straight men would instantly be deprogrammed and realise that of course they find Lizzo hotter than Emily Ratajkowski, and how could they ever have been so stupid as to believe otherwise! In this obese utopia, there would be no "feigning" of attraction.
There's a grain of truth in this observation to the extent that social contagion plays some role in what people find attractive (e.g. Hollywood actress starts wearing her hair in hairstyle, men start finding women who wear their hair in that style attractive). But the sad reality for fat acceptance
activistsslacktivists is that many if not most of the traits to which straight men are attracted don't seem to be culturally bound at all, because they are obvious proxies for genetic fitness and fertility, and this is true even of cultures which have never been exposed to the "toxic beauty standards" of white capitalist cisheteropatriarchy (e.g. African villages without a TV or internet connection to be found). Find me a culture in which most straight men find 40-year-old women more attractive than 20-year-old women (all else being equal), or in which the hourglass figure is widely seen as repellent, or in which facial asymmetry is seen as more desirable than facial symmetry, or in which women who are so emaciated that they've stopped menstruating are highly prized - then we can talk about how straight men's distaste for obese women is a "Western social construct".
You'll also notice that the traits which fat acceptance activists themselves find attractive in men are mysteriously exempt from having been conditioned into them by these toxic Western beauty standards they so loudly decry. The only reason the tall, lean gymrat next door doesn't want to fuck you is because he's been brainwashed into false consciousness; but the reason you want to fuck him is because he's just ever so dreamy. Awfully convenient, isn't it?
My stance for a long time has been that, if you find the facial or bodily features typical to a particular ethnic group attractive, then that's no different to expressing a preference for redheads or petite women.
But I've met men who've explicitly said they're moving to Japan because they think Japanese women are more submissive than Western women, and they want a woman who'll submit to them and who they can control. I think there's something creepy about wanting a partner that you can control and dominate, and I think that believing that members of certain ethnic groups are more susceptible to being controlled and dominated is a perfect example of what activists are complaining about when they talk about ethnic fetishism.
The topic is a personal one for me, as I almost exclusively date foreign women (it's been nearly a decade since I was physically intimate, beyond kissing, with someone of my own ethnic heritage), a disproportionate share of whom have been Asian. I've been accused of racial fetishism on many occasions (with varying degrees of seriousness), but my counter-argument is essentially the above: it's not fetishism if you just like the way Asian women look, it's only fetishism if you find them desirable for creepy reasons rooted in ethnic stereotyping. (My girlfriend could be accused of lots of things but she's certainly not "submissive".) In my angrier moments I've suspected that some of the people accusing me of racial fetishism really just harbour some subconscious hostility to miscegenation that they won't cop to, so they're just dressing it up in progressive language.
FtttG
4mo ago
Well of course I'm not afraid of Covid, in the sense that I'm not worried about catching it and dying from it. But I am worried that one of my elderly loved ones might catch it and die from it. And if I was an elderly or immunocompromised person, I would think it would be perfectly reasonable for that counterfactual version of me to be significantly more afraid of Covid than I personally am.
FtttG
4mo ago
Conjunction fallacy was the exact one I was looking for while writing up the post, thank you!
The other day, I saw a screenshot of this tweet on Instagram:
American conservatism just doesn’t appeal to me because I’m not scared of everything.. not scared of immigrants, crime, using public transportation, cities. I’m interested in other people and like talking to them. Even if someone is weird it doesn’t really bother me.
I commented that I found it very strange to assert that you're not scared of crime. Crime is bad. All things being equal, no one would choose to be a victim of crime. Of course some people are more scared of crime than they really should be, but that's a far cry from saying that any amount of fear of crime is wholly unjustified. I may have compared the tweeter to Bike Cuck.
People in the comments clowned me. "Admitting you're afraid of general crime and calling someone else a cuck is a bold stance for someone so pathetic." "If you live your life in constant fear that 'someone' is gonna suddenly commit a crime against you every time you go out in public, you have agoraphobia and should get therapy." "Do you want the powice offiew to tuck you in and wead you a night night story?"
Nowhere in the comment did I claim that I live in constant fear of being a victim of crime: I merely stated that it's silly to claim to not to be afraid of crime at all. It's a weird non sequitur: "you assert that it's not unreasonable to experience some degree of fear of crime - ergo you are a bootlicker who worships police officers." It's also strange to be accused of agoraphobia by someone who I can only presume was an enthusiastic supporter of lockdowns.
I found the tweet strange, in its conception that "being afraid of crime" is a trait unique to (American) conservatives. Many of the canonical beliefs associated with American liberalism also entail fear of particular types of crime (perhaps even fear vastly out of proportion to their likelihood of occurring). Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment (including on college campuses) are all types of crime. School shootings are crimes. Hate crimes are crimes (the hint is in the name). Revenge porn and certain kinds of cyberbullying are crimes in many jurisdictions. If you're afraid of any or all of these happening to you, you are afraid of crime, by definition. This sort of reminded me of the finding Scott cited, that most American are opposed to Obamacare, but in favour of every individual component of Obamacare.
Moreover, it makes far more statistical sense to be afraid of crime in general than to be afraid of any particular subtype of crime. A woman's likelihood of being raped in a calendar year cannot be higher than her probability of being raped or mugged or having her car stolen etc. If you are X% scared of being a victim of a specific type of crime, you should be >X% scared of being a victim of any kind of crime, as there is no circumstance in which the former is more likely to befall you than the latter. This is just basic statistics. (Thank you to several commenters for reminding me of the conjunction fallacy, whose name was on the tip of my tongue while initially writing this.)
Back in the real world, I know why people react this way, in spite of how illogical it is on its face. Generations of Blue Tribers have internalised the idea that politicians who talk about being "tough on crime" are engaging in "dog-whistle politics", and that "crime" is being used as a code word for "the kinds of crimes that black people (or more recently, immigrants) engage in"; using the word "crime" in a vacuum is a signal of Red Tribe membership. Conversely, a person who expresses concern about being the victim of a hate crime, a school shooting, rape or sexual assault, cyberbullying or having their nudes leaked without their consent is signalling Blue Tribe membership.
This leads to a curious situation in which a black man who expresses concern about being the victim of a hate crime will result in all the white people around nodding deferentially, whereas if he expresses concern about being the victim of a crime (a category which includes all hate crimes), the same white people will roll their eyes and call him an Uncle Tom. In part, this state of affairs came about because many of the people who express these concerns believe (erroneously, in many cases) that these specific crimes are disproportionately likely to be committed by members of their out-group. The idea that white men are responsible for a disproportionate share of hate crimes or active shooter-style school shootings is a myth that stubbornly refuses to die.
But I hate the idea that ordinary common-sense words are being ceded as tribal shibboleths so readily. "Crime is bad" (a category which includes all Blue Tribe-coded crimes such as hate crimes, school shootings etc.) should not be a politically polarising statement, any more than "being sick is bad" or "dying prematurely is bad". It seems our culture has now reached the point at which one cannot say "crime is bad" without half of your hypothetical audience immediately responding "lmao, okay whatever you fascist MAGA bootlicker". And this is far from the only ordinary common-sense word which inspires such a bizarre polarised reaction. The most politically loaded question of the last five years was "what is a woman?", for fuck's sake. If this trend continues, I fear that in ten years' time, anyone who uses the word "the" in a tweet will have people in the replies mocking them as a Definite Article Enjoyer which, per this NPR column and Vox explainer, is a dog whistle for... something.
(This is still probably Freddie's best work.)
FtttG
4mo ago
It was game over as soon as people started using the phrase "dog mom" without a shred of irony.
FtttG
4mo ago
From which it logically follows that advocating for a group which is easy to advocate for in addition to a group which is difficult to advocate for is more difficult than advocating for just the latter group and paying the former group no mind.
FtttG
4mo ago
Thank you for the recommendation, my girlfriend and I just watched it and we both really enjoyed it.
FtttG
4mo ago
Finished My Brilliant Friend during the week. It was pretty good, but I'm not exactly dying to read the sequels.
Started The Unbearable Lightness of Being the other day. Much more accessible than I expected.
FtttG
4mo ago
This article is enormously relevant: https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-chump-effect
Do you like men of Islam?
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
Would you like them here or there?
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
Would you like them in Berlin?
Even shorn of their foreskin?
I would not like them in Berlin.
I care not if they have foreskin.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
Would you like them in a mosque?
Or standing 'round their big black box?
Not in a mosque. Not round a box.
Not in Berlin. Without foreskin.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
Would you? could you? in a car?
Let them in - here they are.
I would not, could not, in a car.
You may like them. You will see.
Living in our land, rent-free.
I cannot stand them here rent-free.
Nor in a car! You let me be.
I do not like them in a mosque.
I do not like them 'round a box.
I do not like them in Berlin.
I care not if they have foreskin.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
A plane! A train! A plane! A train!
Could you, would you on a train?
Not on plane! not on train!
Not in a car! Sam! Let me be!
I do not like them in a mosque.
I do not like them 'round a box.
I do not like them in Berlin.
I care not if they have foreskin.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like men of Islam.
FtttG
4mo ago
Your first point is well-taken. It's remarkable to think of how recently it was completely normal for people to smoke at their desks.
FtttG
4mo ago
It seems like it might be a problem if they have kids
He has two children. I always wonder what dinnertime is like.
Girl: I don't want to eat mashed potatoes and broccoli! I want chicken nuggets!
Mother: Now now, you can't eat chicken nuggets all the time.
Girl: Why not? Daddy does!
The counter-argument is irrefutable.
Americans who grew up in the states but now live abroad (especially those of you who now live in Europe) - what are some things you most miss about home? Things like food and drinks you can get easily in the states, but can't find where you live now.
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