ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Hah that's fair. It is intense for sure.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Arg that just makes me angry. I hate that so many people game these systems and defray costs onto others.
They are predatory though. I'm torn.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Are you armin ferman? Also what makes you think that?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
The US electorate is too pants-on-head retarded to save itself from spending. That's it. There is only one way out of this, and it's riding the lightning until we're all consumed by a black swan event in the next couple of years.
Disagree. There is always hope to fix things, this mindset is a huge reason why we're in the political mess we are. We can and will fix spending, now or later. Unless a black swan comes of course, which is always a possibility.
The war between Trump and Elon Musk is heating up. They've been continuously escalating the fight on both sides, with Elon claiming that Trump wouldn't have won without him.
On the other side, Trump is arguing that Elon only got upset because the Big Beautiful Bill has plans to cut the EV subsidies in it.
The major dispute, at least on a public level, is over deficit spending. Elon was pretty clear during the campaign that deficit spending was a big issue, and indeed most of the "grey tribe" Silicon Valley types who switched sides to support Trump also are starting to regret their decision it seems. Notably David Friedberg from the All-in Podcast, and I'm sure there are others if folks want to fill me in.
Either way, to me this breakup seems to be a clear split between the classic red tribe which Trump seemingly still controls with an iron fist, and the grey tribe that Elon Musk typifies.
To quote the famous Scott Alexander article, I can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:
There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football “sportsball”, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk – but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time.
It seems to me that with the flip to Trump, we're beginning to see the classic Kingmaker dynamic unfold, where Silicon Valley billionaires are playing the third mediator between the two major tribes. I'm very curious to see how this pans out. Personally, I'm very much on the "hey we have to cut spending now" side of things.
Some of the more optimistic folks are claiming that Elon will either support the Libertarian party, or start his own party, based on a poll he made on X asking if a new political party should form.
Either way this is all very entertaining from my perspective, and it actually leaves me a bit more optimistic than I was that something will be done about cutting spending. We will of course see where the chips fall.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I just watched the Dear Elon letter and it was hilarious. @Closedshop what else should I watch?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Gonna join in on the chorus of "I would" hah.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
This is the first time I haven’t worked two jobs in three years, and while University to Go was an easy gig I put in more hours there than I’m going to here (It really does seem be to be in the 40-45hours a week range, roughly 8-4 M-F, whereas I worked 6-7 days a week at the old gig/gigs.), so I find myself with a bunch of free time that I’m not used to having.
Religion can take up a lot of time, and is quite nice to have. ;)
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Good to have you join us! yeah @naraburns is a gem. There is some genuinely great writing here. I liked your post as well.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
It's not quite that simple. In my view the Christian faith led to a massive amount of pro-social coordination to happen, which allowed Europe to evolve in unique ways. Then the wealth of that was misused I must admit.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Yeah priests have been far, far more helpful to me in my personal life.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I agree that there are people who must be contained for the benefit of others, that's not what I'm saying. It seemed as if @WhiningCoil was making the argument that all progressives are insane and need to be imprisoned or killed. Perhaps I read it wrong.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Problem is therapy works, but 80-90% of therapists are very bad at their jobs
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I don’t believe it has been done correctly. Love is not endless, empty compassion. Love is pushing people to become better, even if sometimes against their will at the moment.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
You can absolutely love people into more virtue. Christians did it with entire societies and came to basically rule the world.
These are excuses that I don’t accept.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Must we marginalize and contain these people? I reject this premise. What we can do is work with them, educate them on how to live a better life, and love them.
Then ideally create a culture that doesn’t lead people down these paths.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Hah I have read almost all of these except for the Black Jewel. And never finished WoT rip. Thanks for answering though. Malazan is the bomb.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Eh I'm like 50 pages in and stalled. It's interesting and I like his arguments but yeah very dense.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I like Hobb! What are your favorite fantasy series out of the many you've read?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
What norms? Basically the most common norms of all - the "cool" people run the group, and whoever they decide don't vibe with the group, goes. It's the oldest rule in the book.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I'm reading All Things are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
At each point, Vaheesan equivocates: about "deregulation" (if you want to end apartment bans, you must want poor people to live on Superfund sites!), about "democracy" (if you don't want to hand out veto points like candy, you must love oligarchs), and about the efficacy of reforms (upzoning and streamlining are simultaneously ineffective and giveaways to the wealthy).
If you look at the general progressive mindset as religious, this behavior starts to make a lot more sense. Government bureaucrats are a protected priestly class, similar to but lower status than academics.
Therefore all blame must be shifted away from them, towards the hated enemy: billionaires, conservatives, or whoever the outgroup happens to be at the moment. I don't say this as a sneer at progressives, conservatives do the exact same thing as well.
But as @coffee_enjoyer and others here have pointed out, there's no getting away from religion. Using the religious worldview to model politics has opened my eyes and explained quite a lot of this seemingly incomprehensible behavior.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
The conservative tends to favour an education similar to aella’s, but detests what she has become (“damaged”).
Conservatives absolutely do not tend to favor educations similar to her, you are attacking a caricature. No conservative I know would beat their child twelve times in a row as they're crying in pain. That's very tail-end behavior for EXTREME religious conservatives, and religious in the weird Southern Baptist sense.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
There's a big post on Substack making the rounds talking about similar ideas:
It is not healthy for children to be locked in their homes, only to leave it to go to school and come back. It is also not fair to children to keep them away from society on remote farms and homesteads in order to safeguard them from criminals and sexually corrupting media. But this is what parents have been reduced to offering their children in the modern world. Residents of the city of Birmingham report on conversations on X that when they were children in the 1970s, they could walk around the whole town perfectly safe, but now, their grandchildren cannot go beyond one block or even leave their own backyards because, practically, it is just not safe anymore. Children can no longer enjoy the vibrant culture of cities like London, Paris and New York as they could even in the 1980s because the people who run such cities have more empathy for criminals than for children.
Foremost, it is children who have a right to cities.
Cities should be constructed to be safe and hospitable to them primarily. When children have access to safe cities, they develop more independence, courage and can develop more maturity. They can make friends and do projects in the real world. They can be more involved in their local community and therefore exist more in the real world which they stand to inherit. Instead of this, however, due to the leftist concept of “rights” for homeless crackheads, children only have the right to play video games in their bedrooms and develop toxic social media addictions.
I like this conception, especially with regards to child independence. I think the fact that we care more about the rights of gay and trans people to express themselves in public than the rights of children is very telling about our priorities as a society.
Ok can you recommend some good anime for me? With a good dub ideally.
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