SomethingMusic
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User ID: 181
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
Econtalk recently had an interesting discussion about the Argentinian government, its people, and how inflation affects them in their day to day lives. One of the biggest factors is how Argentinians essentially find ways around their failing currency to maintain wealth; any payment in pesos is immediately converted to other stores of value more readily capable of holding its value ranging from hard goods such as bricks, to US dollars, to Crypto. The day-to-day table talk is almost always about how to maintain what limited wealth they have. The average US citizen, for example, probably has no idea what the current exchange rates are of dollar to other currencies, be it CAD, Yuan, Pounds, Euros, etc. while every Argentinian knows a few different currency exchanges and their rates. The exchange of currencies to goods almost all run through black markets instead of through government approved exchanges to the point where 'breaking the law' isn't just about endangering others, but necessary to survive in the country. The government simply doesn't have enough power (as well as being too politically damaging) to create and enforce basic monetary tightening methods be it taxes or having a central bank so it simply keeps printing more and more money to pay for whatever spending the government needs as they do not receive enough capital through taxes to actually self-fund the government.
With the US midterms around the corner, it made me think about effective governance and what that actually looks like. A lot of the difference between Democrat and Conservative (and yes, I mean the political parties and not the Red/Blue common usage here) ideological divergence predicates on social dilemmas. Abortion, Trans rights, Race issues, etc. are all social issues that we can focus on because most people in the US simply because the general gears of governance in Western Civilization is, despite the 'gross incompetencies' and 'brainless politicians', stable. The taxes generally get collected, the Fed generally will adjust interest rates depending on economic forecasts, and people generally have a decent quality of life. These are things the average American don't think about because these aspects of government are done competently and effectively enough that the real implications of a government who cannot finance itself is not one of regular pressing concern for the average person.
One of the reasons why I want to point this is that it explains why many Latin American voters are seemingly leaning Republican. It is not social issues that change voting allegiances, it's protecting their investments, jobs, and assets. The paradigm and reason for party allegiances is not equality and certainly not about government handouts, considering how every citizen of their home country sidesteps the government to black markets where exchanges are made at better rates. The current Democrat party is actually damaging their bottom line through their fiscal policy.
https://www.econtalk.org/devon-zuegel-on-inflation-argentina-and-crypto/
SomethingMusic
6mo ago
At the cost of turning sex into a consumer transaction? You might argue this already exists and has always existed in some for of human history, (which you would be partially correct), but I think the consequences of widespread acceptance of this practice are largely damaging to cross gender relationships, especially the perception of women, as well as damaging to formation of families. Even historical practices of marrying women to richer/more wealthy men focuses on marrying and producing heirs, not simply for carnal desires. Women who sell their bodies for money have rarely been treated more than 2nd, or 3rd class people and do it at the cost of having a successful long term relationship.
SomethingMusic
4mo ago
I'm surprised that throughout the past few weeks I've seen no discussion on handheld computing a la the Steam deck, so here it is.
I've fairly recently gotten my hands on a Steam deck OLED, and it's everything that I've wanted a modded PSP to be (maybe a touch too large). A higher quality brighter screen is a significant improvement from the old LCD I had from yesteryear. Having Arch OS behind the scenes comes at a significant benefit as well, as full software support means you can literally run common applications, Emulators, etc. with actual software support! Oh, and it can run steam games too, I guess.
Anyways, I think it goes to say I enjoyed messing around with it a lot and have actually started tackling a non-0 amount of my steam backlog. My hope is that the success of these handheld compute units will create incentives for Microsoft to actually take a look at a lightweight version of their OS for ease of use without the endless need for internet connection to send telemetry and personal information and maybe implement some battery-optimizing techniques. I'm not holding my breath but one can hope!
SomethingMusic
25d ago
I'm not a priest nor an apologist, but this reasoning seems incomplete-
The God of the signifier, the God who turns everything upside down. Ancient commentators, in traditions as diverse as neoplatonism and Buddhism, recognized a problem: if God is perfect, unchanging, atemporal, mereologically simple, then how was it metaphysically possible for him to give rise to this temporal, dynamic, fallen, fractured creation? How did The One give rise to The Many? The orthodox answer is that “He did it out of love”
Love is partially the answer, but as you observed it is rather incomplete. The traditional Catholic response is that free will and original sin, which causes suffering, is part of His divine plan of giving people free will and the autonomy to disobey him. Imagine for a second that you have no choice but to worship a deity, is that actual worship? Is following a law with a gun pointed to your head a good law? Free will and its consequences of suffering ultimately stems from the truth is that adoration without choice is not worship.
I understand your conflict about Christianity, but it seems a lot of your conflict comes from the popular social media representation of Catholicism. CS Lewis points this out in the Screwtape letters:
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.
This quote also addresses the next thing you mentioned - the declining attendance and participation of the Church. I agree that it is a sad state of affairs that church attendance is largely the invalid and the old. However, I also see it as a chance for the Church to realign itself to church teaching instead of chasing the leaving masses. The 'trad catholic' you see and push against online is, as you see, disingenuous tik tok coomer bait for lost meant to spend their simp bucks on their OF equivalent. However, I see the performative aspect is rooted in a desperate desire to get back to the Church forms that go back to its foundation. Even though the pope has been cracking down on Latin mass, I highly suggest trying to attend one in your area if it is still allowed to be performed.
From what I've read of your criticism, your problem is the state of your local church and the online personas that 'promote' it rather than church teachings or doctrine. I would argue that if you think the church is so lacking in direction, volunteer and participate in your church as much as possible! I am a big believer of being the change you want to see in the world, where you see decline, I see opportunity (if I have time, I currently am pretty swamped).
Attempts to give art a rational “purpose”, saying that it “teaches us moral lessons” or “provides entertainment”, all sound so lame because they are so obviously false. The purpose of art is to bring us into communion with The Beyond - that’s it, that’s the long and short of it. To make art is to attempt to do magic, and to be an artist is to be a person who yearns strongly for this Beyond, at least on an unconscious level. If the artist does not ultimately believe in the possibility of transcending this realm, he simply dooms himself to frustration - but the fundamental animating impulse of his actions does not change. The aesthetic is what remains when the vulnerable overt metaphysical claims of religion have been burned away: under threat of irrationality, I am compelled to reject God, free will, and the immortality of the soul, but you cannot intrude on the private inner domain of my sentiment and my desire.
Maybe because these aren't the purposes of art? Art's primary goal is communication. To convey an idea or thought that words fail to fully transmit. Beethoven's 5th symphony communications the light triumphing over darkness. The Sistine chapel exists to celebrate and communicate the love of the divine Christ. One of the reasons why I'm somewhat okay with AI taking over productive is because it will fulfill the commercial and consumptive aspects of art, leaving the artists who are looking to express and idea that is difficult to put into words.
Can you expand how the failure of the artist leads you to compelled to reject God? I fail to see the logical connection there, but I may be misreading something.
Unlike you, I am not particularly worried about the end of the Church, but actually rather hopeful that the 'decline' of the current church is a rejection of the modernizing reform from Vatican II and for the church to find its way to better represent the core beliefs of the church. Catholicism has been historically persecuted and actively hunted for long stretches of time, so the latest pushback against the church is nothing new and in the long term not something I find particularly disheartening.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
I'm glad someone else has looked into the Maoist answer to the drug problem. The problem in America at this point is not only do we believe in Democracy, but the Democratic voters paralyze and any decision-making process allowing us to actually begin to answer the problem. Only the wokest policies are able to pass as we blindly virtue-signal the country to oblivion.
The drug problem will not be delt with until we close our southern border -Trump was right, deploy the army, shoot at any illegal trying to enter the country. This won't work as I'm sure firing into Mexico would cause some international treaties to be broken, but the paralysis at every level in US Cities is becoming untenable.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
Does anyone here fiddle with AI art in their spare time? I need to make some fliers in a concert I'm playing, and I want to generate some AI art for them. I'm very limited on time this next week and don't have time to learn and generate images for it so I'm looking to outsource some of the work.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
Test post pls ignore
SomethingMusic
1mo ago
I generally don't participate on ground level wellness Wednesdays, but I'd like to announce some personal breakthroughs!
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I'm getting married! We've been engaged/planning for several months already but it's finally beginning to feel real. There are a number of hurdles to overcome, but ultimately I'm quite happy with the person I chose and that we'll be able to work together to have a healthy relationship.
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I have spent my entire life perusing classical music on the professional level, and I feel like I've had personal breakthroughs with my playing. Some minor setup changes and a couple successful concerts has increased my confidence as a performer, especially from last year where I had some abysmal concerts/auditions where I was quite unhappy with how I played. I need to practice more to help increase consistency but I feel a lot more confident performing.
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I finally tackled my health a bit and got back on asthma medication which has helped my lung capacity significantly. I really want to get back into exercising but time constraints/energy make it difficult. It has some strange side effects, but the upside for me outweighs any downside.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
One of the primary problems of the modern internet is that it creates such false expectations in relationships and dating. 4chan inceldom proclaiming all women need 7 foot 10 gigachads making minimum twelve figures with their own private island is not indicative of women in general but rather of high-visibility women - THOTs on instagram or onlyfans are the focus of a lot of these communities, and these young women are selling themselves for attention and money. Men focus entirely on the transactional nature of relationships which comes at significant cost.
Of course, it's easier to say this when you're not suffering from the anxiety of finding someone. A lot of finding a relationship of it is backing off of that obsession of 'finding' someone and focusing more on building out your friend group.
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Focus less on tearing yourself down and your own self-image and either a) care less about your self-image or b) work on building your self-image up. This doesn't necessarily mean 'more plates more dates' but instead developing hobbies and learning how to reach out to people without the initial expectation of a relationship. This can be at work, finding a friend group, hobby, etc. I found the people who tend to have no problems finding dates are lower neuroticism and more about reaching out to people and being able to talk to them than it is looks and income.
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Many young women have the same neuroticism and insecurities as you. At work I befriended a lot of people simply because I was looking to find people who are similarly social as I am, as I moved to a new state wand wanted to find people to hang out with. That alone gives you a lot of attention because you're inviting people to participate in anything with you, bar hopping, eating out, whatever activity is in the area. Being able to reach out as friends or to make introductions will put you at a significant advantage over a lot of these young males who are too neurotic to do so. A big portion of this is not worrying if it ends up with sex initially. It's as easy as saying "Hi, I'm xyz, mind if I join you?". I wouldn't do this at Walmart but at a lunch table or at a bar or a party it works great.
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Focus on building your friend group over finding a date. If you don't have many irl friends try to find friends first. Show you can laugh at yourself and take a joke and be willing to try new things and most people are pretty inviting. If you find a good friend group girls will naturally be attracted to a group of people having fun, plus you can ask them to join in as well.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
The problem isn't that conservatives don't want to actually achieve anything, it's that they are much less ideologically consistent than liberals. Just from seeing people post 'what conservatives value' in this thread indicates the wide spread of ideological differences that conservatives align themselves left, from libertarian types who believe in individual liberties to evangelicals who desire a God-centric government to business owners looking for less regulations to lower middle class complaining about taxes. The modern conservative group is more against anti-woke ideology than they are a cohesive voting block; this makes actually constructive policy much harder to pass (see the recent McCarthy voting fiasco because conservatives congresspeople could not agree on a vote).
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
I think any type of diet like this ends up being effective just like any other diet - calorie restriction. Processed foods are frequently high calorie. Replacing them with other similar foods will frequently be less calorie dense, therefore healthier.
Another factor is costs. Speciality foods cost more, so people will buy less to follow a particular diet, causing them to eat less and lose weight. Gluten fanatics eat less carbs which tend to be calorie dense. Etc.
Basically if any diet replaces high calorie low nutrition foods with low calorie high nutrition foods its probably going to be effective. If someone wants to do that with eating no processed foods and it works I think they should be empowered to follow the diet, even if they misunderstand how the diet is benifitting them.
SomethingMusic
10d ago
Was this in India or in England?
I live in a city where the road rules are decaying every day. Red light? Suggestion? Stop sign? Suggestion. Left turn from the right turn lane on a red light with oncoming traffic? Fuck you get out of my way. Speed limits? Square the number and you get the speed of the average driver.
I hate driving, but the alternative is a bus fill with drug addled obnoxious lowlifes who are one bad look away from starting a fight on a bus. Also they never run on time and are simply inefficient ways to travel.
SomethingMusic
20d ago
There is a plethora of factors that is infecting all of media, resulting in subpar writing. I would push back a bit in that games like Red Dead 2, The last of us (at least part 1, maybe part 2), It Takes Two, Control/Alan Wake 2, Balders Gate, Cyberpunk etc. all have reasonably coherent and compelling storytelling from the last few years.
So part of your reasoning has to come from separating the wheat from the chaff. There's simply MORE video games being released with varying degrees of writing quality. Of course, many game don't worry much about the writing quality and are still successful (Balatro doesn't have a plot, for example), so writing doesn't determine if a game sells well as much as one might think. Market saturation really does make it more difficult. The barrier of entry of making a game and publishing a game has become much lower, so more people are making games on the off chance they make an insane return on investment.
But let's pretend to ignore that for a bit. I believe 'creative' commercial arts has a too many cooks problem. So many people want to put their mark on a game and implement their ideas into a game. The great works of the past had a few people working on a project - Shakespeare, Tokien, Stolzheneizhen, Wagner, Mozart, are all singular people who had maybe one or two additional contributors in the creation of their works. Video games have hundreds of people included in making a game which can create too much noise. This makes some sense as games are much larger and require a lot more additive details than the historic games you reference.
Another problem is voice acting in modern games force succinct writing - now that major games are all fully voiced, it caused a sudden change in how game characters are written. The biggest example for me was the difference between the characters in FF9 and then in FF10, where in 9, characters had to be unique through how they're written creating dynamic, nuanced and unique characters. FF10's characters weren't nearly as dramatic because of the difficulty of writing for recorded voice.
While blue tribe organizations like Sweet Baby probably has a negative effect on modern game writing, I think it's fairly minimal considering the volume and quantity of games produced.
SomethingMusic
5mo ago
I don't think it's necessarily an intelligence issue as much as an ESL issue. Currently America is being overwhelmed with non-English speaking aliens ranging from South America to Africa to Somali to Eastern European. None of these people speak English at a high level or are particularly knowledgeable about proper English grammar. A large part of it is being out of practice as well; I know my own knowledge of grammar isn't particularly strong either especially when it comes to sentence structure. This leads to people passively learning 'well enough' communication where there's a general understanding of direction but no nuance.
Maybe this is the lesson of the tower of Babel. When a civilization has the means and resources to build a massive tower, economic opportunists who do not understand and have limited ability to communicate start crating stagnation through gridlock - no one can understand each other well enough to organize logistics.
SomethingMusic
6mo ago
Please stop arguing semantics. I hate when discussions devolve into word games as a way of avoiding the actual validity of an argument, and if this is the line of reasoning you're going to choose I'm not going to entertain this discussion further.
If word choice is your problem, is 'renting' better than 'buying'?
Either way, the negative externalities of turning sex into a consumptive act to be exchanged as a market is something that should be discouraged, regardless of age.
SomethingMusic
6mo ago
If they sold their body for ten million dollars, they would not end up as 2nd class people.
But they do, and the evidence of this is clear: how many prostitutes and former actresses have ended up in successful happy functional relationships? The evidence is clear that reputation destruction (and whatever psychological damage that happens during the repeated engagement of promiscuity) that women receive when they engage in these acts is fairly permanent and follows them throughout their lives, even if their acts cause financial success.
SomethingMusic
6mo ago
Something that modern analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fails to understand is the insane length of the timeline of the conflict and how it changes and shifts the perspectives of these two cultures. It's easy to look at this as an eighty year-old conflict as the state of Israel was established and recognized by the UN in 1948, but the truth is that this is a conflict of literal biblical proportions. Even with Israel becoming increasingly secular over the years (currently around 40%), 60% of the population is still practicing Judaism on some level of observant. This conflict and intermingling of peoples comes to a head in the book of Joshua when God commands the Jews to genocide out the nation of Canaanites as entry into the promised land. Israel's failure to do so has perpetuated this conflict for the past 2000 years.
The importance of this not only as a denote of how long the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has lasted, but also defines their relationship, one of violence and antagonism. Our much more recent historical conflicts shows how much chaos happens when one people subjugates another. In the US' failed occupation of Afghanistan and Iran, there has been little to no success of actually changing the populations political or social alignment at all - as soon as we left the old regime quickly took control the power vacuum and ultimately are as or more cruel as it ever was. England's conquest across the globe has also failed to significantly change the political and social rules of the old societies once England absconded from their (former) territories. Total obliteration and oppression seems to be the most effective method of instilling new values in a society.
I think this perspective creates a better 'screen' in which to view this most recent upheaval, this is not something new, but rather something incredibly old involving religious and historical contrivances as old as the Talmud and the torah.
SomethingMusic
6mo ago
If we were favouring Israel because it advanced our interests, that's fine. But that's not the case. It doesn't do us any good to anger the Arabs, who can cause many problems for us and have much more to offer. Reason dictates that we throw Israel under the bus, so we can strengthen relations with more important countries. I see your surgeon and I raise you the petrol station, the latter is more important.
But it does. Who else in the area is sympathetic to western ideology and willing to house western military bases?
Israel is also one of the intellectual powerhouses in the region. Intel has a 17 billion dollar foundry there. It's become an important industrial and manufacturing area of high level technology in the world. There is huge incentive for the US/west to support Israel beyond slave morality.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
If Stephan Hawking can get married twice, you will be able to find some companionship at some point in your life. Learning self-worth is some part of it, the other part is developing a personality which people can find appealing is also incredibly benifitial.
Since it seems a lot of your hang ups are on height; I know of two people in successful marriages who are approximately around your height. Height is only an issue because you allow it to be one.
I have a feeling you've posted a lot in various threads about your dating over the years. I forget, are you still in school?
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
Reddit is beginning to truly shoot itself in the foot. A new policy of charging for API calls of $12,000 for 50 million calls is going to kill 3rd-party developers who have developed lightweight apps that are superior to Reddits own awful app. Reddit is Fun is the app I've used for practically a decade, and Reddit itself has become one of the most important depositories for human knowledge online - how many of us have resorted to "product + reddit" or "problem + reddit" as a method of locating and finding specified information?
All of this seems to be to push reddit towards an IPO and to increase revenues (Especially for a company which has never made money), but I have a feeling their push for revenues will come at the cost of community it has been able to foster. Why reddit even wants to be a profitable company is beyond me - why not just become a nonprofit?
Anyways, I think this will cause a ton of people to leave reddit, or at least cause a lot of grumbling and virtue signaling about going to leave reddit. I haven't used Facebook significantly since the 2016 election, maybe people will flock back there.
I know when the 3rd party apps die (I wonder if that includes RES) I'll probably no longer go on reddit myself.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
I think farm labor would be perfect. Take the unruley city kid and have them manually transplant Vidalia onions for 3 months. If they try to start something I doubt the visa-farm laborers would take a second to beat them to the ground. could even pay them $15/hr subsidized by the government to be paid upon completion of sentence. Any tantrum or loss of crops from the individual can be taken out of their pay.
The problem is that bored young antisocial men have no outlets for constructive behavior in the ghetto. Get them working and put them in a situation where they're isolated from what allows them to misbehave.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
I'm thinking of a cubist styled picture of a clarinet, oboe, and bassoon. If people are playing the instruments, they should be pretty undefined. It fits with the style of music we're playing along with the time period a lot of the pieces we're playing were composed.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
I am convinced NET Neutrality was a push by FAANG companies because they were attempting to monopolize the internet through preventing any company besides themselves to sensor content, the ISPs were the top concern because they controlled the end user experience. Ajit Pai should be recognized by congress as being smart enough to see through corporate greed and went along with his notion to repeal Net Neutrality, especially since the FCC was hardly the correct agency to control the internet anyways.
SomethingMusic
12d ago
I always find it a pity that CS Lewis' most successful work is Narnia series, considering so much of what he wrote exploring the human condition is so eloquent and excellent.
Why America's social policy is not helping the poor
There's a section of Youtube lately that is focusing on the faces of poverty in America. Not in a predatory way like 'get rich quick' influences, crypto scammers, and redpill adjacent-sphere individuals like Andrew Tate who are looking to exploit the desperate poor to make profit, but rather to shine a light on the mindset of poverty in America.
One of the most recent videos is by Andrew Callaghan interview and documentary about the Kia Boys, a group of young teenagers around New Haven notorious for stealing and lifting Kia's and Hyundais who had a vulnerability in their system allowing easy theft. It's a fascinating watch, but what's most interesting is how they want to spend the money they earn from carjacking. Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.
Another youtuber is tackling American consumer debt and looks at how consumer choices end them in significant, and often insurmountable debt without extreme lifestyle and person changes. Caleb Hammer interviews people (in a fairly obnoxious and click-baity style) in significant loan and credit card debt, breaks down their finances, and tries to get them on a budget with a varying amount of success. The most common factor of the guests he has on his show is eating out- for most of his guests, almost 33% of most of their monthly income is eating out at various establishments and other spending that does not significantly increase their quality of life. Many of his guests would have significant personal income if they could have some self-control in their consumptive habits.
The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.
This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.
Unfettered illegal immigration further strangles poverty-stricken America. The social resources are stretched thinner, to the point our politicians decided it's better to serve incoming illegals than their own constituents on the off-chance they're willing to work the menial jobs for well below livable wage for the area. Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.
So the question remains, what can be done? It's quite possible liberal policy is somewhat correct but doesn't go far enough. Instead of social security checks, benefits should be more tied between work programs and corporations. Imagine that individuals in section housing have to work at Amazon fulfilment centers. Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers. People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence and social workers more intimately involved in their lives along with people helping them understand budgeting. It would require insane amounts of manpower, but it would also be the first step in actually beginning to address the problems of the slums.
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