Harlequin5942
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User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
I think what's really needed is a Scottish DeSantis to immediately turn these dystopian laws on the left. The only thing that stops this train is leftists being jailed for hate speech.
I'm not sure it would stop it. True, communists became suddenly more keen on the "bourgeois values" of freedom of speech and academic freedom during the McCarthy years, but e.g. the reaction of most religions in most time and places to oppression by another religion has not been "This shows the importance of freedom of religion" but rather "This shows how important it is to impose our religion on people."
A leftist reaction to jailing leftists for hate speech might just be, "This is why DeSantis types must never have the powers we have invested in government." This can lead to either democratic optimism ("demographics is destiny" "reality = education = a liberal bias" etc.) or just old-fashioned authoritarian attitudes.
For purchasing internationally (and thus for the arms industry) nominal GDP is more important. PPP is a better indicator of domestic prosperity. International suppliers care about what you can offer them at market exchange rates, they don't care about your domestic prices. If Israel can offer me $500 for some small electronics part and Iran can offer me $400, I don't care if it's cheaper to live in Iran.
Harlequin5942
17d ago
But- formal one man rule seems to incentivize anti-corruption drives at the very least.
Not clear that's true. Insofar as power is concentrated, it is easier to identify who you have to bribe. Things like monopoly concessions in return for money (formal and informal) happened a lot in e.g. Elizabethan England, and (I am no expert) presumably other cases of one-man (male or female) rule. On the other hand, that could be attributed to the problems that feudal rulers had in obtaining tax revenues.
However, from an incentives standpoint, it seems that the more powerful the state and the more concentrated that power, the greater the gain and the lower the cost of outsiders corrupting those with power. That's leaving aside "power tends to corrupt, more power tends to corrupt more" considerations.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
Anecdotal: I have a look recently at women playing Super Seducer. I thought it might be an insight into how at least some of them think of seduction and dating. Plus, Richard La Ruina operates in an interesting borderland of acceptability, where e.g. the woker girl gamers feel like they should demonise him but keep on saying "Huh, that's actually good advice."
Where they tend to fail is that their basic plan for a man to pursue a woman is to try and make them his friend. This makes sense: for straight women and even lesbians, befriending is their main interaction with other women. Many women, even seemingly "awkward" women, are actually very good at this task. They know how to flatter women, find common interests, make women feel comfortable around them etc.
While these skills can obviously be useful for dating women, it's not surprising that a lot of these women's advice are textbook paths to the friendzone, because that's what they're designed to do.
Also, even if a woman thinks "How do guys seduce me?" it's hard to answer that honestly, because a woman being seduced is potentially a status loss, so it's necessary to say things like "He has to know me for months and be kind and just treat me like any other friend" etc., because something like "His best strategy is to be confident, asserive, push things forward, one step ahead, and stand out from all my other guy friends in some way" suggests that she's prone to manipulation, and nobody likes to admit that. Men too: I have seem men been obviously lured into a relationship and hate to admit that the woman was actually the one coordinating the interaction. Never me, of course...
Harlequin5942
21d ago
I believe that there are writers primarily motivated by money, but that's not the same as being emotionally uninvested in a story. (This is distinct from being passionate, in a strong sense, about the story.) However, yes, I think it's hard for someone to prove that they aren't emotionally invested at all. How does one prove such a thing? And is it really possible for an intelligent human to both understand a book like Crime and Punishment and read it and be emotionally indifferent to it?
Harlequin5942
12d ago
That's not really 'Irish,' though.
They were in the eyes of Americans at the time, specifically Scotch-Irish. Also, Scots are Celts, though views about that at the time were sometimes complex.
Aside from their Catholicism, there was little to distinguish a typical Irishman from a typical Protestant Highlander. (Their languages would have been slightly different, but equally alien to an English American in 1850.)
Harlequin5942
12d ago
The Pope officially renounced it along with the entirety of mainstream Catholicism
Well, it wasn't just a single Pope who completed that process after WW2! ;)
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
He didn't say (or at least you didn't quote) "underfunded relative to men", he just said "underfunded". Is it not that he could have been speaking in an absolute rather than a relative sense?
No, this is no more likely to be his meaning (in the sense of the factual content he wanted his listeners to impart from his words) than Bill Clinton wanted people to believe that he hadn't had vaginal sex with Monica Lewinsky.
Harlequin5942
22d ago
Suppose an American consulate were bombed by anybody, what would you expect the US response to be?
Let's imagine that Iran didn't just bomb a US embassy, but stormed it and took diplomats/civilians hostage. What would happen?
There's precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
The US response would probably be to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, but to avoid military escalation. As the Ukraine war shows, the US is very wary of escalating conflicts, even with second-tier powers like Russia or Iran.
People saying "if we don't stop him now, he'll take Poland" are fabulists. This is not a realistic scenario.
What about, "If we don't stop him now, he'll attack Ukraine again"?
Just because Russia can't beat Ukraine militarily now, doesn't mean that Putin can't try for a second bite in the future, with the same rationales.
Harlequin5942
21d ago
The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance
Was it that, or more that Russia is much more pathetic (and apathetic - just look at their public's reaction or the level of mobilisation/defence spending that Putin can muster) than anyone expected?
From what I have seen, it's not so much that Ukrainians have been fighting well, and more that Russia's ability to project power beyond its borders is almost completely gone. Once they could dominate Eastern Europe, now they take months of grinding to gain worthless plains within a country that they once lorded over directly.
Harlequin5942
21d ago
The former is definitely conceptually possible, but I am not sure it has ever happened. I think Dostoevsky claimed he was more or less a mercenary writer to pay off his debts, but I don't believe him.
Harlequin5942
27d ago
Agreed. The similarities between affirmation/esteem culture and guilt culture have probably been underinvestigated. I have a meta theory that many problems of human activity involve too much focus on what people ARE rather than what they DO. "Hate the sin, not the sinner" is once instance of moving in the right direction, but I think there are others, e.g. "Provide children - and people in general - approval for good things they accomplish, not for what they are."
(That's not to say that affirmation/esteem/guilt have no place in parenting, education etc.)
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
I've been wondering for a while now if this (generally - I'm not talking about your wife specifically) isn't an underappreciated disaster of the transition from a broad-based traditional Christian culture to a Oprah / Doctor Phil Therapy culture.
Christianity has its own expensive forms of therapy. Just look at pilgrimages, Hail Mary's, time spent talk to someone who never says a word in response (close to some psychodynamic therapists?). And it's easy for people to transfer their neuroticisms to hell, maintaining faith, or the disturbing fact that so many people think you are out of touch with reality. Any one of these concerns can lead to fear, depression, or anger, just as much as a therapist's unscientific speculations on "repression", "authenticity", and "self-esteem".
Here's an evo-psych just-so story: women usually like to be attended to, whether that's by friends, family, "the boyfriend who will always be there for you" (Jesus) or a therapist. This is important, because women who were attended to by many people were more likely to successfully raise children. Human children are hard to raise to raise to reproductive viability, even now.
However, compared to therapy or some other religions, Christianity is fairly cost-effective. A person looking to satiate their lust for attention and elevation of their feelings' importance could do much, much worse.
Harlequin5942
2mo ago
Do you know what was widely enjoyed by male audiences, with positive reviews, fond memories, and enough cultural cachet to spawn respectful memes and callbacks?
Jean Claude Van Damme movies.
Can you give 5 examples, please?
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
Argentina does have some incredibly bad policies, though, e.g. about 1/6 of government tax revenues come from taxing exports. It's as if they looked at export-led industrialisation success stories and said "How can we stop that happening here?"
So that's your update after finding out that your image of "Netflix producing Americans vs. steel producing Russians" was wrong?
"Well, actually US steel production is not enough, because of this qualitative analysis I just developed. The US is entangled in the Middle East (unlike Russia?!)"?
The US spends 3.5% of GDP on defence, around the lowest in its history. For illustration, Russia had been spending 4.1%, but it is now increasing defence spending to 6%. The US is very far from exhausting its capacity to deal with military problems.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
soft-core porn
As someone with an interest in erotic stories, but relatively little interest in seeing nudity or sex acts (which I can either experience or imagine, depending on the exclusivity) I miss those days. Sure, the stories were terrible, but I'd rather some schlocky plot that the lazy quasi-incest "plotting" of modern pornography. The only saving grace (excuse the expression) is that the internet has led to an explosion of amateur erotic writing, most of which is terrible, but which is at least more creative than most of the soft core era.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
Makes sense. The normalisation of any culture sphere leads to the introduction of pearl-clutching women, and humans tend to have strong instincts for ensuring that women feel comfortable.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
For what it's worth, I didn't interpret your post as condescending, but as simply regretful.
Not all societies are created equal, and there are varying degrees of misalignment. If I look at a woman in lust, I am clearly sinning and am condemned; but at least my desires are in alignment with God's ideal. It is only the object of my desires that is inappropriate, as being attracted to my wife is not only not a sin, but is a key part of a relationship that is a representation of Christ's love for the Church. Same-sex attraction is more disordered as both the object and the desire itself are misaligned. Transgenderism is completely disordered: the object, desire, and self are all misaligned.
This sounds like ranking sins, which is commonsensical and popular in e.g. Catholicism, but hard to reconcile with ideas like the Divine Command Theory of ethics. If what's wrong with sinning is disobeying God, then committing adultery in your heart is bad in exactly the same way as raping and murdering a baby. There's no moral sense in which you are better or worse than the cruellest, most perverted person you can imagine; the only possible difference of moral significance between you and a baby-raper-killer is that God may have chosen (and I stress "chosen") to save you from what you morally deserve. Focusing on e.g. the difference in harms is swapping the DCT for something like consequentialism or care ethics.
(I leave aside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism and non-DCT metaethics as interesting but very widely condemned by Christians.)
If Jesus or the Bible had provided a comprehensive ranking of sins with varying degrees of sinfulness, then it's obvious consistent with a Christian DCT, but as you know that's not the case.
Societies that venerate increasingly disordered behavior will inevitably sink into corruption and decay.
I think that this is the better option for what you want to say. Even if all sins are equally sinful, you can still coherently argue that different societies have different propensities to sin vs. redemption. A hardline Christian DCT fan can still reason in a consequentialist way about maximising the probability of redemption and minimising the probability of sins.
Harlequin5942
20d ago
Salami tactics. That was apparently what Putin was trying prior to 2022, but changed his mind for some reason, possibly because of Ukraine's arms buildup.
Harlequin5942
20d ago
when China is currently supplying Russia.
Are we talking about steel? Because the US also imports from China. And, if there wasn't the current glut in steel production, the US could outbid Russia easily.
Harlequin5942
21d ago
This is not to say that passion is a necessary component of great writing
Do you mean sufficient effect?
For Sonic fan fiction, I bring you the lowest depths to which the human mind and soul can sink: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LCWoZEXyGU0
You are usually more charitable than this.
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