KingOfTheBailey
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User ID: 1089
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
The problem is that the entire point of EA is to stop making decisions using base human impulses and think for a second or two about what's actually going to do the most good. Hence bednets, hence deworming, hence "I care about the suffering of shrimp", hence "annihilate all existence so there's no possibility of suffering", etc. This is a movement that via memes such as "80,000 hours", "the giving what we can pledge", and "earning to give" asks people to redirect nontrivial chunks of their lifetime earning capacity, which those people could have instead used to improve their own lives, or the lives of their families, friends and local communities.
Any redirection of the movement away from this mission is waste by its own definition. That its elites have decided to screw around with polyamory instead of doing the maximally-effective thing in the world reminds me more of a new-age religious sex cult than a movement genuinely interested in improving the world.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
As we learned from the sudden banning of Dr. Seuss from every mainstream online marketplace, there won't be any integrity. These will be treated as the only versions that ever existed, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
KingOfTheBailey
4mo ago
It's not about revenge. It's that activists have systematically taken over the academy and have been trading on its prestige to implement their goals. The result is that it's not at all clear from the outside who is there to just do actual science, and who is an activist doing activism with scientific trappings. Worse, the academy has become completely untrustworthy, so we can't ask the people who would know; they'd just run cover for each other. So, with a heavy heart, we voted for someone to take a flamethrower to the system and we'll see what green shoots come out of the ashes.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
Is there a youth backlash brewing against LGBT?
I came up out of the subway the other day, and nearly my entire field of view was filled by a massive glowing screen full of flapping pride flags, wall-to-wall and six feet tall. It was a project by some charity or other claiming that "hate crimes" (or victimization, or incidents, or whatever they measure) jump by 60% during pride month. I've been so burned out by the sight of that flag everywhere that the only reaction I can muster is "maybe stop being so obnoxious about it then?" From the POSIWID perspective, one could consider the purpose of pride month to be to spike hostility against LGBT people, so why do it?
A long tweet from sci-fi author Devon Eriksen claims that pride month is downstream of the "toaster fucker" problem, in reference to an ancient greentext. Condensed: the internet brings together people with bizarre niche interests (what he calls "toaster fuckers" — he claims it's meant to be a general term but he's clearly writing about the LGBT theater of the CW). A supportive online community stops these people from leaving the toaster in the kitchen and adjusting to the normal world around them, and instead these online groups metastasize, eventually spilling over into the wider world: intra-group status competitions start with "who can fuck the most toasters", lead to "'toaster-fucker pride' bumper stickers" and then "bragging about how they sneak into other people's kitchens and fuck their toasters, too" and "swapping tips for how to introduce kids to the joys of toaster-fucking."
I think I agree with some of that description but not all of it, and may write it up in another thread if I get time, but it's not so important for this post. I need it as context for the bit that I think is more accurate: the normies getting fed up with all the toaster-fucking, the backlash, and the response (lightly edited to concatenate multiple small tweets, but no words changed):
Pretty soon normal people, who ten years before would shrugged and said "that's weird", are now sick of toaster-fucker flags everywhere and their kids being told to fuck toasters by sickos, and now they're going to burn every toaster-fucker flag they see, and Florida just passed a law requiring you to be 21 years old with proof of ID to buy a toaster. And Utah has banned toasters altogether and the Mormons have stopped even eating toast, bagels, waffles, or any other heated bread product.
But it doesn't stop there, either. Because a few toaster-fuckers get beaten with fence posts by people sick of hearing about toaster-fucking, and other people, who didn't see or hear the toaster-fuckers' prior behavior, say "holy shit, toaster fuckers really are oppressed". And they decide to become "toaster-fucker allies", despite the fact that they haven't the slightest real interest in fucking any toasters themselves.
I think this explains the split in normie opinion pretty well: red states have had more than enough and that's led into the various legal battles that Devon alludes to, school choice advocacy, campaigns to replace progressive school boards, etc. I don't think I've seen "beaten with fenceposts"-level backlash (I figure it would pop up here if it was an issue), but even the memory of such events in the semi-recent past could explain normie "I want to be a good person so I'll call myself an ally"-ism. Compare the number of "racist hate crime" hoaxes over the past few years, to the point where "the demand for racism exceeds its supply" has become a dark joke among cynical online commentators. I don't think I've seen LGBT activists fabricate incidents (certainly none as badly as Jussie Smollett did), but it seems useful for a group to have opposition to keep its supporters energized ("our work is not yet done!") and I could definitely see obnoxious pride month displays as accidentally serving this function.
Onto youth. A recent tweet by a newish Twitter account, America_2100, claims a drop in support for LGBT over the past few years (2022–2023: US-wide: -7 points; Republicans: -15 points, to a 10-year low of 41%; Democrats: -6 points; "young people": -8 points). In particular, they claim Gen Z's support for gay marriage dropped by 11 points between 2021 and 2023, which is double the time span of the other stats but could indicate an ongoing decline in support. Unfortunately the tweet doesn't source the surveys it refers to beyond saying that it came from PRRI and I don't have hard data beyond a couple of anecdotes. Lime, a scooter rental company, made a pride-flag crosswalk in Washington a 'walk-the-scooter' zone after several teenagers were arrested for leaving skid marks on it. I saw a recent comment on a gaming subreddit (sorry, I can't find it), in response to yet another pride-month-themed mod, saying something like "don't be discouraged! 50% upvotes for a pride mod is pretty good these days". But when I interact with university students, the discourse is still very pro-LGBT: they talking about being excited for pride events, etc.
So, questions for the floor:
- Do you see a "vibe shift" around attitudes towards LGBT, and if so, is it generational?
- Have you seen any discussion on the progressive side around changing strategy?
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
I want to identify and discuss a stealth-CW trick that I find particularly irritating: the use of (predominately left-leaning) CW positions used as examples in some other piece of work. I mostly notice this in technical articles: you might be reading an article about writing a program that prints to the console, and the example code will say something like:
print 'Eat the rich' # or some other lefty slogan
I find this quite insidious: it normalizes left viewpoints in a way that's hard to argue against. If you try to say anything, you risk being accused of derailing the discussion with irrelevant politics or otherwise being a Bad Person who violates the norms of a forum. Has anyone seen any examples of this and/or successful arguments deployed against it?
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
John Carter: The Bud Light Military
(Or, to use the better title from the comments: "Achilles Shrugged")
I'm not familiar with the author, who seems to be yet another online right substackker. He asserts that America's military capabilities are being stretched increasingly thin (Ukraine, possibly Israel, potentially Taiwan) while the armed forces are missing their recruiting targets. This is the background to his main claim: that the core demographics of America's fighting force ("the Scots-Irish of the Appalachian regions, the good ol’ boys of the South, and the farm boys of the Midwest. Hillbillies and rednecks") have become so sick of the sneering racist abuse that they aren't signing up to fight any more, and while the US Army has tried to go back to a more "traditional" style of ad where white men parachute out of a helicopter, it's failed to bring back the volunteers. Carter compares a previous ad for the US Army ("Emma", the girl with two moms who operates Patriot missile defense systems, roundly mocked at the time by comparisons to a Russian recruiting ad) to the new ad that dropped on 11/6, "Jump" (Twitter, YouTube). Carter parallels it with the attempt at brand rehabilitation like the one Bud Light tried after the Dylan Mulvaney boycott, and if the comment sections of Twitter, YouTube, and his article are anything to go by, it's not going to work either.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
It's Skookum, that's just one of his axioms. It seems that his goal is to create a pill so black that light cannot bounce off it at all, and then force himself to swallow it. Why? I cannot tell.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
The way euthanasia has broadened runs disturbingly parallel to the way trans and abortion slid down their respective slopes. Legal euthanasia was legislated on the back of activism asking that terminally-ill old people be allowed a dignified release from unbearable suffering, while they still had their ability to consent. Trans activism used sympathetic cases of deeply dysphoric individuals whose transition alleviated life-long suffering. Abortion activists spoke of desperate young rape victims needing a safe, legal, and rare option for a truly horrible situation.
And now we have young people committing suicide with government blessing, as well as Canada's health system telling a veteran "maybe you should KYS"; irreversible medications, surgeries, and everything you see on LibsOfTikTok pushed with very little care or safeguards; and up-to-birth or even partial-birth abortions. "Oh, that's just the slippery slope fallacy" no longer cuts it with me - I need to see the left make a credible commitment to a limiting principle before I even think about supporting their next cause.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
Yes, Republicans have been calling Biden senile for years. But even as early as his inauguration ceremony he was repeating instructions from an earpiece ("salute the marines") instead of following them. I don't object to the earpiece itself here: it's fair enough that for a big event like inauguration you might have someone giving you cues, but he's been wobbly since the start and only gone downhill. There were also a few instances where he appeared very confused about what documents he was signing and when he should sign them, but I can't find the good clips of that online any more.
KingOfTheBailey
5mo ago
Recent iterations of windows are tolerable as an operating system for a gaming-only machine, though.
Modern versions of Windows don't crash like they used to, but you don't have to install BonziBuddy to get a machine full of ads any more; they bundle the ads with the OS now.
KingOfTheBailey
10mo ago
Personally, I would like to pass on my own terms before I lose the ability to consent, and do not want to see my elderly relatives tortured to life by the medical system.
Unfortunately, Canada has showed how easy it is for euthanasia to become a vehicle to shuttle out any medically inconvenient citizens. This has flipped me back from supporting euthanasia to opposing it.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
There's also the "TikTok-induced Tourette's" thing. It makes me wonder how much mental illness in general could be induced by awareness-raising.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
“Did you just divorce-shame me?” she demanded indignantly, as if he’d violated some well-established principle of etiquette.
We could stop doing things like that. Just stop digging.
The reply could at least be "yes, and you deserved it". Removing shame is one of the dumbest things western culture has done, IMHO.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
My understanding of "roll left and die", at least according to Hoyt, was different. I read it as the members of a failing institution going full mask-off because they no longer had anything to lose, and signalling allegiance to the left bought them status.
I don't know if "dilute/abandon your message in the hopes of not turning away potential members, and alienate your base" has a pithier name. It's not quite the same as "get woke, go broke".
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
Don't listen to the feminists. You are not a monster for being attracted to women, It is okay for men to like women, it's okay to court women you're interested in, sex is not something men take from women but rather something men and women can share. Don't have such a stick up your ass about proper behavior. Instead, enjoy flirting with the cute girl at the supermarket, or at college, or...
Maybe then I wouldn't have missed the signals. Maybe then I wouldn't have been too scared to say something. Maybe then I wouldn't have waited for an imagined thing with the girl back home who wasn't that interested. Maybe then I wouldn't be the last one left as all my friends paired off and started families.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
If you assume these are pathologically controlling busy bodies, which I think you are right to assume, the fact that anybody can program anything probably terrifies them. They barely understand technology to begin with.
It's worse than that. "SJW's can't code" is a dead meme from 2014 or so. The existence of the Rust community proves that there's now a technical community of true believers, not just entryists writing Codes of Conduct.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
I hoped for that in 2016, but nobody seemed interested in reflection then. Six years of TDS later, do you have a reason to believe that this time will be any better?
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
In case it helps, here's my experience as an online rightish guy who's become interested in Catholicism, though I don't go around posting le epic Deus Vult memes. Would I feel the truth of it? No, and I worry about that sometimes. Currently, I consider conservative Christianity good, in that it binds families together, brings people together across generations, and have definitely noticed that the Christians I know lead better lives, etc. But I don't know if I can (or will ever) consider it true, which is a source of concern and some despair to me, because if I can't get to that, then I feel like I'm damaging their group by being there. As for the wilder stuff like sedevacantism, I was lucky enough that the group I found seems to have its head screwed on. I spoke to one of the lay Brothers about the Church leadership, and he said that they respect and obey the Pope while disagreeing with him, pray for him a lot to help him make better decisions, hold out hope that things will change, and believe they get the Popes they deserve.
But even from the secular pit I've dug myself into, there's been some interesting moments. Sitting and contemplating the quiet and stillness before Mass has been beautiful, and while I can't say I've felt presence there, it's been wonderful to enjoy the absence of outside noise and chatter. It's also been interesting to have spent a lot of time reading about and working on psychological integration and then have another parishioner just casually mention that "sin divides man from God, but it also divides man from himself". Duh! No wonder we're all such messes!
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
Is there a conclusion, some big lesson to learn? I don't know. But maybe it's an interesting data point for how the culture war projects down to the periphery such as Hungary.
If you take @KulakRevolt's most recent article seriously, the correct social immune response to a foreign meme is to react immediately to shut it down. Better that it's done with repainting and national colors than a can of petrol.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
deporting some relatively small number of non-citizen foreigners
There's a "Zero to One" sort of effect here, though: once you have a legal mechanism in place to effect something like this, expanding the program looks like a small tweak to an accepted policy instead of a radical shift.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
On anything vaguely controversial, it is really worth reading the talk page and checking the edit history. This is one of the best and least-used things about Wikipedia: you can inspect the sausage as it's being made.
KingOfTheBailey
1yr ago
The suppression of the Hunter Biden story and the plans outlined in in the TIME Magazine article show that the blob doesn't need to stuff ballots or change totals; they have (had?) enough power over the inputs to the voting system that such crass measures were unnecessary.
KingOfTheBailey
2yr ago
Peterson of all people said it very well. There are actually four heads of government power: Judicial, Legislative, Executive, and Symbolic. In America, the last two are assigned to the POTUS, which causes a bunch of problems, but in England it keeps celebrity nonsense stuff safely contained and away from the formal power (and causes a different set of problems instead).
As written in the ancient greentexts:
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