Pongalh
7mo ago
I think it's part of the optimization of everything. Increasingly, if you're about X, you need to have been about X for as long as possible. People who are constantly going from one line of work or lifestyle to another are slipping through the cracks and becoming sort of invisible, on the outside of success looking in. It's associated with being kind of a loser, relative to decades past. Indeed it's kind of a Boomerism, to have worked in e.g. a department store and then one day a guy comes in who makes movies, you hit it off, and a few years later you're firmly ensconced in the movie industry with some success.
Pongalh
1mo ago
Wow, didn't know all that! Thanks.
I actually wrote one piece for Takimag 15 years ago. Just one, after 5 failed submissions to his daughter who managed the site at the time. Something about BART lunacy in SF.
Pongalh
9mo ago
My sister likewise has no intention of having kids. She just recently got to the other side of 40, so I'm extremely certain it's a permanent decision.
And indeed she moved to England years ago, has a great job in the arts, married to a great guy. Loves to travel as well.
(I feel like for women, if you don't have a great career, have a family. Men have to have a good career to have a family, otoh.)
Pongalh
24d ago
Definitely messier, but that's what happens when you relax rules of expression. I for one like the democratization of ads. So random now, showing Americans' quirky idiosyncrasies in all their guy-or-girl-next-door glory.
Disclosure: I'm a proud producer of what is arguably definitely AI slop. (Check out my cheeky YT shorts channel, in fact: https://youtube.com/@ShockJonesy/shorts)
I love that the Motte has broached this subject. If you're not familiar with comedian Justin Whitehead, his whole shtick is essentially watching My 600 Pound Life and tearing into the people who appear on it. Not a particularly admirable way to get laughs, but it's a guilty pleasure: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4GLent9Zk6E
He went viral a while ago when a big guy started following him through a Walmart, knew who he was, ending in a confrontation in the parking lot.
Pongalh
8mo ago
A hereditary union (not officially) segregated along racial lines. Sounds right up the alley of some of the folks here, interestingly.
In what ways could these unions be considered EHC? I mean they've clearly managed to get one over on all of us. That takes skill.
Part of the problem is that so many of us are former libertarians, who see rent-seeking aka banal corruption everywhere already. So Trump just seems a more blustery iteration of something already underway.
Or, ideology-free corruption > bad ideology operating transparently and on-schedule
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