Rex
2mo ago
They don’t need a full choir doing Gregorian chant every week. Ditching OCP, a single organist, and a single cantor would do wonder. Hell, just ditching OCP would get you 75% of the way there.
Rex
2mo ago
My opinion of Scott Alexander continues to crater. I don’t know how much of this story is his or the collaborators, but there is a shocking level of naïveté about everything other than AI technical progress. Even there, I don’t know enough about AI to comment.
My favorite part is the end where Chinese AI sells out China, assists a grassroots Chinese pro-democracy group affect a coup, democratic elections are carried out and everyone lives happily after.
Rex
2mo ago
If he meant AI controlled technocratic shadow-totalitarianism, he should have said so. I agree it seems silly to think that democracy could exist in such a scenario. I wonder why he didn’t address this? But beyond not addressing it, he’s specifically saying democracy wins.
Rex
1mo ago
I have not had covid as far as I know. I did get antibody tests early on which were all negative. My wife had it twice and i slept in the same room with her. No issues.
I also know no one that died from COVID, other than a coworker who's very old mother allegedly died from it. This person is known for his tall tales so I cant know for certain.
I find this to be a reasonable heuristic for how much I should worry about something. I know many people who passed from cancer. Many from heart attacks. More than one from getting hit by a car when cycling. I reckon most people have a similar experience.
Its impossible for me to believe that 1.2 million people died from covid in 3-4 years and reconcile that with my experience.
Rex
1mo ago
I watched him on Tucker and it was very hard to take him seriously after seeing/hearing about the video.
The hypocrisy was at the end when he talking to Tucker about human connection being the most importsnt thing in life. Impossible to reconcile that with interracial gay findom meth sex.
Rex
29d ago
What was the nature of the conspiracies? Asking so I can have a rubric for my own views.
Rex
28d ago
On one had, I did not expect this fight to actually happen and I was profoundly disinterested in the media that seemed to be egging it on and trying to make it happen for the last few months. On the other hand, does anyone else get the sense that this is a staged fight? It seems so ridiculous and performative that it maps closer to WWF wrestling or Biggie/Tupac feuds that were purely stage managed events. Jon Stewart suggested as much this morning before all the big fireworks went off this afternoon. I cant help but think that he's got it right here, even though I'm sure people will say this afternoons attacks make that less likely.
Rex
23d ago
Do you have any intuition as to why there are so my psychotic cyclists? It seems to select for aggressive narcissists, despite the fact that their phenotype is more of a skinny soy boy or scenester. It’s obviously not all of them, but it could easily be 50% of the cyclists on the road. Does a bicycle imbue some sort of power fantasy where otherwise meek people can easily flee if they run into the wrong type of person?
Rex
23d ago
Is your neighborhood in urban or suburban area. I should have clarified that I'm talking urban locations, even small cities.
Rex
11d ago
Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP? I’m asking seriously. I only see reports where it’s implied based on the context of us having spent the last week talking about them. The X community seems to doubt they were used. There is a lot of speculation that this was another telegraphed strike that allows US and Iran to save face and deescalate.
I have zero confidence in my ability to know what actually happened here and make any predictions about the future.
I decided to check in on plebbit over at /moderatepolitics/. What a total embarrassment. There’s 1000 comments there all basically saying that Iran has been denuclearized, defanged, and is is either about to collapse or lash out with mass casualty events against the USA. As I said, I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we did fully destroy Fardow with 6 MOP and it was a perfect op. But the lack of even entertaining other possibilities is sad, but not surprising.
Rex
10d ago
I previously expressed some skepticism about the details of the US strike. And I noted that many on X were questioning it as well.
One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.
Now it appears that this Iranian attack on the Qatar military base did no damage, cost no lives, and, if Trump is to be taken literally, the Iranians called them up and told them it was coming.
And now we have a ceasefire.
Was this just all theater? If it were, what would look different?
Obviously it’s a good outcome. The only downside it see is that it makes the US look incredibly weak to be led around by Israel. But then again, that’s par for the course.
What a puzzling thing. Another downside would be further emboldening Israel, the Israel US lobby, and the pro war faction of our leaders.
This is a great post and very informative. I'll add a bit of my own experience.
You do a great job pointing out some of the absurdities of some masses, but that's certainly not the norm. I say this because i find the normie suburban XP mass to be even more oppressive. I reckon that most Catholics go to a normal diocesan church, they sing awful liturgical music from the OCP Gather book, they have a lay deacon give a homily that was emailed to them from the archdiocese. There is absolutely no energy.
To your point on lay people changing the mass. I find the music to be just the worst aspect of this. And i dont think any of this was done with ill intent. Its just a bunch of ex-hippie boomers singing modern catholic music in a folk rock style. I'll never forget the women who lead our music ministry when i was a kid. She sung kyrie elaison with hippie guitar riff every week. There's another problem - this style has been the normie suburban mass standard for a LONG time. At least 40 years as far as I can tell. These awful songs are now "classics" to the current crop of old people who are involved in the church. As i said, I dont want to be too hard on these folks because they are giving their time and energy to the church, but they are so misguided its a sin.
A few years ago I found a new parish that was run by a religious order in a major metropolitan city. I actually got coffee with the pastor before joining just to see who he was. He was a brand new pastor, so young. He had one other priest under him, also young, and a number of brothers to help out.
My church is the opposite of whatever the normie catholic mass is, but still fits within the vatican II / novus ordo framework. The priests have wide latitude to have a much more traditional mass if they choose. We dont use the OCP mafia hymm books. We have young cantors rather than some old lady choir.
Easter mass this year was the possibly the best easter sunday mass I've ever seen, surpassed only by Easter Vigial mass at this same church. Full on 1hr 45 min Solemn Mass (I remember as a kid at my normie suburban church that easter mass was pretty much just a normal sunday mass. the extra long mass was for palm sunday only). The church was more packed than usual as well, even for easter. Its a big church that probably fits close to 800 people comfortably, we rarely get 150 on a normal sunday and id reckon 400-500. I think the word is getting out. Attendance is surely rising at my parish.
All of this is to say that I believe @OracleOutlook when he says that the new generation of priests will demolish the spirit of Vatican II. I see it every week. I just hope that its crushed in time for me to enjoy it when im older. Its pretty much impossible to have something like this local to you right now except if your lucky or moving somewhere specifically because of a church.
Its also good to remind people that while Vatican II may have been a mistake, it does allow for a really beautiful and traditional mass. If only the normie parishes would learn this. I suspect it will be a while before that happens.
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