HereAndGone
20d ago
Thanks for fixing this! I too was having the very slow loading and then timing out,and last night I got the ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH error message, and everything I tried on my end did nothing.
Good to know it wasn't me that broke it 😀
HereAndGone
20d ago
Executing prisoners, attacks that violate the local rules of warfare, assassinations, these things are regarded as unacceptable.
Codes of honour differ in different societies, and those are male-run societies as well. There are very few universal rules that all cultures accept. Politics means friends today, enemies tomorrow. Spying may be disgusting and dishonourable, but you need a secret service. And that includes state assassinations of the bothersome:
The goals of the secret service, in Arthashastra, was to test the integrity of government officials, spy on cartels and population for conspiracy, to monitor hostile kingdoms suspected of preparing for war or in war against the state, to check spying and propaganda wars by hostile states, to destabilize enemy states, to get rid of troublesome powerful people who could not be challenged openly. The spy operations and its targets, states verse 5.2.69 of Arthashastra, should be pursued "with respect to traitors and unrighteous people, not with respect to others".
Political advisers may recommend the role of virtue, but they always have a touch of Machiavelli about them, as see Chanakya (the so-called "Indian Machiavelli") and the popular legends that grew up around him:
Chanakya had two potential successors to Dhana Nanda: Pabbata and Chandragupta. He gave each of them an amulet to be worn around the neck with a woolen thread. One day, he decided to test them. While Chandragupta was asleep, he asked Pabbata to remove Chandragupta's woolen thread without breaking it and without waking up Chandragupta. Pabbata failed to accomplish this task. Some time later, when Pabbata was sleeping, Chanakya challenged Chandragupta to complete the same task. Chandragupta retrieved the woolen thread by cutting off Pabbata's head. For the next seven years, Chanakya trained Chandragupta for imperial duties.
Picking someone as future emperor on the basis of "ruthlessness in achieving objectives, including murder" is not really inclining towards "dishonour is the worst thing of all!"
HereAndGone
20d ago
it's hypocrisy if you say "the important professions, including journalism, have been taken over by women and this is bad for society" while holding senior positions in journalism as a woman. It's the alcoholic surgeon: "drinking is bad for you, you should give it up" "but you show up for work drunk every day!" "yeah well do as I say, not as I do". Who wants an alcoholic surgeon, no matter the level of their qualifications, operating on them? How am I to believe her cure for society's ills when she is taking jobs from men?
(That reminds me back when my class was fourteen and having debates on 'how to solve unemployment?' and one notion we got was "all the married women should stop working, that would then free up jobs for men". Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Society now requires both partners in a couple to be working, else you can kiss any chance of a mortgage, for one example, good-bye).
What makes you think this is sarcasm? I am going to the logical end of her argument. Granted, it's a reductio ad absurdum but it does follow on from what she claims.
(Also, I get to luxuriate in the gender essentialism of it all. You, dear mod, can't understand what is going on when it's woman versus woman! You are man-brained with man qualities and man virtues, you have no idea what the mysteries of the feminine mind entail, so you cannot intervene in our disagreement! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 This is not a matter of rationality, which is something reserved clearly and solely for the male of the species, but the mystic crystal revelation of feminine intuition and the rest of the blah Mrs. Andrews argues herself: "In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies." Step back and lemme get on with the undermining in my sneaky female way!)
If the professions are becoming increasingly feminised, if many are now majority female, if society is following suit and this will lead to disaster, then she is part of the rot herself. It doesn't matter if she's trying to argue "oh no, I got here on merit". It doesn't matter if she's One of the Good Ones. It doesn't matter if I'm Not Like Other Girls. By entering formerly male-dominated/majority male professions, she is part of the creeping tide of turning them majority female. By taking senior and leadership positions, she is undermining men by displacing male role models for young men and by blocking the career advancement of more senior men. Can she, as a woman, really claim to be able to mentor subordinate male employees and model leadership to them, in the way that is both appropriate and increasingly necessary in today's feminised world?
She should, if she is sincere, step back and step down. But this is the Land Acknowledgement trope. "This territory was unfairly and unjustly taken from the unwilling". "So are you going to give it back?" "Of course not!" So she's being a hypocrite.
Strong words, you say? Nothing more than her own argument turned upon her.
If wokeness really is the result of the Great Feminization, then the eruption of insanity in 2020 was just a small taste of what the future holds. Imagine what will happen as the remaining men age out of these society-shaping professions and the younger, more feminized generations take full control.
...Other fields matter more. You might not be a journalist, but you live in a country where what gets written in The New York Times determines what is publicly accepted as the truth. If the Times becomes a place where in-group consensus can suppress unpopular facts (more so than it already does), that affects every citizen.
The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.
...The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.
...The most obvious thumb on the scale is anti-discrimination law. It is illegal to employ too few women at your company. If women are underrepresented, especially in your higher management, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. As a result, employers give women jobs and promotions they would not otherwise have gotten simply in order to keep their numbers up.
...A lot can be inferred from the way that feminization tends to increase over time. Once institutions reach a 50–50 split, they tend to blow past gender parity and become more and more female. Since 2016, law schools have gotten a little bit more female every year; in 2024, they were 56 percent female. Psychology, once a predominantly male field, is now overwhelmingly female, with 75 percent of psychology doctorates going to women. Institutions seem to have a tipping point, after which they become more and more feminized.
That does not look like women outperforming men. It looks like women driving men away by imposing feminine norms on previously male institutions. What man wants to work in a field where his traits are not welcome? What self-respecting male graduate student would pursue a career in academia when his peers will ostracize him for stating his disagreements too bluntly or espousing a controversial opinion?
Right now we have a nominally meritocratic system in which it is illegal for women to lose. Let’s make hiring meritocratic in substance and not just name, and we will see how it shakes out. Make it legal to have a masculine office culture again. Remove the HR lady’s veto power.
Very well then, but what is the "right" or "correct" proportion of men to women in the workplace? What ratio of men to women in a profession or field? Forget meritocracy, because now we're talking about quotas, and those are every bit the fruit of wokeness that she decries. 50/50? Two-thirds male to one-third female? Three-quarters to one-quarter? It depends? Kindergartens should be majority female but going up the scale of schools, we end with high schools majority male teachers (the ladies can teach home economics) and colleges (save for specialised fields like nursing) all-male?
She convicts herself out of her own mouth: "What man wants to work in a field where his traits are not welcome?" And what man wants to work under a lady boss, even if that lady boss is Mrs. Andrews, former senior editor here and former managing editor there? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!
I am the mother of sons, who will never reach their full potential if they have to grow up in a feminized world.
And so she should yield the positions she has usurped to the rightful holders, men, and remain within the feminine sphere of domesticity, supporting the man in his career of risk-taking rationality, and raising those sons with the little feminine graces that soften the harsh edges of the competitive, striving male psyche so that they will be gentlemen as well as scholars. Let her lead by example! Has she ever considered she may have benefited from being a diversity hire as per her "anti-discrimination law" example? If she had to compete on strict merit, there were no men better than her? Part of Larry Summers' ill-expressed but not incorrect point about "“different availability of aptitude at the high end” applies just as much to her; it makes little difference that she is competing in the world of letters, since that world not so long ago was majority male and women's talents were held to lie in writing novels, if they must write, rather than factual reporting and scholarship. Even if Mrs. Andrews is smart (for a woman) there are still men out there smarter than her and thus better qualified for those jobs.
HereAndGone
21d ago
In September, I gave a speech at the National Conservatism conference along the lines of the essay above. I was apprehensive about putting forward the Great Feminization thesis in such a public forum.
That's the problem right there. This lady should step down and stop taking a place that rightfully belongs to a man, with the masculine qualities of rationality, risk, and competition, rather than cluttering up organisations and forcing them to stagnate with her feminine qualities of empathy, safety, and cohesion.
She should know her place and be content with being a secretary to the (male, of course) "senior editor at The American Conservative" and the "...managing editor of the Washington Examiner." Imagine the effrontery of this lady to take over such senior roles! Much better suited to support roles to enable the man to function efficiently as she uses those feminine qualities to ensure good office manners.
HereAndGone
22d ago
Oh, definitely grabbing for any kind of parallels, and if they can't find one, just invent it. There's enough fools out there who will believe it because someone on the Internet said so, they will never bother checking "what does an Iron Cross look like?"
HereAndGone
22d ago
That's why I think the best response is to say "No it isn't" and keep the merch up on the site. Some ambitious little wannabe influencer on TikTok sees a prime opportunity with Swift's new album out now to grab a piece of the attention economy pie with "this is Nazi!" (just like our kittykat pal here with the original post) and by reacting in such a manner, it's setting her/her business up for "well if it really was innocent, why did they take it down? it must be true!" further accusations.
Ignore the idiots is the only way to maintain any sanity.
HereAndGone
22d ago
I don't know, I was getting a hint of Impassionata, who has indeed recently popped back up over on rdrama.net with the same old song about TheMotte, ACX, Scott, and so forth.
HereAndGone
22d ago
So now we've moved from "they're Nazis, Harold" to "they're conservatives (which is the same thing)".
Why am I getting subtle hints of motte and bailey here?
HereAndGone
22d ago
News just in: well-known White supremacist Nazi dogwhistler Taylor Swift has been forced to remove an offensive necklace from her product line, due to the eagle-eyed TikToker who was able, with no margin of error at all, to identify it as offensive blatant Nazi symbolism:
The backlash began when TikTok user @Sampire1513, a self-described former Swiftie, posted a viral video dissecting the necklace’s design. She claimed the lightning bolt links resembled “SS bolts,” a symbol historically used by Nazi paramilitary groups.
She pointed out that the necklace contained eight bolts, which some white supremacist groups associate with the number “88” — code for “Heil Hitler.” She alleged that whether the resemblance was intentional or not, it reflected poor cultural awareness.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, both the SS bolts and the number 88 are widely recognised symbols of white supremacist hate. The TikTok creator also compared the star-shaped pendant to the Iron Cross, a German military medal later adopted by Nazis.
Just like them swastika flags, right? It had to be done on purpose, no way this could have 'just happened'. After all, she is an infamous alt-right icon!
HereAndGone
22d ago
Even Alexander can make reasonable points with which I agree every so often. Granted, it's a blue moon type of thing, but it does happen. So far, magicalkittycat is not even in "when all six planets line up" frequency.
HereAndGone
22d ago
Thanks for making my point for me. Don't hurt your backside as you plop down on the fainting couch.
HereAndGone
22d ago
If adopted, it certainly would make reading the Gospel at Sunday Mass a lot of fun 🤣
"4 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and observe: 5 the blind persons of low vision see, the lame persons with a mobility impairment walk, lepers those who are in need of dermatological services are cleansed receive appropriate medical care, the deaf persons with a hearing impairment hear, the dead are raised, and the destitute people whose incomes are below the federal poverty threshold hear the good news are empowered by targeted aid regarding their circumstances. 6 How blessed is anyone who is not offended by me does not commit microaggressions by the use of ableist language!”
HereAndGone
22d ago
The dispute is:
Person on left: "if you hold view A/believe thing B/do not agree with me on position C, you are a Nazi!"
The idea is "this is so terrible an accusation, any person wanting to be thought of as good or on the right, decent side will be so appalled, they will immediately change their views and drop the Nazi opinions".
The outcome, though, is "because everything and everyone has been called a Nazi, the sting of the accusation has faded". Hence the actual result is:
Person on right: "That makes me a Nazi? Guess I'm a Nazi, then!"
Outcome: person on left faints all over the place about "OMG, the righties really are Nazis! This person just came right out and admitted they were a Nazi!"
But the person on the right is thinking "I have good and sufficient reasons, in my opinion, to hold the views I do. Therefore, I am not going to shift my beliefs merely on the grounds of being called a bad name. I don't care if you think I'm a Nazi, I know I'm not a Nazi, so go right ahead and call me one; I don't care, it does not affect me, you might as well call me a lizard person from the planet Zogabong".
HereAndGone
22d ago
HereAndGone
22d ago
Somebody enlighten me, what was the slur verse of a Michael Jackson song (of all things)?
HereAndGone
22d ago
Ah, the Before Days. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. The same old same old trotted out and fought over until everyone was too exhausted to keep going and agreed to stop (much like the Wars of Religion in 16th to 18th century Europe).
HereAndGone
22d ago
HereAndGone
22d ago
Ah, that old friend instead of the other old friend I suspected!
HereAndGone
22d ago
I'm right-wing and I wouldn't wipe my shoes on Hanania. I think you're trying way too hard, to the point where I'm getting paranoid "are you Impassionata?" vibes.
HereAndGone
22d ago
Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.
I have no idea who Gaines is and I care even less, but as a former low-level public service minion that part made me laugh. The DHS in the USA is a hive of scum and villainy, huh? If you're a low-level employee, then you must be... dun-dun-dun... a Nazi!
Let's take a look at the demographics of the DHS (ain't statistics wonderful?) All them low-level female, disabled, BIPOC employees who are secret Nazis! Tidying up the table a bit:
White (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 51.7%
Hispanic or Latino 22.8%
Black or African American (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 16.7%
Asian 6.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native 1.0%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0.7%
Two or More Races 0.8%Male 65.4%
Female 34.6%
Individuals with Reported* Disabilities 15.4%
Individuals with Targeted** Disabilities 1.3%*"Reported disabilities" includes employees who self-identify as an individual with a disability or targeted disability ...and employees who were appointed under hiring authorities that take disability into account, i.e., 30% or More Disabled Veteran Appointment and Schedule A Hiring Authority, who have not otherwise self-identified as having a disability.
** "Targeted disabilities" are a subset of reportable disabilities that the Federal Government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis. Targeted disabilities listed on the SF-256 form include: developmental disability, traumatic brain injury, deaf or serious difficulty hearing, blind or serious difficulty seeing, missing extremities, significant mobility impairment, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy or other seizure disorders, intellectual disability, significant psychiatric disorder, dwarfism, and significant disfigurement.
Federal workforce in general, stats from 2023:
Sixty percent of the federal workforce identified as white compared to 76% in the private sector. Nearly 19% of the federal workforce identified as Black and 10% identified as Hispanic compared to 13% and 19% of the U.S. labor force, respectively.
While 40% of the federal workforce was comprised of individuals who identify as part of a racial or ethnic minority group, this number diminishes significantly at higher levels on the General Schedule scale. People of color make up much of the federal workforce in positions from the GS-2 to GS-6 level, these grade levels typically comprise lower and entry-level administrative positions. White employees make up much of the workforce above the GS-7 level, which consists of mid-level technical and first-level supervisory positions and top-level technical and supervisory positions.
Twenty-six percent of career Senior Executive Service members identified as a person of color in fiscal 2023, a small increase from 25% in the previous year. Of the federal workforce that was not on the GS scale, 37% identified as a person of color.
The overall federal workforce was 55% male and 45% female, compared to 53% male and 47% female in the total U.S. labor force.
Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions. Notably, 73% of GS-6 employees are female. Men made up much of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.
Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions, while men made up the majority of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.
Individuals who have served in the uniformed military service constituted a considerable segment of the federal workforce. At the end of fiscal 2023, 30% of federal employees were veterans compared to 5% of the total employed U.S. civilian labor force. In the same year, 25% of new federal hires were veterans.
In fiscal 2023, 21% of the federal workforce identified as having a disability or serious health condition. Of those employees, 2.7% indicated having a targeted or serious health condition and 7.8% identified as having other disabilities or serious health conditions. The other 10.5% of employees with a disability had either an unlisted or undisclosed disability.
Thirty-two percent of federal employees hold a bachelor’s degree, and another 21% have an advanced degree. Federal workers possess bachelor’s and advanced degrees at a higher rate than the overall U.S. labor force—53.8% to 40.4% in 2023.
So - feds are slightly less white and Hispanic and slightly more black than the general workforce, slightly more male, especially in higher-level/more technical grades (the higher up you go, the whiter and more male the management levels get, which tracks with private industry as well), more likely to be veterans, and somewhat better educated than the general workforce.
Pick your Nazis out of that.
HereAndGone
22d ago
See, I'd be way more convinced by the "no, nobody is trying to say that modern Nazis are members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei from back in the 30s" were they not, like magicalkittycat, so desperately dragging out "look! swastikas on flags! fascist salutes! they're Nazis!"
Make their damn minds up: if they don't mean "Nazi as in Hitler" then say so, but they can't. They want the connotations of "Nazi like Hitler, no literally, if you tolerate this then you will have the Fourth Reich" to whip up fear and loathing and resistance and opposition. But then they also want to try and make any critics of their hysteria look absurd by "no you idiot of course we don't mean literal Germans from 1936, you oaf, you buffoon, you cretin".
HereAndGone
22d ago
He's worn Trump sweaters and said "It's Trump 2024 or this country is going down the toilet" and "Everybody's got to go out there and fucking vote for Trump, especially if you live in Florida. Bro, he is the last stand we got, man".
So voting for Trump makes one a Nazi? Well, thanks for the clarification of your viewpoint.
HereAndGone
22d ago
At this stage, where everyone to the right of Karl Marx is a Nazi, I too am "Bring on the Nazis". If we're going to have fascists under every bush, let them be real fascists out in the open where we can fight them and not "well you are not convinced that someone can be a non-binary trans femme presenting masc butch two-spirit gender fluid genderqueer person with a feminine penis who is a Real Woman in every sense the same as your cis het self, so you are indeed Goering come again" fascists.
What is artificially high, though? If being majority female is wrong but majority male is right, how much admixture of female into a profession can you have before it tips over into "too much"? She claims that now women are flooding into professions and fields they are ruining those, but she also says that it's not a problem of having women in those fields as such. So we're back to "what proportion of journalism or medicine or law or education or working on an oil rig should be female?" and she doesn't answer that.
She's happy enough to be one of the women in the professions, which as I point out makes her part of the problem. Her answer seems to be "meritocracy! let men and women compete on equal terms!" Great, but what then if it still turns out more women than men make the grade?
More options
Context Copy link