RenOS
something is wrong
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
If @hydroacetylene is to be believed, these are homeschooled christian conservative kids, or at least something close to it. I'm not sure how wise it is to project their problems from modern liberal dysfunctions, as much as I may dislike them.
If I compare what he's describing to my own upbringing - german conservative catholic mainline christian, not exactly the same but somewhat related - it's unclear how this can even happen. At 14-15 everyone, and I mean everyone, even the atheists and heretics protestants would start dancing school here. They would teach a pre-defined list of dancing styles popular in the entire region (primarily disco fox, secondarily wiener & regular waltzer, as well as the basic steps for some completely different styles such as latin). If you didn't, people would laugh about you. It's pathetic to not go, and even if you wouldn't formally be excluded from much, you'd be de-facto excluded from a large number of social gatherings. And at the ones you can go, partner dancing would still be present and you'd be very much negatively noticed.
This culminates in a big ball at 16, similar to a prom. At that point for us, everyone would already have a fixed primary dancing partner which we would bring to the ball, would be familiar with dancing with other girls, and would be capable of dancing to almost any music that is played. Your partner would be extremely pissed about you in particular if you then just wouldn't dance with her. You'd be eager to show off proficiency in some of the lesser-known styles, or just generally. Even shy & socially awkward guys like me didn't struggle particularly with the expected basics. At most, you'd only dance with your primary partner instead of asking out other girls, which is slightly looked down upon but generally accepted.
The only way how something like what he is describing could happen would be a complete breakdown of the supporting infrastructure. So it's hard for me to blame the guys here. One of the advantages of conservative societies is that you can do this: You can blatantly push people into certain behaviour on little more than "this is how we do things, and you'll make an ass of yourself if you don't". But you need to actually do it. Evidently, the parents and other guardians didn't. Imo this is a general problem with some neo-conservative groups, that they basically try to cargo cult traditions without understanding which parts make them work. Especially the parts that require effort, or require enough pressure to seem mean.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Sorry, couldn't resist. I guess I emphasize with your guy from Dresden.
To your general point, imo people are generally sold a certain image of their own future already over the span of their childhood and early adulthood, and how happy they are later as an adult depends on how well reality compares to this deep-seated expectation. This can be the life situation of their own parents, but can be influenced heavily by other people or media as well. The general unhappiness in the west right now is due society selling an extremely unrealistic expectation of self-actualization, especially for the academically inclined. I have a few friends who have unimpressive parents, but got so convinced as students they are contenders for professorship, artists and similarly prestigious occupations that they are deeply unhappy adults now that it becomes clear they are not.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
FWIW, I also vote +1 for Cremieux being TPO. Not 100%, but he is at the very least extremely reminiscent of him. The combination of being not only interested but strongly pro-HBD AND regularly using the concept of measurement invariance in particular to argue certain points. TPO also did that all the time. I should have noticed earlier, the connection just didn't come to mind.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
It's a much bigger problem than this: Most laws favor the entrenched & powerful by default unless very carefully designed not to. This is one reason why large companies often are neutral or even actively lobby for extra regulation. THEY can afford a large legal department for compliance. Smaller competitors, not so much. This is completely independent of whether a law is also deliberately designed to boost specific actors.
And it gets worse once you consider politically entrenched powers. A new law to limit political donations to specific parties in the vein you are considering? Well, WE are only unaffiliated NGOs defending democracy, YOU are obviously a thinly veiled campaign contribution, so all money spent on you needs to be added to the fund of our the other side!
Turns out, helping the genuinely weak compete is pretty hard. Usually you just end up helping a different faction of elite. And even if you design a law that helps bring down a powerful actor, the same law can often be used to bring down anyone, which means it destabilises the entire system.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
I know it's most people experience but don't generalize. Neither of our kids was anything like this. Months 1-3 are so sleepless that we didn't even want to meet people even if we could. Month 4 they would already be mobile enough to not tolerate the stroller.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
That would be a good analogy if people were lecturing you on CICO while you're bleeding out. You can't fix a broken engine with more gas, you can't fix a broken body with CICO.
But pretty much every case of being overweight can absolutely be solved with CICO. Calorie restriction always works if you actually do it. It's just that 90%+ of people prefer to dump a bottle of sauce on every salad they eat but still count it as 100 calories. Which is very understandable - I also struggle with plenty of things that are 100% willpower issues - but pretending that CICO doesn't apply or even claiming it is wrong is just silly. Even Ozempic is nothing but CICO at its core.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
As I said last time - a large part of the AfDs policy plans are sufficiently unappealing for many people so that it's easy to rather grit your teeth and give the CDU a last chance. But the CDU has been rapidly exceeding even the most cynical expectations.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
The penal colonies are imo quite clearly presented as bad, and Glokta likewise as a cynical anti-hero literally broken by life.
Also, this reminds me of another thing that gave it such a modern western feeling: West hangs out a lot with the Prisoners because he gets along with them well, while the prince he is supposed to be with is a complete idiot asshole. This is mirrored in the cast of PoV characters; By far the most insufferable person, and deliberately so, is Jezal, the nobleman, who only redeems himself through the adventure the story is about. The king, meanwhile, is a fat, drooling senile. The first law consistently portrays the aristocracy as vain idiots with few exceptions, and even those exceptions make up their intelligence with malice. On the other hand it idealizes the wretched.
In history however, meritocracy didn't succeed because commoners are better than nobleman, but because the best of the commoners are better than nobleman. However, the average nobleman had always been better than the average commoner in most ways you could care about. Nobleman often suffered higher casualties than commoners during wars due to their bravery, even common-born upstarts would prefer spending time with the noble-born due to their sociability and commoners in general often engaged in the kind of dysfunctional self-hurting behaviour that contemporary lower classes still exhibit much more than contemporary middle and especially upper classes. And this is and was true even more so once you compare criminals with the nobility.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
As cannabis legalisation around the globe shows, even trivial inconveniences add up. Before legalisation, I thought legalizing was good but kind of pointless - it wasn't particularly hard to get nor did I expect to get into significant trouble even when caught (at least with the small amounts I had as a customer).
Now after legalisation, I actually lean towards it having been a mistake, bc consumption increased so much, especially in frequency, that it's both gotten really annoying to go over campus due to the smell and evidence is adding up that while occasional usage isn't problematic, daily usage is. At the very least, even assuming no long-term effects, a decent chunk of students is blasted out of their mind perpetually.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
I don't really mind it too much in itself. It's a question of frequency and presentation; It's annoying and stupid that it has become the default, especially so if it's not justified through fantastic elements. But it seemed relevant to the OP.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Thanks, Trump! Now we only have to figure out how to get all the Bürgergeldempfänger to work at these businesses...
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
I think the only way to get persistent trade surpluses is when one country is saving in the other's currency (earning or buying their currency, and then just sitting on it).
From what I understand, Import/Export is specifically goods and services exchanged for money, so it does not include many financial instruments, such as direct investment into a foreign country or leaving your money at a foreign bank. So a country can run a long-term trade deficit indefinitely as long as it can re-capture the difference this way. Which is especially easy if you just-so happen to be the financial headquarter of the world. But yes, many countries saving in US currency is also an option.
I agree that, if anything, this implies a trade deficit is good for you.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
I also considered the first law, but despite the morally grey main characters, it had a modern western feeling to it. The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter. The opponents engage in slavery and dark magic, while the main characters, for all their faults, have clear red lines on that front. Modern-style romance and gender relations in general are quite clearly implied to be the morally correct option. It has been quite some time since I read it so I may be misremembering/forgetting some parts, though.
As far as I understand Trump, he considers the trade imbalance itself a problem and thus if a country doesn't buy enough american goods - even if it isn't the result of tariffs - that needs to be fixed. Negotiations can then still be done by the governments of the respective countries by deliberately buying american for large-scale infrastructure projects and pressuring their own larger companies to invest/buy more american. Taiwan, for example, has had no tariffs, but has declared their intention to invest more into american companies to start negotiations.
But yes, I agree overall. Achieving a perfect equal trade balance with all countries is the same kind of nonsense as the desire on the left for the perfect equality of all people - neither desirable nor realistic. I'd greatly prefer genuine reciprocal tariffs.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Sequestration was a response to an entirely artificial crisis (it was part of a deal to increase the debt ceiling)
The ceiling may have been a somewhat arbitrary value, but the crisis wasn't artificial. The debt increased in a major jump, reaching the ceiling in 2011, which was a direct result of the 2008 financial crisis and demanded some action, one way or another.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Some of the current developments are increasingly pointing towards 2.
But we will have to see. If he really intended primarily for 2., his move was very ballsy. I'd have been much more careful, first negotiating and only considering targeted tariffs in case a country shows no willingness to change. In a one-on-one, America is always economically larger, so they can strong-arm almost anyone; By picking a fight with everyone simultaneously, they risk them banding together instead. But I'm also quite strongly generally opposed to tariffs, while Trump at the very least does not mind introducing them if he feels treated unfair (and he does so quite easily).
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Human babies are basically dysfunctional compared to other mammals for the first year or so, probably just so that they can have such an unusually large brain, and by extension skull, for their body size. I wouldn't over-interpret any particular behaviour they exhibit.
And yes, crying before sleeping is very common for babies. It gets (much!) better with age, but most kids get increasingly cranky in the late afternoon and evening.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
What about the Warhammer 40k universe? Very grimdark of course, but as far as I see it should mostly fulfill your conditions, though it depends on which particular book you read. Neither sadists nor edgelords are rare, for one, but they also aren't universal. I guess some may say the entire setting is kind of edgelord-y.
Another option would be old epics and stories, especially greek or german are enjoyable. Or do you specifically mean modern western? I wanted to mention japanese stories, but they are also excluded if you are spefically looking for western ones.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Oh I know, your second sentence made clear what you meant. I just had to chuckle since the first sentence wouldn't have been out of place in a very different kind of post.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Does this mean it’s crossed the inter species barrier?
I'd consider "two-year-old child in India" to be an edge case.
Woah careful with these levels of HBD! We have indian posters here, you know.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
I'm about as pro-capitalist as it gets but imo this is the wrong model for zero-sum (for example advertising) and negative sum (for example compliance) industries. Especially large, already successful companies can secure their position by burdening everyone with enough extra costs that only they can shoulder well enough due to scale.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
I don't think those really are comparable - all of them were reactions to concrete fiscal crises/shocks which absolutely needed a short-term budget correction. Our current problems are ballooning costs, and while I think this has significant long-term negative effects, it doesn't have that immediate necessity. But I'll grant that I myself was being hyperbolic - it would be more correct to say that governments rarely manage to limit spending with long-term foresight in mind, but only purely reactively after a crisis has already happened and desperately requires action. DOGE is attempting the former.
On the second point, I completely agree, but in my view this makes reducing welfare spending for the old a foregone conclusion, it's only a question of how long we can kick the can down the road. And mind you, Americans have a comparably rosy situation - here in Germany the old / young ratios are much more grim.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Even the politically motivated firings, I understand, if not condone. Trump's first term was plagued with malicious compliance, obstruction and outright and blatant ignoring of orders.
Yes. It's not nice, but I don't see how they could get anywhere without them.
The execution? All kinds of programs that most people think are laudable are catching strays. The administration doesn't seem to be particularly on the ball when it comes to rolling back the most obviously negative changes. And the savings figures they tout are frankly speaking, worthless.
I still find it very hard to judge whether the allegedly-laudable programs really are strays. All the ones I've personally looked into seemed fishy at best, and they almost universally have pretty bad transparency. When in doubt, cancel spending. Not to mention the multiple cases where the media just pushed blatant lies yet again, which is also one of the prime reasons why they are reluctant to rolling back anything - if they were responsive, they'd end up rolling back almost everything, because the media will always find a convenient sob story. The savings figures is just Elon doing Elon things - wildly overpromising, but even the estimates by critics seem quite OK for such a small team in such a small time. Especially considering how rare it is for a government to meaningfully cut spending at all.
RenOS
something is wrong
2mo ago
Even if you want that, the change in tariffs from one day to another is just staggering here. Say what you will about stupid, counterproductive left-wing economics (which I'm certainly not a fan of!), but they almost always make sure that they don't rock the boat too much in the short term at least (Corona aside).
At least to me, polyamory is defined by treating sex & romance as just another part of a friendship where you can have different degrees and kinds of sexual relationships with many different people, which can also change quite fast. A fixed group of say 4 guys and 5 girls living together, having kids together, etc. would imo be more aptly described as a commune. And, as you say, 1 man/x woman is 99% just a harem in practice.
Ironically, this is also why polyamory is imo by far the worst for a functioning society; It's basically expanding the dating period of many young people's life to the entirety, with all the anxieties, drama and labor it entails. If you have work & kids, you just don't have time for that. Since work is usually necessary for all but the richest, that means you skip the kids. Communes often have similar problems but to a lesser degree, and as long as they're not too large and have clear boundaries to everything else, can be made to work. I don't like the intrinsic inequality stemming from Harems, but from a practical PoV they work just as well as traditional couples since the boundaries and expectations are simple and clear.
More options
Context Copy link