Mer
9mo ago
So many you just don't respect women?
I wouldn't put it like that. I just really enjoy being male, all of my interests are deep inside "man" territory and as such there's really nothing on the feminine side of the spectrum that makes me go "oh yeah, I'd want that for myself".
I'm pretty lucky thus far and haven't been stabbed, although I have had to pick some decent sized shards of broken bottle out after one nasty incident, I was lucky to not need stitches. No breaks either, although I've dislocated my right shoulder twice and my nose tends to dramatically explode into a fountain of blood whenever someone so much as taps it. Closest I've been to lawsuits/charges over fighting was when I broke another kids leg when I was in my late teens.
I've worked security in a few bars and spent my younger years doing MMA; I've heard similar lines from a lot of 'tough guys' who've never thrown a punch in their lives.
I swear some former doorman always pops up to say this whenever the topic of fighting comes up online, as if you need credentials to make poor life choices. I get into fights because I get angry and make bad decisions in the heat of the moment, I enjoy them because the adrenaline and catharsis of releasing a lot of anger into my surroundings drowns out the pain and fear I would normally feel for doing something so reckless. It's not smart, but it feels amazing.
Mer
9mo ago
cold logical rationality's argument can be reduced to "my survival is a priority"
It can also be reduced to letting others survive at the expense of yourself, what is logical depends entirely on what your values and goals are.
Mer
9mo ago
Over the years online I've encountered a few people who make this kind of argument and I have to say that it baffles me.
I'm a man and I can honestly say I've never for a moment felt envious of women and I really don't understand the people who say that if they could choose, they would choose to be born as a woman. The only thing you've really listed that bothers me is child support and custody, I've got no kids myself but I feel for the good fathers who get a raw deal from the courts.
The "minimum deal" of life for men is worse than for women. The "minimum deal" for women seems to be "get married." The minimum deal for men seems to be: become homeless and kill yourself, if you aren't murdered first.
I'll take being homeless thanks, I'd much rather be bum-fighting a junkie than live my life as any woman. I've been in plenty of fights, brawls and various other flavours of fracas over the course of my life and I've enjoyed them all thus far, I don't know what the hell your average woman does to pass the time nowadays (eat hot chip and lie?) but I have to imagine it would be deathly boring by comparison.
Mer
9mo ago
I've got to be honest, I was fully expecting this to be yet another "trust me bro, it's good I swear", but that was actually great.
I might actually give this show a watch now and I watch damn little TV.
Mer
9mo ago
Because it's inherently engaging with the series on a very superficial level.
I'd say if you're at the point of writing fan fiction about a setting you're past the point of being "superficially" a fan of something.
A fan is not defined by how much they "get" their chosen obsession, it is defined by the level of enthusiasm/passion for it.
Being moved to write gay fanfiction that completely misses the point of the setting makes someone as much a fan as a person that memorises pointless trivia (who also misses the point of the setting, but in a male way rather than a female way).
Mer
10mo ago
The song was insanely popular at the time, but of course, someone who's chosen to write a book about why said popular song is ackshually not cool at all is a far better arbiter of coolness than the general population.
Mer
10mo ago
if you filter out all the dumb people, only smart people end up forming groups
More likely you get no groups forming at all, as the number of smart people who also want to join or form radical terrorist groups in the US is so small that the odds of enough of them actually connecting with one another to make a meaningfully sized network are practically non-existant. The exception to this is when you have places where smart malcontents may end up naturally gathering, like universities, which you should be monitoring closely to break up any nascent networks in their infancy.
Clearly the FBI are good at their jobs, the kind of attacks that the modern US regularly faces are not ones conducted by organised groups, but are instead almost always lone wolves and lack any sort of staying power, usually being "one and done" terrorists.
Mer
10mo ago
I think presumably the implication is that the FBI believes that ISIS truly does recruit online and that by re-routing some of the would-be terrorists to them, they are taking away "real" terrorists.
That's similar to my thinking, I would imagine that the justification is that they're clearing out the proverbial deadwood. This approach also has the added benefit of reducing the probability of these kinds of people forming their own groups and deterring smarter people from attempting to reach out and join/form their own groups.
I would say it's a sound strategy.
I think you're underselling it - the Russian position has been, since before the conflict even started, that they view western missile interdiction systems being placed in Ukraine as an existential threat (as they believe it would give the US government the false impression that they could initiate a nuclear exchange without reprisal). There aren't just dead russian soldiers and destroyed russian weapons on those roads - there are plenty of mushroom clouds as well.
Their position was blatant posturing then, it's blatant posturing now. The Russian leadership is not stupid and they are not suicidal, the use of nuclear weapons, in any quantity, by Russia in this war is the fastest way for them to lose this war and in ways infinitely worse for the Russian leadership than any loss that can be inflicted on them upon the battlefield in Ukraine. The very best outcome that can be reasonably expected is that Russia loses the last friendly relations they currently have, as China (a nation very strongly invested in maintaining the nuclear taboo) turns against Russia and the country becomes a true pariah, followed not long after by near complete economic collapse. The worst outcome is that the entire Russian leadership and everyone they care about dies, either in a blinding flash of light, or from an agonizingly protracted death from radiation poisoning, along with their entire civilisation. Russia won't use nuclear weapons until tanks are hours away from Moscow and even then it's not terribly likely beyond tactical nuclear weapons, the consequences of using nuclear weapons in the modern age are, in almost every case, an order of magnitude worse than the consequences of not using them.
Russia is attempting to leverage its ridiculously oversized nuclear arsenal to frighten civilians in the west, ignorant of nuclear strategy, into pressuring western leaders to reduce support for Ukraine. They've put down "red line" after "red line" only to do nothing when they are crossed, because they know the consequences if they do try and play the nuclear card and they want absolutely nothing to do with it. The strategy hasn't been a total failure, the threats give those in the west eager for reasons to ditch Ukraine an argument they can trot out and I'm fairly certain it's at least partially responsible for the slow roll out of western weapons to Ukraine, but I'd personally put that down more towards western politicians trying to win the war with the least possible expense, not understanding that this strategy will instead prolong the war.
I think a far more likely motivation for Putin holding forces back in reserve is to prepare for a potential NATO escalation that involves US troops being deployed in force, and this matches up to both the statements of the Russian government and the current situation on the ground.
If you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you. The US isn't putting serious numbers of boots on the ground in Ukraine, most you'd possibly see is the USAF deployed to do some Desert Storm type missions in support of the Ukrainians on the ground, but that's extremely unlikely. The reality is that the American establishment simply does not care enough about Russia to do something like that, not when China is eyeing Taiwan and trying to extend its influence. Russia has been effectively contained, even if they win in Ukraine they're spent for a generation at least, probably forever. Finland has joined NATO and Sweden has in all but name, Europe is collectively rearming in a way that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago and will be able to deal with Russia without having to heavily rely on american intervention. Of course the US would prefer a Ukrainian victory (although they're divided internally over what that looks like), but they're not willing to expend much to achieve that victory and certainly not American blood.
I don't think that Putin is scared of the domestic consequences - his approval rating has gone up since the conflict started. Hell, he's actually doing substantially better in terms of approval rating than Biden is. I find it rather amusing that your framing of this paints a picture of Putin's government being substantially more beholden to and dependent upon public opinion than the USA
The position of an autocrat is a strange one, they are less beholden to their people than leaders in more democratic societies, but are simultaneously in greater fear of them. The threshold for discontent that would cause a leader to be replaced in a democratic society may be far lower than that found in autocratic societies, however a similar relationship exists in terms of the consequences for the deposed leader. Democratic leaders get to retire into private life, autocrats are dragged out of pipes and sodomised to death with bayonets. The fate of Gaddafi apparently deeply affected Putin and has influenced much of his thinking since, Tsar Nicholas the second probably also weighs quite heavily on his mind these days. If I were him I'd be pretty damn cautious right about now, it doesn't help that the nature of autocratic systems means they tend to stifle the warning signs until everything goes up.
Mer
10mo ago
Russians can also now launch operations from the North and Ukraine has to defend.
They could, but they probably won't. Russia has shown zero real desire to start seriously engaging along another front since they withdrew from north of Kiev. More likely Russia sends some bottom of the barrel troops to hold the line, perhaps even resorting to sending conscripts, but Putin seems very scared of involving any of them in the war, even when the law says he could. Offensive operations require motivated troops, which Russia has been burning through with alacrity and they'd be better used fighting somewhere that matters. Overall the Ukrainians running the war have shown themselves to be competent, they've mostly been making sensible moves on the macro level, they know the situation on the ground better than probably anyone else and I don't think they'd do something as big as launching raids into Russia unless they felt that it was really advantageous.
Overall I believe actions that might force further mobilisation in Russia are not good for Ukraine.
Further mobilisation is going to happen regardless, the only thing that's going to stop another wave of mobilisation is if one side folds before it gets to that, which seems exceedingly unlikely at this point. Or Putin decides that it's too politically risky and he'd rather lose the war, which also seems unlikely. You don't win wars by being afraid of seriously hurting your enemy, you do so by shattering their will or ability to fight. Putin has made it clear that the roads to those objectives are paved with dead russian soldiers and destroyed russian weapons.
They are massively benefitting from Russian leadership’s desire to make the war invisible to daily lives of ordinary Russians, and because of this they are able to keep parity in soldier numbers against a much more populous rival.
The number of able bodied men within a country and the number of soldiers a country can field are not the same. Again and again in this conflict people act as if Russia is "going easy" on Ukraine, rather than fighting to the best of the ability that the political leadership feels it can. Putin is very clearly scared of the domestic consequences of acknowledging the seriousness of the situation and putting Russia onto a real war footing, delaying important decisions like mobilisation or major withdrawals until it is impossible to do so any longer. Putin isn't afraid of losing this war by having Ukrainian tanks rolling into Moscow, he's afraid of being hung from a lamppost by his own people. Ukraines total population is smaller, but has a far higher level of motivation per capita than Russia does and will be able to mobilise a much greater proportion of society towards fighting the war.
Ukrainians also have to tie down forces and equipment to create such a reaction
Substantially less than the Russians have to. Russia is forced to defend a huge area of land against raiding forces that are able to strike pretty much anywhere along it and must defend in sufficient strength to withstand the raiding forces, who will simply withdraw before serious reinforcements are able to be brought to bear against them. The raiders, able to choose the time and place of the battle, need only to be strong at one point, whereas the defender must be strong everywhere they wish to defend.
You don't even need to launch many raids to achieve this effect, meaning you don't really need to care about rapid redeployment, in fact your goal should be to launch the minimum number of raids that you can in order to achieve the desired effect. The point is to present a threat that your opponent cannot ignore and that they must therefore dedicate a disproportionate amount of resources to ensure their security, the raiders should make themselves the biggest nuisance they possibly can, while keeping losses to a minimum in order to maintain this effect for as long as possible.
Mer
10mo ago
Tie down Russian forces and equipment defending large stretches of land would be the biggest "real" reason. PR and morale reasons are definitely valuable as well.
Mer
10mo ago
After all, you're basically torturing yourself regularly, week after week, for seemingly no purpose whatsoever other than to, well, keep doing it?
You get to enjoy it after a while, then eventually you find you can't imagine yourself living without it.
It's (usually) only the first few weeks that a new form of regular exercise feels like torture, then the body gets on board with the program and finishes up the initial adaptation and it gets substantially easier. Then as time goes on, you start to see the benefits, the body continues to adapt to better handle the strain and eventually it becomes part of your identity. If exercises did continue to feel like torture even after hundreds of hours of training, nobody would presist in them.
Cause men tend to be more insane than women.
I would say it has more to do with testosterone than with anything else. It's an incredible chemical, a real life super-soldier serum that we only take for granted because it's "always been this way". Your average man will see greater results faster than your average woman in (almost all) forms of sports, which would certainly help a lot as seeing progress is a real boon to getting invested in any particular form of exercise. The social differences between how men and women value sport are also all certainly downstream from the differences that testosterone impart.
Mer
10mo ago
I think you've chosen a very interesting place to stop your chain of logic here, not examining why Britain "wanted to get involved from the very start". Given that Britains war aims were essentially to keep the continent pretty much as it was before the war and preserve the balance of power in Europe, it is in fact accurate to say that Britain chose to use the excuse of maintaining Belgian independence in order to join the war in support of Britains true goal of supporting Belgian independence.
Mer
10mo ago
Maybe if for example the US had stayed out of WWI it would not have been quite the decisive victory for the allies and thus the terms might have been not as bad for Germany. With less bad terms, maybe Hitler never rises to power and thus we never encounter “peace in our time” rhetoric.
It's a fairly persistent narrative that it was the harsh terms of the treaty of versailles that lead to the second world war, but it's always struck me as a load of rubbish. If your enemy is still strong enough to make another serious go of invading you a generation after you have decisively defeated them, it's an argument that you were not thorough enough in their hobbling, not the reverse. You don't hear many people saying that the Romans were in danger of the hurt feelings of the Carthaginians causing another great war when they made their desert and called it peace.
The problem with the post-WW1 peace was that it did not change the fundemental conditions that lead to the outbreak of WW1. It left a Germany that was humiliated and embittered, but still in pretty much the same place it was before the war. If your aim is to prevent the rise of Hitler and WW2, you need to disarm its military at the end of the war, rather than letting them go home under arms, occupy the country and then dissolve Germany as a nation. Of course I'm referring to the nation as a political entity and not advocating for some sort of mass disintegration of all Germans, but I think having Germany forcibly broken up into a series of smaller nations is a fair price to pay for starting the greatest war in history and then making the rather inadvisable decision of losing it.
I would say that WW2 was a consequence of firstly, that special brand of German pig-headedness that convinces them that everything must be done the German way. And secondly, a dangerous cocktail of American softness mixed with the bitterness of two empires that had just spent the lives of a generation of their men (and a whole lot of money) with very little to show for it.
Somewhat tangential to this point, I'm not typically given to writing great long essays for the internet, but I do feel that one day I will be compelled to research and write a great screed about the US and it's approach to international relations and diplomacy. I'm thinking of opening it with "American diplomats and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race".
Mer
10mo ago
What's the point of principles if you only hold to them on matters that are agreeable anyways?
I would say that there is no point, that you should abandon paying lip service to principles you clearly don't believe in and live a life more authentic to the principles that actually govern your actions.
Mer
11mo ago
And yet of the people who have made significant and immediate changes to the world, people who wish to make significant and immediate change significantly outperform their percentage of the population
In other news, new research finds that people most likely to complete marathons are those that wish to run marathons. In all seriousness, this isn't an argument in favour of extremism. Of course extremists are the most likely to achieve extreme goals, the only alternative candidates are those whose hands are forced by circumstance and those who unintentionally stumble into it.
Strength, cunning and luck are of course of overwhelming importance as well, but all three together do not change the world if the person possessing them is quite comfortable with the way things are.
This is again true, but also not particularly useful. If you have all the virtures of someone capable of shaping the world around you to your liking and you happen to like things the way they are, then you're going to deploy your virtues in pursuit of that end rather than in direct opposition to it.
It seems to me that the point you're driving at, is the importance of strength of will, or of conviction to your goals. This is definitely a quality common among extremists and it is an important part of managing to stick with difficult goals like shaping the world to match your vision, but your odds of success are a lot better if you also happen to have those other virtues as well. The idea that strength of will alone is enough to achieve your goals seems historically fairly common among those who are at a severe disadvantage in other areas, but cannot accept their disadvantageous position. Imperial Japan springs to mind as an immediate example and look how well that worked out for them.
Mer
11mo ago
Extremists die in ditches. The strong, the canny and the lucky make history.
The number of extremists that have achieved success and changed the world are far outnumbered by those that achieve nothing and usually end up lining the inside of a mass grave. The Paris Commune did not fail due to a lack of extreme beliefs, it failed because extremists are by their very nature terrible at making the kind of compromises you need to make in order to advance your goals.
Mer
11mo ago
it is important to continue until Anheuser-Busch is driven to bankruptcy.
I would say it's probably more important to have realistic goals.
Mer
11mo ago
I feel much less clever and witty when I need to directly explain my points rather than obliquely make them with historical references, but very well.
The point of that post was to draw a parallel between the final stages of the Roman Republic and the modern era, specifically the moment before Tiberius Gracchus made the first moves in a long chain of events that ultimately lead to the collapse of the Republic. Mostly this was done to somewhat cheekily point out the folly of the quote I amended, demonstrating that it could readily be applied to a system that was about to undergo several bloody civil wars and "reigns of terror".
The Republic collapsed into civil wars and eventually gave way to the rule of one man at the height of its power and security. The catalyst for its disintegration was elites leveraging the disgruntled masses to further their careers battling against elites that sought to supress said disgruntled masses for their own benefit. I could go on, but the parallels are obvious, the USA is consciously modeled after the Roman Republic and has in many ways followed a similar trajectory thus far, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it might continue along that same trajectory.
Also I should say that the poster who you were replying to had a point, although I disagree with the idea that America is an empire (or that the Republic was truly an empire either). Power is a force and follows its own laws in the same way that natural forces do, there is too much power converging in Washington for it not to change the system that channels it. Much like the Republic, the US has gone from backwater to Hegemon practically overnight, in the case of Rome it turned out that a system designed to govern a leading city state could not survive the sudden pressure imposed on it by the near absolute power, time will tell how the US fairs.
Mer
11mo ago
On what time scale? For all the talk of the disenfranchised plebs, materially they have never had it so good. The Republic brings home the bacon at the moment, why wouldn't it 100 years from now?
Only the gods can answer that, now enough of this, lets go to the forum. I've heard that Tiberius Gracchus has some new land reform he's wanting to talk about.
Mer
11mo ago
I own precisely one suit that no longer fits me and haven't worn it for years at this point. Frankly I wouldn't consider the later stuff you list as appropriate for a business/formal social occasion, that's what I'd consider to be casual clothes for going about town (maybe not the thawb and keffiyeh, depends on the town at that point).
I would say I'm generally well dressed, in the sense that I wear clothes that fit and have a coherent "look" to them, I just tend to prefer a more casual style. These days I mostly wear a jeans, shirt and wifebeater combo. I strive to look like I've just stepped out of 1980s Miami, although if I'm being honest it's more often 1970s surfer.
Mer
11mo ago
This talking point has been repeated ad nauseum but is it really true, though?
It absolutely is, the man is wildly popular with your stereotypical urban/university leftist types and nobody else. He managed to lose what should have been a walkover election against the wicked witch of the west.
The British public is not going to elect a Prime Minister that appears to reflexively side against Britain and with her enemies whenever the opportunity presents itself. The man just comes across as someone who never got over his "student activist" phase and that is not a reassuring image to present to the public when you're asking to lead the nation.
Labour's supposedly weak leadership and Brexit position
Labours leadership was weak, their Brexit position was weak. Corbyn couldn't control his own party and was evasive as to his Brexit policy because while he personally wanted to leave, the majority of his supporters wanted to remain. Both of these were also true for the Conservatives, who have been ineptly flailing since the 2016 referendum. The only reason that the Conservatives have managed to cling on to power despite being incredible dissapointments by almost every measure is because of the fear that the alternative is worse. It is not a coincidence that Labour is massively gaining in popularity and credibility as the party distances itself from its "loony left" and is at least trying to act like they aren't allergic to the British flag.
I've never seen or heard an argument in defence of Corbyn that doesn't come across as either willfully self deceptive or blinkered, from someone who really really wishes that Corbyn was secretly popular and that the only reason he lost was because of a massive conspiracy within the Labour Party and British media to trick the British public from ushering in the socialist paradise that they so desperately yearn for. It just seems very out of touch with "the man on the street".
I mean, it's not like I have much choice on the matter and believe me I am aware that women find the things I like to be boring. I'm not going to be so cruel as to try and force some poor woman to sit through Das Boot.
I see your point, but at the same time that's such a radical and fundamental change that I don't think I'd consider this hypothetical person to be me anymore. Who I am can't be disentangled from growing up as a boy and living as a man.
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