Throwaway05
10hr ago
Yeah it doesn't work for America but by golly does it work well for England. I wish more Europeans got to experience and enjoy both models but in most countries Football has nearly all the mind share (which admittedly is a large part of how the whole thing works).
Throwaway05
11hr ago
As always Technicals remain the most superior war fighting weapon.
Throwaway05
13hr ago
Great game!
If you are struggling it's easy to make the game easier by gear hunting, the difficulty is very front loaded - once you have more options it's easy to break the game if you want to (without touching modifiers).
Throwaway05
13hr ago
I mean the amount of love that I see in Europeans for a local football team that sucks and always sucked is far higher than what Jets fans can put out.
Throwaway05
13hr ago
the ones that aren't at the top of the money league, it's not really about the trophy,
As an American fan of the sport who is homeless and doesn't have this investment that's always fascinating to me. I follow the sports teams of my birth city through thick and thin, but I'm not happy if it is a down year (or cough cough decades). Soccer fans seem totally down win or lose. Getting the title isn't the thing. That's nice.
Throwaway05
13hr ago
I expect that gamers will say it's overrated and be firmly overridden by the actual masses of players. Rockstar doesn't seem to have lost a step, have an absurd amount of money to work with and aren't afraid to take their time.
The normies who play few games except Madden and CoD are going to go wild.
Look into the amount of money GTA online has made, it's absurd and that's for an experience that doesn't seem interesting at all.
Throwaway05
14hr ago
Let's break this into three segments:
Factual correctness: important, but also not important. You can be right while being wrong because: discussion value-add and moral worries matter.
Darwin's greatest sin in my mind was never saying anything interesting, I would just assume his posts would be filled with maximally infuriating and inconsistent arguments as soldiers woke nonsense. Discussion rarely led anywhere useful. I didn't have to read his posts, I would read the responses and sometimes see something interesting but he himself was seldom useful.
I remember you being a high quality poster with a perspective and information that was useful for me to hear and I enjoyed hearing from. Of late I have not felt that. Many of us have been around long enough that we've become caricature of ourselves in some ways (I am certainly guilty of this). Yes some of this is that an anti-Western perspective does not flatter my biases. But that's not all that's going on here, I think most people would say that they feel what you write has changed and not for the better and that they have to pick harder to get to the meat. Only you can tell me why the change.
However both of those matter a little bit less than the moral worries. The way you are writing is worrying, it makes me worry about how you are doing, where this dehumanization is coming from, and so on. It's not always easy to spot internally that something has changed but a lot of people here who have seen much of your writing are like "okay what's going on here."
This community has been together for too long for me to enjoy flame-outs at this point, especially when I am worried that some topic (Charlie Kirk, Geopolitical Bullshit, The Joos/anti-joos) is having an active impact on someone IRL - both for real and in the mind alone.
Please take care of yourself.
Throwaway05
14hr ago
Structurally the sport trends towards variability - most performance in a match doesn't show on the score line and the whole sport is hard to moneyball. You win by being dominant in performance and grinding away the whole game (in the way you see in true mismatches), you get lucky (and lucky holding it), or you pick at the margins by being slightly better.
The league table in the premier league is longitudinal and you really need longitudinal performance to tell what the best teams are, any given game is not helpful for the reasons above.
Except the Champion's League has regular final games as does the World Cup (as opposed to basketball style series) and it's usually a usual team who wins?
What gives?
Well superstar players don't matter as much. Individual player skill doesn't matter as much as chemistry and vibes. And context. Messi is in a retirement league, but he's killing it right now (but for how long?). Teams make runs see Leicester. Teams outperform by non-selfish play and playing in internal leagues with a lot of familiarity with each other (see: Iran). This makes it confusing.
Soccer is hard from an analytics perspective because of these harder to track metrics.
You can easily paint some of the discrepancy you are noticing as something like "okay this team doesn't really play together normally and later in the World Cup that absent chemistry is built by being together for a month." Or because the group stage (as opposed to knock out) rewards more conservative play, or because you can't tie in knock out and greater skill and more star players usually shows in extra time or penalties.
The lack of surprise and upset in the latter parts of the knockout doesn't nullify the fact that Spain was 2 or 3 in the rankings and drew with a team outside the top 50. If you tried that in American Football people might actually die. Basketball? Baseball? Total blow outs it's just not possible.
Soccer involves intangibles (moral, chemistry, "creativity") and skill as much as physical gifts. Large swathes of the big three American sports have been drilled down into pure athleticism, Aaron Donald's moves aren't nearly as important as the fact that he's a total freak. Obviously Messi has terrific intangibles and technical skills but physically he's much closer to a normal human being - absurd body control, spatial awareness, and reaction time is easier to overcome than me trying to block Donald at the line.
Circling back to American pro sports the ethos is really one of profit sharing through parity for the most part. The NFL really actually has parity - any given Sunday plays out. This is financially enforced. Bad ownership is legit what holds teams back not coaching, location, or the team itself. The MLB and NBA aren't as good but still do much better. This is by deliberate design and the structure has good parts and bad parts (for instance relegation doesn't make sense).
I don't know how much you know about the way salary caps work in the various sports but if you aren't familiar that's a big missing piece.
Anyway sorry I think this turned into a bunch of disconnected thoughts that had a minimal through-line.
Throwaway05
16hr ago
Soccer is predictable - most leagues have zero parity and zero financial parity (and I think this alone answers most of your question) and the same teams finish at the top every time. The predictable super teams make it to things like the Champion's League every time.
Yet.
Soccer is unpredictable - a lower ranked team can often draw (see this in the World Cup all the time) and sometimes even win. In some ways it is the most parity of ANY sport a lower ranked team, or a team from a lower ranked league can actually win.
If you ask gridiron football players they will tell you that an NFL team will beat the college football team 1000 times out of a 1000. A shit soccer team can catch someone sleeping, score a goal, and then hang on through teamwork and familiarity.
So in some ways I reject the premise - I think soccer outperforms most sports in variability, but the structural pressure of the game towards variation (driven as you note by its low scoring nature) is balanced by the complete lack of financial parity and the things that are downstream of that. Bayern is just that much bigger than everyone else in terms of talent acquisition, resources and so on. That counterbalances a lot of structural stuff.
Throwaway05
1d ago
What's that young sonny? I don't have my hearing aid on, would you like a Werther's?
Throwaway05
1d ago
Well done!
Throwaway05
2d ago
Most positions! For the love of god no wide receivers though.
Throwaway05
2d ago
It's certainly possible my community was particularly aggressive, that it was an American thing, or that that time is now over - but for a good decade or so if you were in a gay space you'd get groped, or get comments that were rather unacceptable or forward. Some of this is the lack of time wasting in the gay community but even gay men will complain about this - someone who wants a more heterosexual romance can often find it hard or impossible to find and just end up barraged with dick picks, promiscuity, and harassment.
The community is degenerate, and to some extent that is okay - but it's a problem when it impedes on people outside the community (it does) and has reached the point where some people in the community are mad about degeneracy (see: growing number of gay Republicans).
With respect to the STIs - yes many straights are just jealous and straights would have similar behaviors if allowed (and celebrities do do that) but celebrities are small in number and the rest can't so gay people are currently causing a public health crisis (and did in the past when parts of the community declined to acknowledge the existence of AIDs).
It's selfish and anti-social behavior that does in fact hurt others and while I don't think it should be banned it does annoy me that we don't have the social technology to make things better. Likewise I don't agree that we should just let them die from venereal disease but it should be doable to understand why some people feel that way.
Most STIs are much, much more of a choice than the average lifestyle disease. Avoiding addiction and overeating is hard. Putting a goddamn condom on is easy.
Throwaway05
2d ago
Thank you for indulging my curiosity!
Throwaway05
2d ago
I am 100% against CSAM existing in any capacity, but your objection raises a question - is it about training data? Would an AGI that can act based off of extrapolation salve your objections?
Throwaway05
2d ago
This is meandering.
When I was younger we used to call gay people "faggots," which was the style at the time. Increasing acceptance and exposure (as well as the same stuff that eventually created "woke") rendered that inappropriate and impolite and the world verboten.
For a time in between those two states you would call someone a faggot if they were gay and obnoxious about it. You don't do that anymore but you can have some very important adjacent insights. Plenty of gay people are just like "straight men" who have sex with men. Plenty of are flaming gays and it's those who have a disproportionate mindshare in the minds of straight men and conservatives.
This is for good reason - they are socially aggressive, much more likely to sexually harass, culturally evangelical, beloved by straight women and therefore a distraction and a bunch of other shit.
Psychologically once you establish a culture without shame (and especially if it has widespread support like you see for gay and trans communities right now) things can go off the rails very fast. Drag queen story hour is fundamentally the same stuff as a gay couple who refuse to stop having sex in public (and unlike a straight couple make no effort to hide).
That couple is rare, as bug chasers are - but they have no guilt or shame and a social milieu which fully supports bonkers and inappropriate behavior.
Most gay people may in fact not be like this, but as many of my gay friends complain - they are culturally marginalized by gay men who are assholes or inappropriate (and those get support from the woke victim complex). Bug chasers are also rare but they are real and like any rare but high impact group they can cause problems.
Some of the bad behaviors are by no means rare however. Sexual harassment by gay men is crazy common. Once I stopped being young and athletic women stopped sexual harassing me (yay?) gay men never stopped. It's not a lot of them (but sadly it's more like 10% then 1%), but the ones who do it harass enough that it's a common experience.
Like most modern Americans I don't really have any issue with gay men (or any other demographic) that acts within the bounds of polite and appropriate behavior, but again enough people from these groups exist and they are metaphorically forced down our throats by pride initiatives and the woke (a similar annoying demographic is the militant lesbian who ex complains about manspreading on the subway but sits with her legs as far apart as she can because "men do it" and doesn't understand hip morphology).
Some of the bad behavior does have more direct impact on the rest of the population though. AIDS is a disease of the gay that took a lot of work to get into the straight population and this was caused by gay men who made zero effort to change their behavior.
Another similar problem (in the U.S. at least) is a rise in STIs and drug resistant STIs because gay men have hundreds of partners, refuse to use condoms and then fuck bi and "straight" people. Because they can't get pregnant and HIV is no longer a death sentence they refuse to use safe sex practices. Shut the fuck up and wrap your shit or have a reasonable number of partners, "benign" STIs are significantly more problematic for the female population.
So I do think some of the aggravation in this thread is coming from a reality based place.
Throwaway05
2d ago
I gotta imagine you'd see a lot of arguments-
"It's disgusting," "making it is terrible," "having this exist encourages production, consumption, and interest," various religious and specific ethical motivations etc etc.
Production is bad is probably the most clear and obvious bad outcome but the vast majority of people would be against drawn or AI versions.
Throwaway05
2d ago
While disgruntled women may not like men looking at the 19 year old cheerleader/athlete/celebrity most men are going to find that acceptable (outside of woke circles),*
I tried to capture your example in age of consent laws, which (at least when I was a teenager, I don't know if this has been patched everywhere) could get you in trouble for dating a high school student while you were in high school.
*Notably in porn, most places don't use "jailbait" or "teen" heavily anymore but stepsister porn is high popularity and while the reasons for existence have less to do with the age stuff, it's definitely by implication underage people even if the actors involved are clearly in their late 20s and make sure to loudly explicitly state "I'm over 18."
Throwaway05
2d ago
I actually wouldn't have posted my opinion outside the Motte since I don't want to aid and abet that crowd. I was hoping to share my view here merely as a data point, not as an implied condemnation of the game or anyone's taste.
Love that!
Superweapon
Probably, but a lot of people here are autistic enough to be like "that 16 year old looks 23 and massive tits why is this in the same category....." (with threat of social censure making most not say that and many of those believe it). While Stellar Blade is a different situation those lessons metastasize elsewhere.
DW's shitty cultural milieu
Between my social scene and work I am very fortunate to have access to pretty much the full range of people. It's really important to remember the lessons of "its just those kids on college campuses" we started hearing that in the early 2010s and now our culture is unrecognizable, if you have a lot of woke access you'll see that the stereotypes and worst ideas are all full throttle. I was talking to a former NFL player turned business exec at dinner this weekend. Guy is about the most anti-woke manly male you will ever see, but his wife and daughters are woke crazies so he uses his charisma and authority to push their agenda.
The crazies are crazy and have ways to make the rest of us suffer the crazy.*
*Because of the specific topic I will clarify I mean specifically with respect to healthy age gap relationships, I don't want anyone thinking I am a pedophile because even posting anonymously it's a scary thought that someone would incorrectly think that.
Throwaway05
2d ago
You may have a heightened degree of sensitivity for this topic (which is by no means wrong, the heat generated by it is kind of the point, see other poster's comments) or an increased ability to perform facial discrimination and be actually correct - but you have seen enough posters quickly post their anecdata, many people aren't really seeing what you are seeing (again doesn't make us more correct, just reflecting the views of others).
With respect to the woke scolds. Yes. Yes people care what those people think. Those people run the culture and decide what is allowed and permitted and what gets you fired. A small but lovely part of watching the World Cup was seeing beautiful people from around the world representing the appearance and character of those countries. That's banned now, so when the camera scans the crowd it's mostly fat old guys in costumes. The world was made dimmer by the woke scolds and they are working on age gap relationships right now.
As to the frequency of these beliefs.... I work in healthcare so I'm around tons of basic bitch women all the time, they've all obtained the download and find everything bad and to be truly "pedophilia," even the ones who fantasize about a rich age gap relationship for them. It's just how they are.
Throwaway05
2d ago
Can't find the citation because it was video but I did see a Critical Drinker video recently where one of the plugged into Hollywood guys was implying that something about the Hammer accusations was bullshit and that he might have gotten looped into the #MeToo hysteria.
The whole cannabalism thing seems to be a bad look but at least one person with privileged knowledge (although not un unbiased narrator) is questioning the narrative.
Post still filtered at this time so not sure of the context.
Throwaway05
2d ago
I mean several things get wrapped into pedophilia:
-Age gap relationships.
-Socially approved Ephebophilia (such and such sexualized pop starlet is 18, now we can stare at her).
-Socially not approved Ephebphilia (such and such sexualized pop starlet is 17 and 360 days old).
-Clearly not okay relationships that fall afoul of age of consent laws.
-Clearly okay relationships that fall afoul of age of consent laws.
-Historically accurate but icky relationships between a post-pubescent but young child and a much older person, usually a noble or equivalent figure.
-Actual relationships or physical contact between an adult and a prepubescent child (aka actual pedophilia).
Obviously I've approached this a in a loaded way, but all of these things get labeled pedophilia by some people. Your lines may not match what the woke feel is appropriate for instance, nevertheless they've had a lot of success at labeling the first item pedophilia.
Realistically we need other words for icky behavior but we don't have them, even as an anti-woke person what Leonardo DiCaprio gets up to is weird and deserves some social censure. But we have the one weird and it gets tossed everywhere.
With respect to the matter at hand - I know lots of Asians and Asian enjoyers who are like "yeah this looks normal" even if you don't feel that way, and I have seen some cosplayers already look like the character.
Throwaway05
4d ago
Ultrasound doesn't really give the information you'd need for a lot of things, but I did a quick lit review and it looks like nature has a paper about some novel techniques they may be copying.
Still probably snake oil but okay fair play maybe this will go somewhere.
Throwaway05
5d ago
Ultrasound is very good at some things but is currently understood to be fundamentally unable to provide information about things Midjourney has made claims on. Thanks to AI I'm not going to say it's impossible (unlike say Theranos) but it certainly looks like one of those situations...
As long as my truck has a machine gun on top I see this as an absolute win. Although I imagine I would shortly thereafter be arrested after an incident on the interstate.
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