Tanista
19hr ago
Yes, despite deep skepticism of the trans worldview I've always modeled it as more confused than evil or anything.
I think, for many people, once you reach a certain threshold of harm to others, it doesn't really matter that much. Especially if you're supposed to be held to a higher standard.
I don't believe that people's beliefs are not within their control. Looking at the response to the Cass Report, it seems there are a lot of people who have chosen to inure themselves against the opposing viewpoint almost before it even dropped (in some cases literally immediately, to the point where they linked to the wrong document).
Professionals and activists are responsible for the ideological castles they build in their head. A person who was willfully ignorant about say...prescribing opiates is not treated kindly by most. Others have recognized and pulled themselves out of these echo chambers.
I can give a random confused mother a pass for picking any particular intervention that the alleged truth-seeking organizations drive towards. Those same organizations must surely be treated differently, or why do they have any authority or prestige?
Tanista
1d ago
On the other level, does this take away some steam from Republicans seeking re-election?
Anyone who is following along knows that Biden caused a lot of these problems and tried to mislead people about his ability to affect the outcome until it was clear it'd cost him.
Anyone who isn't probably still knows about the increase in migrants and, if they're inclined in an anti-asylum direction, Trump will always be more credible.
Once upon a time, I'm sure faraway and more isolationist America seemed vastly less threatening to Europeans than the near enemies. In fact, this is exactly what American hegemony in Europe still depends on.
Once upon a time, America had never jumped into the sorts of ill-fated intervention to reshape the Middle East one might expect of other powers.
Once upon a time, Japan was isolationist.
I don't understand why people act like China's historical inability to harm Europe or best it at the colonial game is some immutable part of its character.
Michael Bispings a one and done thing.
Honestly, that comparison is still flattering to Poirier. Rockhold had a deadly top game but he was never one to shoot much. He trained with DC and Khabib but he never really a wrestler of that sort. IIRC him bashing Weidman's face in happened after many striking exchanges and driving Weidman into a desperation move he took advantage of. In other cases, it's reversals and sprawling.
So Bisping's "puncher's chance" was much higher because it was at least going to be standup fight for a bit.
One of my favorite things about LW: it's so stacked that I don't really mind who wins. It will probably suck for Poirier but so be it.
EDIT: That went far longer and a better defensive performance from Poirier than I expected tbh.
Tanista
6d ago
The popular narrative right now is "It was all undermined by Arafat," and honestly, I'd say that's only about 60% true.
Who gets the other 40% of the blame, if you don't mind me asking?
Tanista
8d ago
As 2rafa said, the line is that Israelis are colonists and will fold and "go home"...somewhere. How much people believe that line or it's just the best PR position, I dunno. They walk around carrying keys to houses they've never seen. Who knows how many drunk the Koolaid?
I doubt Palestinians outright want to burn. But are they willing to gamble on burning if they believe that, when Israel no longer has the ability to act with impunity and has to choose between mutual annihilation and backing down, it will fold?
Tanista
8d ago
The Samson Option. The Israelis are at least as stubborn as the Palestinians, and if they think they're losing a war for their existence they will use the nukes. Which is not going to turn out well for anyone.
If you're playing the long game there's a future where some Middle Eastern Muslim state gets nukes. This makes Israel just genociding the Palestinians and/or its other enemies a much more fraught endeavor. Such a nation might not have a choice but to signal it'd intervene, or its leadership could be overthrown.
Tanista
9d ago
Have you eliminated sleep apnea by doing a sleep study?
I did one about a year ago and we did. I have cut down on caffeine before and not noticed any difference but I suppose experimenting with going cold turkey can't hurt.
Tanista
9d ago
Right now, regardless of morals, the simple fact is that Israel destroyed Gaza, Israel controls Gaza, and therefore Israel has a moral responsibility to rebuild and improve Gaza. To the tune of billions, quite frankly. You break it, you buy it.
Israel withdrew from Gaza, the governing body that took over was Hamas, Hamas started the war that destroyed Gaza.
It has never been a principle of war that you get to attack people, they whoop you and then they have to fix everything for you.
The Palestinians aren't just the Palestinians they're the - increasingly tenuous - foothold on Jerusalem for the entire Ummah (and a symbol of Muslim humiliation that has to be addressed)
This is why they have outsized support, and all sorts of special benefits that other refugees don't get and are seen as an ongoing moral issue for the entire Muslim world, even if many leaders have bent to the facts on the ground (and American bribes).
A lot of groups don't have this sort of situation to embolden their radicals who want the whole thing.
EDIT: While we're at it, there is the question of what separate and distinct Palestinian identity (separate from being Arab) exists outside of the conflict with Israel.
Tanista
9d ago
I need a sanity check: when do you get exhausted in the day?
Cause I'm just useless after ~5-6 (around 12 hrs after I wake up) and I don't know if it's just that I'm old now or my sleep is so fucking bad that even when I don't feel sleepy in the morning it hits me later.
Some policies are so pollyannaish I can hardly believe people considered them. When I remember that, despite huge increases, only so many people have a college degree it makes more sense.
Yeah, if you could just slice off the bottom half of the population in terms of agreeableness and so on I'm sure plenty of ideas like "don't punish criminals" and "unilaterally disarm and hope for the best" might work better.
Yeah, I suppose we can say they did it to themselves but the time when "no fighting" and "peace" in the way the world wants - 2SS - were the same clearly seems to have passed.
he just sort of assumes, as many people do, that the US has the ability to dictate terms to people.
It's always interesting to see how some of the people most critical of American hegemony believe in it the most. They take for granted that , if it so chose, it could rid itself of all its problems
The hawks at least believe they're going to have to crack a few skulls to make people obey because others have agency.
JS: If the government of Israel either were told, or said, there will be a state of Palestine, and we will live peacefully side by side, the fighting would stop today. These are basic facts, basic matters of truth that if we actually spoke them, if we actually treated each other like grown-ups we would resolve to seem to be these insurmountable crises. They're not at all insurmountable, they just require a measure of truth.
Secular liberals have to believe this sort of thing. Because they, correctly, believe that the most likely solution that people will reach if they decide there's irreconcilable differences is ethnic cleansing.
That in no way makes it true though.
Didn't we just have a bunch of complaints about the lack of movement and discussion in the main threads?
Maybe the people who have successfully made some level of youtube career out of condemning hated woke adaptations that disrespect the original material should pool resources together and try to create themselves some faithful adaptations, starting with less ambitious targets. The Critical Drinker who is a writer might be able to do something interesting.
I stopped watching a while ago so I don't know how it's going, but the person who seems to have found the most success building a platform for conservative/outsider film-making is Dallas Jenkins. But I don't know that you can generate that sort of grassroots enthusiasm for most stories, even Christian ones. I think people are specifically willing to pay for his (pretty fun) take on the Gospels in a way they wouldn't for other products.
The Daily Wire is trying, but it's not looking good when the very critic you cite (who they actively courted) was lukewarm on their last movie (Ladyballers). Maybe Snow White will be good because they'll stick to the source material but we'll see.
I just don't think they can play at the sort of scale that does certain movies/properties justice (The first Narnia cost $180 million...a couple of decades ago). There's a reason Hollywood has a chokehold on blockbusters. Luc Besson got $200 million for Valerian after a surprise hit in Lucy, in an attempt to have his own franchise. It bombed, he will never see that sort of money again. Very few entities can absorb those losses.
Tanista
11d ago
I saw propaganda around that recently, I didn't really take it that seriously - just thought it was part of the same desperation causing them to look for men. Because, if you're going to use women as combat troops, it seems deeply unwise to let half your manpower go.
Lewis and his society were simply closer to the reality of war.
Even to this day, this attitude is held when the rubber meets the road. Ukraine didn't put both men and women on the frontline and Ukraine did not stop women from leaving on the grounds that they had to fight and there was very little outrage about it.
People just don't want to be told they can't do X, even if they had no intention of actually doing that thing.
That was the recent Katt Williams episode, which was also unbearable.
Howard goes even further, because I don't think Williams questions basic math.
Tanista
13d ago
People enjoy the altered flow-like state created by reading a long narrative for hours at a stretch, their own consciousness and volition being overridden by the flow of the story.
Narrative-gooning.
Tanista
14d ago
There is no trap - as in "a problem that's unpredictable and becomes worse if one uses their better judgment". There's a problem that's very soluble to the actions of the selective sex.
I took f3zinker's point to be more that, in many cases, we just tell people to do the sensible thing to avoid certain problems. But in this particular case people try to contrive some explanation (and/or blame society/men/patriarchy) for why people can't just do the thing that makes it seem like they've been trapped rather than just misusing (allegedly - revealed preference and all that) their agency.
For a certain type of person this is indeed good advice though.
It might have been good advice for OP, if they'd gotten it at a different time.
Using your example, much more useful if you're headed into your first year of college compared to when you're 25-35 or whatever.
Race riots are a GREAT way to let someone know they aren't welcome and should make all effort to shape up, fight, or get out.
Race riots have to be pretty fucking bad for people to go back to Africa or Pakistan, especially the way things are going now in some of those countries. Frankly, I don't know that you can make it bad enough except on pain of death. And, of course, people will react to that.
Even worse, you run the risk of radicalizing the biggest - by mass - obstacle to this sort of thing: Good Whites who want to fight Nazis. It's not gonna be a stretch if you're actively ethnically cleansing via violence.
Of course Democrats could do this. But they won't. In Poland and Russia, if some minorities are caught up more in these sorts of QOL policing policies, c'est la vie.
The entire reason Democrats have experimented with ruinous crime "reform" that has ruined some cities (against the very self-interest you appeal to) is that they consider this fundamentally delegitimizing. Their natural response to seeing some people fall below standards is to try to destroy the standard
So, yes. The urbanists could have their good transit and clean and safe downtowns and it could be a mocha paradise where all of the prosocial people of all races gather, but this would require simply slicing off the bits of each demographic that can't hack it. And they have gone down a radicalization rabbit hole that renders them ideologically (and maybe even legally) incapable of doing it when it appears those slices won' be equal. The people admiring Netherlands' bikes and trains and Tokyo's policies are the same sorts of people that cannot abide what that would cost, even if we posit that it'd only have to be short erm
So segregation will persist, as people with wherewithal flee this chaos.
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