ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
No bio...
User ID: 822
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
Anyway, you're really ok with people just purchasing children?
A counterpoint: Westerners traffic purchase children from far poorer countries all the time, as in Western countries the demand for kids to adopt far exceeds the supply (whereas the opposite is true in the host country).
This is done openly and their activities are usually portrayed positively, even though children are generally considered possessions (their involuntary labor is your right as a parent or guardian) in the West for the first 18 years of their life.
What's the difference between this kind of remote adoption, enslaving workers from foreign countries (for labor or prostitution, which is what people usually mean by "trafficking"), and domestic surrogacy? Because I don't think there's a difference at all, and the argument against those things can be made, but is not defensible on strictly utilitarian grounds (because if it was, human history wouldn't contain the amount of slavery that it currently does).
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
when times are good companies are more than willing to keep a bunch of low impact employees on the payroll
Also, it helps crowd out competition. Why fire a bunch of people when the interest rate is zero?
Sure, you'll save money in the short term, but those workers don't just disappear from the labor market; enterprising competitors will snap them up and end up requiring you to offer them a billion dollar acquihire scheme to shut them down before their product starts taking your marketshare.
Better to just keep them at Bigco. Sure, they won't really develop anything for you, but why drive the state of the art forward when you can just ignore all your customers, keep your competitors down, and rake in the cash from your ad business?
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
What does TheMotte think about hiring a home cleaning service?
It's not a signifier of high-income for no reason- people actually do like not having to worry about it. Just like cooking, when it's something that requires a lot of time to prep and contaminates the entire kitchen it's often more efficient (and tastier!) to choose an industrial kitchen- but a bit more niche and personal.
I just clean whenever I'm entertaining or when it gets to the point that it annoys me (usually a symptom of an underlying mechanical problem, like the sink or tub failing to drain). If it's not annoying me and I'm not worried about anyone seeing it, then there's no problem and am confused as to why it would be.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
They don't just know that they're supposed to do it
Or in other words, they're counting coup- Kiwifarms vs. Keffals and co. is how I'd expect that to look.
creating entire internet subcultures devoted to spreading their ideas
If it looks like a liberal and quacks like a liberal it's... probably a liberal. They're disproportionately dissident anyway when in a political situation that doesn't favor them- it's probably an evolutionary strategy to be sufficiently indispensable that the progressive-traditionalists can't fire them. These people just tend to create things because it's, for lack of a better word, in them to create; hacker culture used to be like this and, when you look at what the forefront is (used to be tech in general, but it's more limited to ML now), still very much is.
Once you figure out that traditionalists and progressives are just fighting over the temporary allegiances of these people- remember that, while the left can't meme, neither can the right (without the liberals)- political dynamics make more sense. It's just a pendulum; when dominated by traditionalists, play progressive, when dominated by progressives, play traditionalist.
What I was getting at is how would the reality of curtailing the freedom of about 1/2 the population significantly and the radical changes to even allow that to occur affect the rest of our society? What other massive impositions might be made on the population?
Given historical evidence (remember, we only stopped doing this 100 years ago) the answer appears to be "things change vanishingly little if at all". There's very little difference between pre- and post-suffrage in terms of how Western societies operated and women (at the population level) still held significant amounts of power, political and otherwise, over the men casting the votes. Prohibition is the perhaps the best example of this.
By what scaffold do what's left of our freedoms hang in this scenario?
Given the Enlightenment predates even universal male suffrage I think the foundations are pretty solid, though maybe not as much these days given the capital class needs far fewer laborers for the same proportion of economic output so they can't be held to account for their oppression as easily as they used to be.
If you won't be sent to die protecting a society's interests, being given the same right to choose what those interests are as the ones who will be sent is textbook moral hazard.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
Judging by the URL structure, I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a more private YouTube mirror (clearly it's so private it doesn't even exist).
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
I have a cheap 4-16x Vortex that I used when taking the Ruger beyond 300 yards.
Why not just put said cheap Vortex on the longer-range AR and shoot with it until you've found something another scope will do better than it?
(Alternately, what have you found wrong with it such that you want to switch in the first place?)
If you're dedicating the rifle to beyond 100 I really wouldn't worry about 1x- the reason hunting-oriented scopes don't tend to bother with 1x to begin with is a combination of the fact that doing 1x right costs money (it's not like they have to make a 4x scope exactly 4x- you won't notice if it's 3.9 or 4.1- but if they're making a 1x scope you will notice 1.1 or 0.9x), and it costs you in top-end magnification. And any and all of those are still going to leave you at a disadvantage if you now need to take an unanticipated shot at 10 yards anyway.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
Could someone explain to me the likely causes of homosexuality?
It seems very likely to me that 100% of (definitionally) homosexual behavior revolves around the [existence, presence, and availability] of [attractive people] of [the same sex]; it's just that those three things have asterisks to them. Another complicating factor is that love and sex could quite possibly have something to do with each other.
Anyway, I think the first part was pretty clearly covered by the sibling comments about situational/loveless sexuality, but the second and third didn't have much emphasis. So...
For the second, it's all about finding people of the same sex to whom you happen to be sufficiently attracted. There's a common meme around this about "are traps gay?", meaning "is it gay if you don't know they're a guy, or what degree of knowing makes it gay?". Now, while most men are quite a bit uglier than superstimulus-abusing merchandise machinery, it's still somewhat applicable to you if your pattern of attraction should happen to match one (usually happens to the denizens of 4chan with Asians; their physiology tends to pattern match to "female" for a non-negligible fraction of men, and one country in particular is in?famous for its crossdressers).
Yeah, I'm sure there are plenty of academic papers waiting to definitively prove that liking Felix Argyle is gay, but not Astolfo or Bridget.
Somewhat but not entirely related is the third part. What's "the same sex" even mean, especially when you start branching into the gender non-conforming spaces like tomboys, tomgirls, every gay man with the lisp, and the harder transgender (as in, they actually emulate the opposite end of the binary the way you'd expect them to)? Can wanting a woman who has more in common with a man in terms of general attitude or approach towards life be the primary feature of sexual desire, and if so, is that gay? How about the reverse?
I dunno. I think our models of relationships are popularly both as loaded and as accurate as the term "gender studies"; can fish notice water?
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
You get better battery life from the same size of device and pages/apps are, all else being equal, going to render faster (especially if they're using a JS framework adapted to mobile to cut development costs). iOS has always had the edge on Android in terms of UI responsiveness, too; managed languages are a bit of a handicap right out of the gate, and Google has never really been one to emphasize UI polish (much like post-2012 Microsoft, for that matter).
Really, though, iPhones aren't necessarily the most advanced in terms of specific features- it's true that Android has some real interesting things going on with its support for foldable screens (2 apps at the same time with a screen that folds up actually is a big deal- make it 250 dollars so I don't have to worry about it inevitably breaking, and I'll probably buy one). But it works pretty damn well, and you can walk into any repair shop in the world and get parts for it.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1yr ago
Last I was aware, Kiwifarms is still operational, using a protocol and software created and funded by the US Government with this use-case as one of its objectives. It ain't exactly normie-compatible since the URL is some long base-64 abomination only a Linux user would think was acceptable, but you can still talk there with sufficient motivation.
The problem with subversivity is that you can't be subversive without a value-add (something that gender politics mirrors very well with respect to men). As far as I'm aware, Kiwifarms doesn't actually have a value-add; it's just a place to sneer at people. Twitter, and those who would like to be employed there, are interested in socio-regulatory capture to enforce its monopoly on being the place you go to sneer at people (with "the only acceptable sneering is leftist sneering" being the subtext).
Contrast SomethingAwful, being the place a few cornerstones of current Internet culture had their beginnings (most notably, the entire concept of the "Let's play", being a multi-billion dollar industry today), or 4chan, whose unique mode of operation enabled its users to be the leaders in meme-creation for many years, spawned a few games, and whose stream-of-consciousness format lends itself to a wide variety of topics and subtopics not properly serviceable by any other forum. They don't exist solely to sneer, whether by happy accident (4chan sucked up all the non-sneering SomethingAwful users; if they hadn't been so Mean Girls, 4chan wouldn't exist in the first place!), or they only had the sneering take over after the fact (SA and Twitter).
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
3d ago
I’m quite fond of my Lee-Enfield and stocked up on ammo for it.
It is the best fighting rifle under the technological constraints of the era (ignoring the P14/P17, but those are just iterative improvements on Rifle No. 1; Rifle No. 4 had to compete with "just make semi-autos lol" and isn't in my mind as special).
They already had the high-speed operator thing figured out, and you can tell; cock on close, 10 rounds in the mag, and the safety that you can "slingshot" off of Safe when the rifle is cocked (which is an interesting touch I've never seen anyone mention). It's truly unfortunate that a fighting bolt-action rifle was never iterated on meaningfully beyond this- I would have expected one design just to try and keep that niche alive but nope, nothing but slow-fire high-accuracy (which was the only niche that remained for the action type).
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
14d ago
you could probably do well creating something to re-orient gen z people into healthier directions.
You need to teach them to want.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
14d ago
I just call it “corruption”; because that’s what it is.
The woke are not meaningfully distinct from an Eastern European cop demanding a bribe; great for the cops, bad for everyone else. That they claim it all goes to the church is not material.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
28d ago
it makes the hands massive
But the real question: does that happen in reverse?
It would be darkly humorous for a yaoi fan to create a male model with large hands (I don't know why they do this) only for the final product to more closely resemble the unflattering physical stereotype of yaoi fans.
safetyism does lead to (or contributes to) life being better than it has ever been?
All the things that make life better than it ever has been were created in a culture of calculated risk.
If there is no-one to compete against then your people don't need to be taking calculated risks
If they're not taking calculated risks, they're not developing/producing, and being undeveloped/unproductive is Bad, Actually. There's a balance between safety and dignity, and cutting dignity out of the picture means you stop advancing. "But we don't need to advance, just masturbate in your own existing greatness until you die" is not how human beings are wired, and doing that kneecaps your ability to handle internal crises properly.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
Clearly we need meta-safetyists to invent safetyist brakes.
This is generally called "the enemy tribe". The fact that, all else being equal, they'll outcompete you if they take more calculated risks is why safety cannot be first.
External enemies are the ultimate check against internal risk aversity, and when they stop existing that begins to spiral out of control. I don't see any external enemies around right now and life is generally better than it's ever been, so people just pay the toll and suffer the loss of dignity/productivity quietly since the bill will never come due... right?
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
I have a meta theory that many problems of human activity involve too much focus on what people ARE rather than what they DO.
That's because it's the easy way out. You need to do intellectual or emotional labor to deal with people who DO [are aligned with your goals] but ARE NOT [aligned with the rules], and one way to deal with that is to turn your back and say you're not going to do it (doing this also gives you short-term power and sometimes people just get tired and want the easy way out).
Societies start to stop being able to do when the populace gets lazy like this. And while there is a place for identity, it must ultimately be subservient to activity, and when certain kinds of Christians/the Bible start talking about "women/the identity gender should not be in charge/operate unrestrained by men/the activity gender" I think this is what those parts are getting at.
Which leads to some interesting implications when you're talking about sexuality [and topically for this week, homosexuality], since "but what if my girl/boy grows up to be a woman/man incorrectly?" seems to me to be the driving impulse for the stereotypical swift parental overreactions to a woman who's more activity biased or a man who's more identity focused (regardless of how self-aware said child eventually becomes). And then, when that happens, is the implication more that two activity-genders or two identity-genders getting together is sinful (or is it just limited to "penis in the butt is bad", which... if the above is your understanding of gender/men/women that's going to seem immature at best and pointlessly angry at worst)?
"Hate the sin, not the sinner" is once instance of moving in the right direction
But that, again, requires an unwillingness to be intellectually/emotionally lazy (which applies to both parties in that interaction; the sinner? has to also not be taking the lazy "they hate us 'cause they ain't us, so fuck you, I think I'll be as obnoxious as possible because I like being transgressive more than I like accommodating others" [which... right or wrong, it's that last part that condemns you more than anything else]).
The similarities between affirmation/esteem culture and guilt culture have probably been underinvestigated.
Esteem/affirmation culture, in my view, lends itself far more to mere masturbation-by-proxy than a guilt or shame culture does.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
It's a shame there wasn't a Knowledge option
Maybe, but the only thing Knowledge rewards you with is Lamborghinis and I'm dreaming a little bigger than that.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
but someone said the whole "demisexual" thing is just "being normal" and I still haven't heard a compelling counter.
No, that's called "heterosexuality". Biologically speaking, letting your dick do the driving (or taking advantage of the fact that most men do this) is optimal from a reproductive standpoint for what should be obvious reasons, so it makes sense that's the default. You're not supposed to think, you're just supposed to do (insert "only enough blood to run one head at the same time" meme here).
Isn't sexuality supposed to determine who you find sexually attractive?
Yes; heterosexuality (and homosexuality) [in men] is keying off of normal secondary sexual characteristics. Demisexuality isn't a real sexuality though (I think it describes something else; maybe 'male sexuality' and 'female sexuality' are built out of components, it's possible to only get some of the wrong ones, and they cause different problems [from a biological standpoint] when run on the wrong hardware), so it doesn't fit the 'who are you horny for' that hetero/homo/bi/ace can be used to answer.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
Hentai games do this most often for obvious reasons, but the fact that it does that (and all the other things that happen as you start to lose) suggests [to the player] that the difficulty has a slightly more casual relationship with the player even if the rest of the game is quite difficult, so the game designer gets a bit more leeway if the balance isn't otherwise struck just right.
Come to think of it, lots of different games do bad ends this way, and a slightly wider variety of them change substantially based on certain choices you make- for instance, playing the earlier Fallout games with 1 INT makes a lot of the dialogue in the game vastly different. Sure, you don't have to play it that way, and playing it that way makes it more difficult in certain ways (but less in others, at least you can max out STR), but the novelty is going to be worth at least another playthrough.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
I was trying to read up on mobile chipsets for a while
Honestly, they're all good enough, you'll just be tempted to replace the slower ones more often.
And I still think you're doing it right; Android phones only make sense at the "cheaper than the current-gen SE" price point (and they do make a lot of sense there even if your total spend is going to be roughly equivalent)- simply because the more expensive Android phones are just iPhone 11s with a different OS and a better screen (or a gimmick- I'd actually say the future of Android is foldable especially for people whose phones are their main computing device because Apple is institutionally incapable of making proper multitasking and copy/paste is one of the most important things a computer can do).
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
1mo ago
Well, yeah, that’s the entire reason AO3 even exists.
ThisIsSin
Tomboys: transgender or transcendental?
2mo ago
So basically, just Mean Girls then.
CGDCT is usually men's idea of a utopia, with everyone happy, getting along well, and doing fun things
Yeah, but the problem in reality is that this state of affairs if not defended inevitably becomes Mean Girls.
In the same way, any such organization not explicitly and constitutionally oriented around doing fun things will sooner or later end up with everyone miserable and fighting each other; this is Conquest's Second Law.
Yes, that's called "internalized homophobia", AKA "you're being gay wrong/working against (what the powers that be consider) your own interest".
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