Tanista
11mo ago
Trump is probably the most pro-vaccine prominent politician in the GOP because he couldn’t let go of his personal belief that it’s a great achievement even as the base radicalized beyond him.
His narcissism helps him here.
He dies on hills he probably shouldn't, just to be stubborn.
But I guess it can come across as a costly signal of sincerity (or at least spine, something many of his 2016 competitors seemed to lack)
The fact that it causes the outgroup to attack him even more for this might be a secondary benefit of Republicans feel obligated to close ranks.
Tanista
11mo ago
If the majority of woke supporters (at least within institutions) are supporters only because of civil rights law, then support for wokeness could turn pretty quickly.
I mean, it's pretty easy to argue that the Emperors' favor helped Christianity get entrenched but that doesn't mean it died with them
It might be too late.
Tanista
11mo ago
So, Succession recently had its finale. Thoughts? Did it stick the landing?
Tanista
11mo ago
Do we have spoiler tags on this site btw?
But, barring that, I more or less agree, it's good tragedy in that it all seems almost inevitable after the fact. Kendall especially.
The funniest I think has to be Connor. I love how Armstrong just came back and rugpulled the thin sliver of hope for the people who constantly memed about Connor. Despite the briefly, middlingly positive* interaction at the wedding, of course Willa would enjoy her alone time.
* Might as well be the series' tagline
Do Reddit mods actually improve Reddit much?
I've been a mod so I'm biased but I'd say...yes. Reddit is benefiting from a lot of unpaid labour to keep things running.
It really is like being a janitor. When you do it well, people take it for granted. But people quickly notice when the rubbish starts to pile up.
Especially since it takes a small number of defectors (especially for small subs) for things to get bad. I've mentioned this before but we had a situation where one user was making 2% of the posts. And they were prone to drama. Such types eventually get banned (I could have taken a harsher stance on banning them earlier) but just imagine the disproportionate impact such an obsessive person could have on the climate of a sub if they aren't deterred.
If they spend more time than I think removing spam, then I could be convinced otherwise, but that doesn't seem to be what they mostly do.
A ton of stuff is done on the backend users don't care about. And yes, removing spam is one part of it - big subs like /r/movies and /r/sports would be unusable if mods didn't prune the 6,000 reposts of the same breaking news . Another thing is nipping negative shit in the bud before it becomes a problem
So long as it isn't too contentious, users likely won't notice or be thankful though.
Tanista
11mo ago
How much agency did Buffy have? She didn't choose to be the slayer, nor was she the 'brains' of the operation.
By this standard any superhero with innate powers may be said to not have agency?
Rey more or less was carried along by the plot, and was simply gifted the powers she’d need exactly when she’d need them...Male characters are written with challenges to overcome and often must work very hard to learn to overcome them. They’re allowed to not know, they’re forced to figure it out on their own, and they absolutely are deciding on what to to and how to do it.
You say that like it isn't the result of the girlboss trend? It is girlboss feminist characters who start with all of the tools, based on the idea that the only thing really wrong with women is that men are holding them back (see Captain Marvel for the most prominent recent example).
So they can't just be flawed, it has to be everyone else's fault.
Even in Hunger Games, Katniss makes no real decisions, they simply don’t come up.
I've only seen the movies, but Katniss' role as a symbol for a rebellion much greater than herself always seemed to be the point. She makes choices (especially in the final movie where she has to act on her own or turn against supposed allies) but the entire point is that her choices are constrained by the tyrannical system she's in.
Even when she is acting as a lightning rod for the resistance she's sort of forced into a particular mold and one of the plot points is how constricting it is (it's actually a pretty funny and interesting look at manufacturing propaganda and the use of symbols and celebrities)
And she does do things, and they do matter. Deciding to (pretend) kill herself and Peta- the fact that this is the closest thing to rebellion she can manage is again just reinforcing the point above - not only wins them the games but makes her into said symbol of resistance despite her wishes cause she knows it puts everyone she loves at risk.
Even Hermione it’s more of a case where she happens to have just read a book and the book tells her what to do so she does it.
I'm sorry. This just seems like grasping for straws now. Hermione, especially in the films, does a lot that others can't do even though they have access to the same books. You've basically been presented with a genius female character and are writing her off cause...she reads before making her plans?
Another way to put it is: Hermione is the most studious and skilled member of the group and is basically the required support for most of their schemes coming close to succeeding - from independently figuring out the Basilisk's nature, to making polyjuice potion to setting up Dumbledore's Army (including her spiteful little revenge on anyone who tattled about it). She also goes into business for herself on crusades that the rest of the cast don't care for (e.g. freedom for house elves).
At worst, she's Q. At best, she's Tony Stark.
I could come up with a much less flattering description of say...Ron's contributions to the group. But no one denies he has agency.
Tanista
11mo ago
until they were either ruined or replaced with girlbosses whose only flaw is that they can't see how awesome they are.
If we're going to speak about failing at cross-sex mind-reading the fact that girlbosses - who are basically an inversion of the male role - come across as more defensive and mean-spirited than the average male hero says something about how these writers think men see their heroes.
I don't think I've ever gone to a Tom Cruise movie to see him upstage some woman (or women as a class) by rescuing her or being the competent hero.
It isn't just one side failing to read the other.
Tanista
11mo ago
As I said there are people who just run around posting disproportionately and being negative. One example is podcast threads: you can have someone jump into a thread that was just posted (well before they could listen to it ) and make snide, low-effort comments about guests or the host (including back-handed comments like "well, at least he had a good guest this time"). Then that's the first thing everyone sees and a significant portion of the discussion is not about the topic but whether the guest is awful or not in some unrelated issue or, even worse, whether the sub is too toxic and so on.
Then there's users who have some grudge with each other and it can drag out across threads and weeks. Nipping it in the bud by simply removing those comments removes the incentives for that pettiness cause no one will ever see it.
I've previously described the psychology of a certain sort of poster that seems determined to ruin a sub and such people just have to be deterred or banned early.
There's also inflammatory off-topic stuff like HBD that has, ime, never went anywhere good. If it doesn't violate the relevance rule then we're stuck with it. But it actually did make life more bearable for everyone to just not discuss it (it seemed to draw the above sort of people like flies). The sub markedly became worse when it actually became relevant and we could no longer remove it.
The more I've thought about the concept of disease and disability, the more I've become convinced that there isn't actually a good philosophical grounding for talking about variation and difference in normative terms.
To take just one example, being left-handed is a variation that occurs in a minority of humans. Is it an "unfortunate mutation" or a "normal variation"?
I mean, if we're going to question the concept of disease and disability why start there? Seems "convenient" to start on an edge case that most people would acknowledge (presumably because there's other factors at play that prevent one assuming that variation is disability - e.g. almost no impact on what we consider right and healthy functioning)
Seems like this easily collapses into a general challenge to the idea of health as a normative category.
So what about people born without an arm? Or many other actually painful congenital conditions? How do we know that's "unhealthy" or a "disability"? Do we just not? Is there no normative sheen to any of this?
I think this leads to strange places that are at least out of step with most people's intuitions.
If it doesn't, then I don't see how this point isn't subject to the same critique being made of this concept of gender: it's a deliberate attempt to occlude the fact of a generally accepted category by using edge cases.
Tanista
11mo ago
You made a big leap from left-handedness to missing limb, which is commonly accepted as a disability, and ignored all of the in-between.
Yes, it was deliberate.
Thats my point: OP criticized the very idea of normative categories due to biological deviations but conveniently picks one deviation that most people would now argue falls outside of the category of "disability" (because such people fall within the normative category of "healthy").
It seems to me that even in his attempt to "problematize" such categories he's trying to leverage their assumptions. Presumably because arguing that "health" as such is a meaningless category is a fringe position.
It's only a "leap" once I accept that there is such a thing as health and it doesn't exclude certain minor deviations but excludes larger ones. On the category skeptical view who is to say?
I want to push him to apply his logic consistently, to cases intuitively considered less thorny.
If he doesn't see this as a problem then I refer back to my OPs final paragraph.
Tanista
11mo ago
I think the mistake is viewing categories as “real” things that exist outside of your mind. Categories aren’t “real”, they’re a fuzzy concept that humans invented. This doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless; they’re an abstraction through which to compress tons of information about a subject, allowing you to make decisions more effectively. Every category is like this, from species to planets to sandwiches to chairs.
So, if categories do carve reality at the joints sometimes, how does this square with:
The more I've thought about the concept of disease and disability, the more I've become convinced that there isn't actually a good philosophical grounding for talking about variation and difference in normative terms.
You're providing one potential grounding and justification of categories - they are tied to important things that are truth-apt. Why is that not enough for grounding, when OP's own examples seem to quite clearly show implicit use of "meaningful" categories?
I think OP is being inconsistently nihilist. He should either pay the full price of nihilism or accept that he's right there with the rest of us and can't just blithely dismiss categories via edge cases to avoid inconvenient exclusions.
Put it another way: can I use OP's argument to dismiss, I dunno, flesh-eating bacteria as a disease? If not, why not? How does the above argument not prove too much?
So if you ask is “X a disease”, you should be aware that disease isn’t a thing that objectively exists outside of human interpretation.
I don't see how that helps OP. First of all, it's debatable what's objective or not (or what we mean by it). Morality is widely considered objective by ethicists and is even more subject to this criticism.
For another: why does "disease" need to exist outside of humanity? Isn't it enough that OP seems quite clearly able to see that "left-handedness" is only weakly (or not at all) within the disease camp but flesh-eating bacteria would be? Why did he not leverage a more intuitively absurd example? If they know they can't, why do they think they can just dismiss categories when they're quite clearly guiding him?
Already you sure maleness has no privilege in and out of itself? By default, men are taken far more seriously in professional situations, have medical professionals disbelieve their medical conditions less often, get sexually harassed a lot less, and the ability to cooperate easily with other men is a certainly advantage.
Men are also more likely to be abandoned to their fate if they are marginal (see the homelessness rates) and I don't see why I'd give men "privilege" for the ability to cooperate with each other unless I also gave them a malus for being more likely to violently assault one another and attribute the absence of that amongst women to "female privilege".
IME few feminist or purveyor of privilege theory do this. In fact, they seem to do the opposite: men's heightened risk of assault and violence and longer prison sentences are the result of "toxic masculinity" (with the not-subtle implication that it is men's fault and issue, unlike problems that impact women) and women are EDIT: not privileged for avoiding it.
but if you’re trying to say, be a successful businessperson, being a woman can be a double edged sword
What if I, as a man, want to be a successful kindergarten teacher?
A stay-at-home dad?
you can be pretty sure it’s because they’re interested in the business and not because they want to sleep with you.
And what about all of the benefits that can come from leveraging sexuality? Or just the general "women are wonderful" effect?
Tanista
11mo ago
Some trans people would argue that such a “cure” would fundamentally change who they are as a person
So would cochlear implants. It hasn't posed a significant moral problem for us I think.
It is only a problem if you buy into the idea that an illness or deficiency has the same value as the natural functioning of the body. But that is putting the cart before the horse.
Given that transpeople are claiming that their dysphoria makes them suffer so significantly that care is mandated and most of their gains have been based on a mostly pragmatic desire to avoid this suffering they have less room here than many - e.g. homosexuals - to complain.
Tanista
11mo ago
who on earth thought he should star in an action movie?
Probably Harrison Ford? By all accounts he actually loves the character, as opposed to Han Solo where he required a dump truck of money to do an obligatory film and then close the book forever by being killed off.
Tanista
11mo ago
The price was too high, but more significant than that was the fact that there was no presence of the actual characters I care about, like Han and Luke and Leia. Or that guy. I’ll take goddamn that guy, just give me someone I know.
The fact that Kennedy or anyone even suggested this and wasn't fired immediately explains everything about where Disney Star Wars is.
An enemy company could not have come up with a more malicious suggestion to slip into the box.
And for what? It's not like the Sequel Trilogy has its own unique character. They could have had both OT characters and newer stuff.
Is it really just a "I want my thing to be the Thing?"
Tanista
11mo ago
I heard that about Shang-Chi too (couldn't be that the Chinese - who, unlike black Americans, have their own whole industry - don't really care about a "groundbreaking" Chinese-American superhero?)
It's amazing, we've never been more connected yet the weirdest stories come out of China and just proliferate as if they're urban legends about Japan in the 80s or something.
The Little Mermaid is not earning the overseas profits it needed to do, and seemingly on the second domestic weekend it also fell back (this is being blamed on the usual "racist backlash" but oh dear those racist East Asians who aren't going to see it, tsk tsk!)
Of course they'd prefer the tale to be about racism. I've seen some articles from alleged news sites that might as well have been penned by Disney. Which seems to have contributed to the impression amongst normies that the movie actually opened well.
But the truth is that these movies are bankrupt. The race lift is just one attempt to make them distinct from the still-classic originals. The other being the CGI which is generally worse and less expressive and "fun" than the original animation. Then there's the added length for a kid's movie...
All these factors taken together, the movie's failure seems over-determined. The question is why did equally bad adaptations like Lion King succeed?
Tanista
11mo ago
Asking when the LGBs are going to jettison the TQs is kind of like asking when the Republicans are going to jettison fundamentalists.
There's a difference: fundamentalists vote in large numbers so they provide continuing value to the general conservative movement.
Meanwhile:
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the Ts are a small number, even within the movement.
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Many of the gains of the Ls, Gs & Bs are locked in by judicial ruling so aren't going anywhere. Their allies certainly wouldn't dare roll them back if they sat this one out. Even the GOP has large numbers or even a bare majority in favor of gay marriage.
But I also don't think there'll be a jettisoning for that reason.
Because the "normie" gays like Andrew Sullivan either went on with their lives after winning the important battles or were turned off or defenestrated by the TQs and radicals who still need the movement - either for their unpopular goals or whatever psychological need for belonging or the perception of radical politics they have.
Tanista
11mo ago
I heard that given as a reason they wiped the old EU but then they did bring back Thrawn and co.
I don’t agree with OP’s blanket dismissal of categories.
Fair enough. TBF it's unclear how far OP will take it themselves.
“Disease” is a very useful category, my argument is simply to recognise that humans have a tendency to ask “is X a disease” when the real question actually is “should X be cured”, and focusing on whether X is a “really” a disease or not is pointless.
The term "disease" has normative implications. The implication that it should be cured is built into debating whether something is a disease.
It's really the same discussion.
Latest "red pill"' icon, former fighter, pimp and now grifter selling information on how to make money, become fit and, of course, get women.
A lot of his audience like him because he's an aspirational figure that emphasizes an internal locus of control rather than victimhood - while also feeding the part of men that likes to see themselves as temporarily embarrassed ubermensch. Or, more charitably, a recognition that no feminist-style solidarity or ideology will change that men have to develop themselves and compete against other men and someone has to fail.
People like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman do offer positive messages and roadmaps, but as relatively stable married men with conventional advice (Peterson especially is vocally against hookup culture) they don't really satisfy young males' natural fantasies of unlimited sexual access and climbing the status hierarchy, perhaps by literally kicking people's asses.
Yes, Tate's worldview is one where a lot of "loser" men will fail but the trick is of course that he's telling you the audience member how to not be that guy.
The logic is that there's no going back to some sort of equitable 1950s distribution of women anyway, the romantic safety net for normal guys is gone and we live in an inegalitarian time, a new sexual Gilded Age. No point complaining about it, it's done. Since you can't just count on finding one normal "modern woman"* easily like your grand-daddy did at the church ball or whatever, all men should be trying to maximize your chances by becoming the Top G(uy).
You're gonna be that top guy, obviously (if you buy his course).
As for his "using" of women - the men he sells to are products of the oppositional, transactional, selfish culture of the gender wars, rap music and hustle culture - it's every man for himself in the market. The logic being that women (well, everyone) are in for themselves and have all sorts of advantages now so why not shouldn't men play their own game? If you don't want to be "used" don't sign a bad contract.
There's probably an added element of vengeance and vicarious pleasure in that feminists are blamed for ruining any old arrangements and trumpeting female freedom and agency, so if things also go wrong for them (as they've gone for the audience) and the tables are turned, well...that's just the game they wanted to play.
Of course, in a highly porn-friendly world, many may simply not give a shit at all about women being "exploited" via a webcam business cause they're already jaded to it happening on an industrial scale. Contractarian logic doesn't lend itself to sympathy here - especially if the charge is of emotional manipulation.
TBH the oddest bit is how he admits to basically preying on male loneliness (basically running a webcam business and leading men on to think they're chatting with the women when they weren't, basically defrauding them) while also sounding notes about how hard a man's life is and never gets called on it by his audience.
But, again, temporarily embarrassed millionaires and all.
* A polite euphemism for everything from "slut" to "naive blank slateist" to "unjustifiably selective harpy"
Yeah, DeSantis I think has a bit of the Hillary thing: he comes across as a careerist dweeb that'll tell you what you want to hear (like that SNL skit of Hillary morphing into Bernie)
Even when he has a point ( he'd probably be best on fighting wokeness on a legal level) I can see why it doesn't connect. Hillary also claimed the wonk title as a selling point for people who weren't bowled over by her charisma, some people just didn't care at all.
I promised myself I'd treat Hanania with more skepticism after his Ukraine call but the minute I saw DeSantis being mocked for his Twitter announcement that article plus his general view that DeSantis was going to be done in by Trump immediately came to mind.
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