Titus_1_16
9d ago
Listening and very much enjoying, nice job
Titus_1_16
19d ago
Russia looks pretty white to me, just saying.
Russia is only about 70% ethnically Russian, from memory. Eyeballing it, at least half of the countries in Europe would have a higher % of their primary ethnicity.
Titus_1_16
15d ago
one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens
Really nice turn of phrase
Titus_1_16
24d ago
A 50% raise is serious business, well done
Titus_1_16
25d ago
As a European, "hot ethnic cleansing in Europe" would be top of my wishlist. I have a few candidates in mind.
However it's very, very, very unlikely to happen within a 12-month time horizon. There is no party near power in any western/central European country with the will and means to do this.
The likeliest scenario (and it's not very likely) would be that we have another crazy year of illegal migration north across the Med like 2016 - except voters and politicians know what this spells now, and "Wir Schaffen Das" sentiment is supplanted by "No Fuckin Way" sentiment. I could then imagine a pushback of current wannabe migrants, and perhaps expulsions from some of the particularly god-forsaken tent cities - but not deportations of people who'd been here longer than a few months.
Titus_1_16
25d ago
That's not a sensible or fair criticism. The point of the post was to illustrate that effective policy solutions are certainly conceivable, they're just outside the Overton window.
Titus_1_16
19d ago
A couple of points: first, in terms of English proficiency being a cultural solvent - English already is the lingua franca of Europe, as it is in many other parts of the world. When an Italian meets a German, 9 times out of 10 they will speak English. When a Finn meets a Spaniard - English (although the Spanish are generally pretty bad at English). And so on.
If Europe is to achieve some manner of proper confederation and thereby preserve itself as anything other than a relic over the next century or two, it needs a language with which to do this. English in Europe (and remember it is after all a European language) doesn't just mean Americanisation, it also means the coalescing of pan-European consciousness.
So English proficiency is not purely a malus, or purely a tool of globohomogenisation.
Secondly - I know you're talking about Latvia as a long shot in terms of migration and integration, but actually its neighbour just to the north, Estonia, explicitly is pursuing a strategy of welcoming ambitious foreigners from the likes of America. They've set up an E-residency scheme that's kind of notoriously open to abuse, but it's meant a lot of foreign tech setting up shop there. Estonia is a more reasonable shot for someone of your profile to move to and integrate into, if you're interested
Titus_1_16
1mo ago
Is the Motte supposed to be funny?
This is the funniest shit I've read all morning
Titus_1_16
1mo ago
Would you say a majority of people find the linked image amusing, or sad?
I gotta say the cat at the end really bummed me out. Poor little chap
Titus_1_16
15d ago
Well look, you used it naturally enough that I couldn't have told the difference
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
You'd be wrong actually - Brazilians have congregated heavily in certain areas of Dublin and are widely viewed as a scourge there (eg, the area I live in, where this attack and subsequent riot took place - literally 100m from my flat).
True, they are more economically productive than the median African or Arab, but have some cultural traits that make them rub Irish people the wrong way. For one, they are more crassly materialistic than even Nigerians, and are heavily involved in every sort of vice trade.
Second, their sexual mores are extraordinarily lax in comparison to the Irish, who would be one of the more chaste European nations - prostitution in Dublin is dominated by Brazilians, and a "Brazilian wife" gives rise to the same sort of sniggering that a "Thai wife" might elicit elsewhere. Brazilians have a reputation as being ruthlessly mercenary in matters romantic, and the visa-marraige-to-ugly-man-until-passport-divorce is a very true pattern I've seen in a mate myself.
Third, they are facilely _un_cynical in a way that grates on Irish people - I have yet to get through a conversation with a Brazilian without them telling me about their "dream of Europe" in such a gormless way as would make a beauty pageant contestant squirm.
What's interesting is that Brazilians actually embody many of the traits that Irish people claim to dislike in Americans, with none of the redeeming characteristics whatsoever.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Ah now, everyone knows he was a Gypsy, not a Slovak. Ironically it would mainly be over-the-hill, state TV watching, identity-is-citizenship types (ie not far right) that would fail to make that distinction.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Okay I'll bite on the pictures: the first, more attractive, woman is the nice one who wrote the Slate piece, and the second woman is the one that wrote "Cat Person".
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
The emotional explosiveness isn't limited to twitter.com, but that's fine because it's a good thing.
Ethical reasoning is something a person can be better or worse at, and it's good that most people do not engage in a priori ethical reasoning - they follow the guidelines laid down by those who've examined an issue deeply (their betters, to be maximally provocative).
There's a complex system through new norms are derived by experts, road-tested by organs of opinion propagation, the common man's reception is incorporated iteratively into refinements, and so on.
It's no more desirable that everyone should invent his own ethical systems than that he should invent his own electrical systems.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
I'm sorry to report that I could not resist downvoting this post, but will make amends with a comment.
Also - I think the downvote is useful, it's interesting sometimes to see the tally of up and down votes. Highlights contentiousness in an interesting way
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
OpenAI researchers warned of AI breakthrough before CEO ouster according to Reuters. It seems that, disappointingly, there's more to the Sama exit than just petty politics.
I had found myself greatly reassured by the thought that, actually, this whole debacle was just (human) politics as usual - and not the eerie dawn of some new era.
Have other motizens noticed a substantial disconnect between their foremost worry the past while, and that of the normies in their life? Everyone else is chanting for Palestine, and I'm chanting sotto voce for a decade or two more of human supremacy before the singularity. And anytime I could comfort myself by the thought that, well, Serious People are not yet concerned, I see some preposterous headline from selfsame Serious People about how hillwalking is white supremacy, or equivalent bullshit. The illusion is bollocked.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
An interesting specification here:
a pretty (by conventional Western standards) blonde lead
Is the detail in the brackets really necessary? Is there really any hetrosexual man who wouldn't, in his heart of hearts, grant that this woman is at least "pretty"?
I mean perhaps there are some freaks who'd demur - but they'd simply be wrong. This is "pregnant people" hair-splitting.
If the word "pretty" means anything, and if there are any moral/æsthetic truths at all, then it's just simply true that this actress is "pretty".
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Ah look, I'm sure they're fine on their own terms - this isn't a critique any Brazilian should take seriously. I'm describing a mob of Brazilians versus any individual, etc.
Behold: classic Irish obsequiousness and indirectness and backpedalling coming out even on an anonymous board. I'm sure a Brazilian could take an equally good potshot at us - I've heard they find our lack of cosmetic surgery troubling and wrongheaded, for example.
As for poverty explaining vice - I don't think that's the case in an interesting way. Sure, poverty drives people to vice - but which vices, and which first, are culture. Brazilians in Ireland are generally here on bad-faith student visas (they must get a stamp from an "english language school" as a visa condition, making these schools de facto a private arm of Irish migration control - this incentive structure leads to exactly the outcome you'd predict) and I don't see, say, Indian students that dool the same visa scam turning en masse to dealing or prostitution.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
It was a bunch of people writing books at the same time.
What's the difference between that and an intellectual movement?
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
It's ubiquitous porno usage, not obesity. The Japanese example supports this heavily
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Yes, the same class of youth is given to trangress in both cases.
Amusingly, there actually was quite a bit of looting by Africans of sports goods stores - presumably caught up in the far-right spirit and violently enthused by the prospect of their own deportation.
This all took place extremely close to my flat (I live in a rough but very convenient/central part of Dublin), and I can attest the escalation was : angry protests by a cross-section of Irish working class (mammies with prams, old people, the youth, etc), followed by garda over-reaction, which tipped the crowd into a fury and attracted red-blooded young proletarians mainly interested in trouble. What's underexplored is that the police were on edge because there had just been a potential terrorist attack, and they were greatly concerned by the prospect of additional attacks.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Ethnic wilting was contemporaneous with the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, if not its proximate cause. Hardly a point in favour of "civic nationalism"; the Germanic barbarians that Rome allowed to settle in its lands from the 3rd century onwards were never assimilated, and to use anachronistic language, formed a fifth column.
As for America - large-scale Irish Catholic (and later German) migration was the proximate cause of the collapse of the sort of agrarian yeoman republic that most of that American rebel leaders had envisioned. The sort of Irish people that showed up en masse in the 1840s - starving, illiterate, destitute, non-anglophone and uncivilised - ruptured the white/other distinction that had bounded the USA's participatory democracy for white landowning men, and necessitated the shift to managed democracy: yellow press, chickenfeed for the hoi polloi, the impossibility of complex public arguments and time horizons beyond the next election.
Were I making an argument for democratic universalism - I wouldn't - but if I were, I'd pick an example where a state identity has authentically and comprehensively erased localist ethnic distinctions into a single homogeneous "the people". 19th century France is actually not a bad example. Any country you can think of where ethnic division is still noticeable has not, ipso facto, succeeded in democratic levelling.
Heck, I can't remember the last time I've heard a "Bethlehem and Jesus" style song on the radio instead of a "Presents and Reindeer" one.
A point that rankles my American other half, year after year, is that the "Christmas Music" played publicly here in Ireland is a completely different canon to what she grew up with back home. And, unusually, there is just a total failure of Americanisation in the domain of Christmas music - her canon seems ancient (many tunes from the 1950s versus a tilt towards the 1980s here, because of different population pyramids - we don't have a bulge of 60-70 year olds monopolising all the cultural memory space) and painfully schmaltzy to most Irish ears, including my own.
For example, the universally-acknowledged GOAT of Christmas music in Ireland is The Pogues' Fairytale of New York, a thoroughly secular 1980s ballad that consistently rankles schoolmarmish woke types not because of overt Christofascism, but because the word "faggot", in the pejorative sense, is a key lyric. This song gives rise to the only occassion in modern Ireland where a person can drunkenly chant the word "faggot" at a stuffy office (Christmas) party and recieve no censure.
Overtly religious stuff is also played publicly (a fine example is Mary's Boy Child by Boney M, a jaunty German-calypso tune) because it's a religious holiday. The modal Irish person under 35 sounds like a Q-Anon believer when discussing Catholicism (it's a giant conspiracy run by paedos to amass wealth & get a go of children), yet will still tolerate religious music at Christmas because, come on. I don't know how American culture has managed to get away from this. Maybe it really is semitic sour grapes from the pullers of American cultural levers.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Standard physiognomy win, nice
It's really interesting to me that someone could post regularly on this board and yet still enjoy cannabis. I'm envious of your mental robustness tbh.
A strong plurality of people posting here could fairly be called "anxious overthinkers" - the board is a bilge pump for excess thought, and eg expressing any worry whatsoever about AI risk (whether the worry is grounded in real things or not) ought to be a criterion for anxiety diagnoses.
I smoked a fair amount of weed in my teens/early 20s, took plenty of other recreational drugs, and a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious. Weed to me now is solely a tool I would use if for some reason I wanted to give myself a panic attack. Maybe I'm a little more dramatic in my dislike than normal, but it's very normal to find weed unenjoyable from mid-20s onward.
So what's your secret? Youthful brain? No prior history of smoking? Iron resolve?
I actually would quite like to like weed again, and agree with the demerits of drink that you outlined - so if there's One Weird Trick you can share, please do so.
More options
Context Copy link