MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
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User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
7hr ago
The difference between those things you’ve described as historically common, which I agree is accurate, and a more generic “deliberate cruelty as deterrent for mass illegal migration” is that the latter has not been supplanted by anything clearly superior.
The Industrial Revolution killed chattel slavery & most extreme institutional types of patriarchy. It substituted a physical technology in place of a social one; it was made possible to permanently discard old ways through sheer power of technology.
The same cannot be said about of the problem of mass migration and the erosion of the hosts’ social environment that it causes.
As I’ve stated before, the only possible way this can be completely ignored is if the framing simply doesn’t acknowledge or value the social solidarity provided by the nation at all; it requires a wholesale denial or blindness to the glue that binds various societies together since time immemorial.
As a former libertarian, I’m frankly embarrassed by how blind I was to these basic social truths. On X, a pithy little tweet described libertarianism as “truly the only equivalent of feminism for men.” Which made me chuckle; the theory only works if you’re willingly or unknowingly blind to social forces which make the political possible in the first place.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
18hr ago
I suspect his list of “countries worth defending” is paper thin in both time and space, as if political morality only started 70 years ago.
Liberal internationalists are almost all like this. It’s terminal recency bias.
It’s like that meme about liberals lecturing Christians about Jesus; “No, I don’t believe in your backwards ideas, but if I say the right things you might do what I want.”
Substitute The Nation for Jesus and you’ve got it pegged; in reality they don’t think any nation is really worth defending on its own terms, they never have, and they never will. It’s total anathema to them. When pressed, they don’t even think The Nation exists or should exist, or they believe in it in only the vaguest, wishy washy terms.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
18hr ago
That’s not true, if you’ve lived in or near a beach town or ski town there’s plenty of serving staff who only work in a restaurant a portion of the year, every year.
They just work like crazy to make enough money to support themselves on a part time job or unemployed for the remainder for the year.
It’s like a tour of duty. There’s lots of industries that are hyper seasonal and / or are intensive for short amounts of time.
Oil workers are like that, for example. Fisherman, cowboys, that’s just off the top of my head.
Some people really love the freedom of working extremely hard for part of the year and consequently fucking off for the rest of the year.
So, most of the countries that have existed in the entirety of human history are not worth defending?
Inter-ethnic conflict that expresses itself in “cruelty as deterrent” is as historically common as the summer rain. It’s currently happening in multiple places, and depending on where you live, it’s happened in the recent past. In your backyard.
I find it rather hubristic to tell someone from the baltics, the balkans, the eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia that their country isn’t worth defending.
This is very “rootless cosmopolitan” coded.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
7d ago
Easily one of the most important and immediately impactful business decisions of my lifetime.
I’m amazed at people’s ability to forget how bad things were in 2020 / 2021 on the internet.
I suppose it’s easy to forget the constant fear /r/TheMotte was living under for years if you were always willing to jump ship to /r/TheSchism or some other wasteland full of doe-eyed quokkas ever willing to castrate themselves to placate the eye of Sauron
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9d ago
Oh, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. Many a night in my youth I’ve absolutely housed a steaming cheesesteak after a late night shift and a couple beers under the soft glow of the Wawa parking lot lamps.
It’s no coincidence that Wawa is endemic to the ancestral homeland of the Amerikaner, god’s own country.
I know when I start to see Sheetz I’m leaving the grace and beauty of my native land and entering a lesser world
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9d ago
Wawa nationalist
Yeah, that checks out.
Soon brother, soon.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
They have a more diverse array of “market dominant minorities” so they’re more familiar with the concept in general and yet less familiar with the particular expression of the phenomena re: the Jews. Which explains their thoughts on the subject.
They have market dominant minorities in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia & more…
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
“Poasting”.
Real mottezin hours up in this bitch.
It and memes using the audio / poasts discussing the phenomenon are doing massive numbers on X, the only platform it’s not actively being suppressed on.
So… yes.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
A little hidden gem in that forum thread is the mention of spelunky;
While not as famous as Minecraft, I think it was actually more influential on the history of gaming writ large.
I also played the original freeware version of it and was blown away by it, it came out only a bit before early Minecraft. It totally blew me away and was also an early trendsetter for procedural generation, and basically spawned an entire genre of games and various subgenres.
Legitimately one of the greatest games ever made.
But in retrospect
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
I first played it in late 2009 when it was still super primitive, even before alpha, and I was basically instantly blown away by it even in its simplest form. I’m an elder millennial and I was in my 20s at the time, having just started my career.
I might have legitimately been one of the first 100,000 people to play Minecraft in the world.
It’s incredibly funny when I tell kids this, they look at me like I’m a wizened old sorcerer when I spin tales of the old country. My own kids aren’t old enough to understand but where I tell a kid who’s 9-12 about old Minecraft it blows their little minds.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
No, but the criticisms of the scene on an aesthetic level really hit home for me. It really does look like a mid market cell phone commercial.
And when annoying midwits effusively praise something so underwhelming, it’s basically impossible to unsee.
Vibe killed, so I’ll skip. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to watch when I have free time.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
So you have no theory of mind for Trump, his team or his supporters?
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
Also, geography.
Iraq is pretty flat and featureless other than the giant rivers; a classic border region or “March” where two powers clash.
Iran is an absolute nightmare of jagged peaks and long mountain valleys which is many times easier to defend and hide in.
All the technology on the world can’t completely compensate for good ground.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
Flat frictionless plains with spherical cows, where the planner’s plans can shine.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
That may be partly true but tariffs are something he’s literally been talking about since like the 80s. This particular issue should have been the least surprising of anything he’s ever talked about.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
It’s been apparent to me for years and years that the vast, vast majority of opponents to Trump & Trumpism have little to no theory of mind when it comes to their political enemies. Sometimes even proudly so, boasting of their ignorance from the rooftops as if it grants them high status.
They fail the intellectual Turing test over and over because of the iron information bubble they’ve built for themselves, and even when they leave the physical bubble to places like this where open Trump support isn’t instantly banned / siloed / throttled / etc, often the bubble still exists in mind. Even now after the walls have come down in social media and the censorship has cooled, even if only relatively.
Many are incapable of simple listening, not even to speak of comprehension. It’s too late, They’re Not Going To Make It, and they have no idea what’s in store for them.
Sad!
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
My Neighbor Totoro?
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
2mo ago
wallfacers
This is the absolute pinnacle concept of that series. I’m not exactly an AI skeptic, I truly think it will revolutionize the entire world in my lifetime.
But rationalists constantly underestimate the power and grace of intuition in service of subversion. Humans absolutely excel at it, and I can’t envisage a world where they are overtaken by machines in this particular task. It’s too messy, too inexact, too chaotic.
Under constant total surveillance and crushing power imbalances, prisoners develop their own occult economy, rituals, alliances, symbology, etc etc etc. the prison which is not in fact run by the prisoners is the unstable exception only bought by extreme and unwavering competence & creativity, not the rule.
People regularly deceive themselves in a richly woven pattern that only they themselves can unlock.
Deceiving a rationalistic / probabilistic super intelligence?
Child’s play. GG EZ.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
3mo ago
That would be pretty funny if done on purpose.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
3mo ago
This is an obvious tactic, it even has a recognized name if I remember. “Washington monument syndrome”, from the act of closing a high visibility and popular attraction to affect maximum outrage.
High level bureaucrats get to where they get by knowing how to play the game and defend their turf. Cutting their budgets is a direct threat to their power, so instead of trimming the fat they immediately cut into muscle and bone to cause maximum observable negative effects.
If you’re a librarian, instead of cutting unpopular programs or reorganizing for a leaner institution you cut staff hours at the front desk, maximizing wait times, then blame it on the mean old politicians who just hate children and reading. Same thing with national parks, I rolled my eyes when I saw they cut that locksmith and shut down the bathrooms, it was so transparently designed to be maximally disruptive and silly.
But this is just politics 101, its easy to see if you’ve ever interacted with any of these people.
Sinecures for the politically connected? Untouched. Programs and initiatives that play to the party faithful of radical activists? Reshuffled, renamed, hidden from view.
Beloved symbols that are popular with a huge swathe of the public? Tragically closed, so sad, so avoidable if mean old republicans and townies just learned their place.
Utterly predictable.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
3mo ago
Furthermore, despite obvious structural problems the USA is economically much healthier than the EU, Canada & Mexico.
So from a leverage / bargaining position tariffs make a certain sort of sense; we are much more well placed to absorb the hit and bounce back. It’s like a Mexican standoff where one person has a Kevlar vest and the other person has the shakes from alcohol withdrawal.
It’s completely in line with the “Daddy’s home” / “My house my rules” vibe that sustains the MAGA movement. Trump has been entirely consistent in his sentiment that the USA has been taken for a ride by its supposed closest allies and partners, and it’s time to play our hand. He’s been saying it for like thirty years, it’s his most deeply help political belief as far as I can tell.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
3mo ago
This is a fair point, and that’s why I said it’s not a precise comparison.
Do we have examples of elections being held in circumstances exactly like Ukraine’s? I genuinely don’t know, although I know elections have been held in war torn countries before.
I disagree. Institutions and memeplexes exist in a positive or negative feedback loop in relation to its constituents, it’s not unidirectional like an impossibly neat organizational chart; not only is the whole more than the sum of its parts, but the sum of the parts are a function of the sum of the whole.
Individuals and institutions push and mold each other and they have values independent of each other but separately the whole equation shifts.
When I was younger I saw as criticism of globalism & neoliberal economics a term; “Autistic economics”. I laughed when I saw it at first but I think there was a there there in the criticism.
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