Considering just Europe for a minute, the theory doesn't work very well either.
Northern Europeans are easily the largest and strongest European subgroup (outside of tiny Balkan groups that are taller), it's also the group that civilization came to last and despite all this it's also the most domesticated.
To me it seems that there are many ways to select for behaviour and various types of capacity.
You might think that but you would be wrong.
What has happened is very limited construction, large population growth and a massive credit expansion, leading to a price spiral. Cost increases in housing almost all exclusively comes from increases in land prices. Building is relatively cheap.
The vast majority are living in housing that was built before the 35 year price rally, not a single subway station has been added during that entire period.
Some people, like my family, have won big and are now (dollar)multimillionaires, due to no effort of our own. Others, like people from out of town or their children are just fucked.
Mostly cut spending leading to less generous benefits in a whole swathe of areas, pensions among them. Eventually economic growth allowed for lowering taxes, the initial decreases of which were likely a Pareto improvement due to their high level.
The point is that this wasn't the end of the world. The welfare state could still exist and be fairly generous (and shoulder the burden of ill-advised immigration) despite being balanced.
Ioper
5mo ago
Yeah, they're kind of shit and samey. You start to recognise everything about them, the way they're composed, how humans and animals look, the lighting, the contrast, which facial expressions they use etc.
That said, Corporate Memphis and generic stock photos were at least as bad or worse, and this tech seems to be rapidly improving. Maybe in a few years we'll actually have something spectacular and truly democratise visual art generation. We're almost there.
Ioper
6mo ago
Or take the Vikings. "Viking" means both to go on a raid or a trading mission. The Norse were renouned for both.
Ioper
6mo ago
Also you can easily find reluctant heroes/leaders. Moses, King Arthur, Brutus in Caesar etc.
I don't think it as common as it is today but it's hardly unheard of either.
Ioper
6mo ago
It's a bit funny to me that the general decrease in quality of writing in video games has somehow happened at the same time as a greatly increased focus on narrative and dialogue.
It will be interesting to see how GTAVI will do without Houser and in a much more high-strung social environment.
Ioper
1yr ago
Only, I've noticed older men that used to read having stopped/significantly decreased their reading, and they haven't picked up video gaming, while their female counterparts read as much as ever.
I used to read a lot but I'm frankly interested in very little fiction these days, written by either men or women. Getting a recommendation these days (especially for fantasy) feels like when someone recommends an isekai. No, it isn't different this time either, it's garbage.
Can someone explain the ongoing crisis in Israel? I have trouble making sense of it.
From what I see described online the leftwing (broadly defined) has made a series of anti-democratic grabs for power through the judiciary since the 90s through abusing the mess that is Israel's legal system.
The rightwing, now dominated by a combination of far rightists and religious extremists are unhappy about this and seeks to curtail the supreme court's ability to prevent legislation from happening based on shit all. The opposition to how the judiciary operates is broader than the current coalition in power but due to polarisation people can't agree on what should be done.
This makes everyone very mad. Both sides sees the conflict as existential and widespread protests are now happening.
The reform by itself isn't really bad on an object level, the issue is that Bibi is a piece of shit and parts of his coalition are extremists and people fear what they might do with the democratic mandate they've won.
People are so hysterical that I have trouble making sense of this and would appreciate for someone more in the know to add context and correct me where necessary. I'm open to having completely misunderstood this.
Ioper
1yr ago
White Americans fail along these metrics far above their European peers.
The murder rate of whites in america is well above twice that of western Europe's total rates when you don't account for the extreme overrepresnstion of non-whites in those statistics in Europe.
Consider Sweden with its recent murder spree and gang wars. The general murder rate is still about half that of white American murders.
The same extends to other areas. The rate of homelessness for white Americans is about 2-4x that of general homelessness in western Europe ( and far higher than any European nation), and the homeless are far more anti-social.
All that said, I don't think that adopting a "European" approach will necessarily solve America's issues, and the same goes for the growing issues in nations like Sweden.
Ioper
1yr ago
It seems to me that there could easily be two separate and sometimes overlapping things going on here.
There could be one group with the underlying physical cause and then the usual neurotic demographics that develop the same condition psychosomatically after it gets promoted for some reason (or people sorting their own different physical condition in under whatever label is hip or gets them resources and/or sympathy).
Or people have some more or less severe physical condition but the consequences of it gets magnified psychosomatically by the cultural understanding of the (or a similar) condition.
Ioper
1yr ago
Have you heard the cut Obi-wan lines from a new hope?
I was under the impression that the primary competitive advantage of african slaves were disease resistance to (primarily African) tropical diseases that the very small amount of initial African slaves (or sailors?) brought over.
Before those tropical diseases were widespread white (and indigenous) workers did just fine in the tropical areas of the americas and were willing to go over and work for competitive rates. After the spread of the diseases people were much less willing to go unless paid well (and if they did many died), which obviously doesn't work very well for low skill labour.
It wasn't until the development of things like Quinine that things started to really change.
Ioper
16d ago
Inflation adjusted housing costs in Stockholm have risen +500% in the last 30 years, and its not like it was some thirdie shithole before.
Ioper
1mo ago
Supporting Palestine and hating Palestinians aren't mutually exclusive positions. If I was Egypt and I hated Palestinians I would very much be pro Palestine because that means the Palestinians stay the fuck away and you have somewhere to expel palestinians in your land to.
Ioper
3mo ago
Everything doesn't have solve root causes. Sometime you just need some pain relief and be reminded of what having fun is like.
Obviously you shouldn't rely on alcohol as your long-term solution having fun.
I'm a bit curious, how are the rest of you stacking up against that chart?
I've never been above a 2 and I'm a bit of a slob. I don't even think I've been in a home that's at a 4 and I can count the number of threes on one hand.
I think you have to consider what was happening in Japan, I don't think what Hitler did or thought affected this much at all. They lost decisively at Khalkhin Dol in '39, which lead to them focusing on going south instead of into Russia. If they had won or drawn there they might have chosen to go north instead of south.
Or maybe what if they just went into Russia rather getting bogged down in China and subsequently getting into a war with the entire west? If that happened it's harder to see the US cutting them off from oil and the USSR would likely have been fucked. The Chinese communists would likely also have lost the civil war and we might have had a second massive war after ww2 between an aggressive nationalist Japan and an aggressive nationalist China.
It would have been a very different world.
Owning a home really changes the incentive structure.
Sure, it leads to rent seeking.
because it turns out you can just vote yourself other people's wealth.
Indeed. We in the big cities vote ourselves the provincials wealth by limiting housing construction. Very good for me personally but hardly good for the economy overall.
My impression is that people are discovering just how bad the real productivity of the median Indian consultant is so they're moving away from using them. Hire the real elite, sure, but even the above average are mostly not worth the effort, at any price.
The people you are interacting with in America are an extremely filtered sample, even by the standards of Indian émigrés.
That criminologist can say whatever she wants, it has little to no bearing on what the ruling rightwing coalition is doing or what the social democratic opposition says they want to do.
Don't read the guardian, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
Ioper
6mo ago
Try to get it to depict an average American... It refuses because its a perpetuates harmful stereotypes! LMAO
I don't think you have to go that far. Just be moderately high status in some way and not a massive sperg, the latter of which I realize is an impossible standard for many.
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