Tree
1yr ago
Thanks, it’s an under-appreciated state of affairs I like to harp on. We may be the descendents of winter people who always had to anxiously stack their grain, but we now live in a land where no one even remembers what true hunger feels like. Most financially literate people understand that it is irrational to insure your TV or phone against breakage, yet claim it is reasonable to insure anything bigger. Even your house burning down does not threaten your existence in any way, there is no need to preemptively hyperventilate by giving some slimy salesman thousands of dollars per year.
Tree
1yr ago
I see, I did not mean to question your taste in family values thots.
To get back to your original point, I don't live in the US, I don't work in tech, yet I think unions are a scourge. The first, and main thing they do, is make it extremely hard to fire people. So the company stops hiring. Outside, unemployment rises, and the normal job market gets very brutal and cuttroat because all the good jobs have been cordoned off. The union employees work less and less for more and more, and then the entire industry goes bankrupt. Classic european industry life.
Tree
1yr ago
You said the motte works in SV, that is incorrect. I haven't claimed that the motte is full of normal christians, just that some christians living in flyover country are here and know and complain about aella.
Tree
1yr ago
The rat and reactionary twitter have a lot of overlap. The people here don't live in silicon valley, neither are they normal christians.
I think my criticism is about as deep as the usual take about people being "clearly dissatisfied" with the sexual revolution, modernity, neoliberalism, house prices, health care, etc.
I feel the hostility for aella and polygamy is higher than is warranted. Despising people does not require so much communication. Too much protesting versus “I don’t think about you at all".
Tree
1yr ago
I think the man who classifies muslims as christians will make more mistakes in his daily predictions (ie, navigating daily life) than the man who classifies mormons as christians.
The validity of the categories is independent of the subject's self-identification, or of the ur-trope-namer’s decision as to who is allowed to use the name.
To make the obvious analogy, some kid may think they're 'nonbinary', but to the outside world, and to me, they will be put in one of the two original buckets, I'm not creating a new bucket for this nonsense. And in this case I'm not creating an extra mormon bucket when the christian bucket will do.
Tree
1yr ago
who's talking about general reach? I'm talking about this sub. Your opinion of aella is by far the most commonly expressed here, and you're not in Silicon valley.
Tree
1yr ago
They “know” her from outrage-bait reactionary twitter. On sunday they meet in a pointy house in the sticks and sing hymns about the whore of babylon. They go home and have wet dreams. Then they come to themotte and write posts wondering why anyone cares about her.
Tree
1yr ago
Most of the polyamory/aella gangbang posts are from christians/social conservatives saying polyamory and the sexual revolution have failed, fun is bad and you'll pay.
Tree
1yr ago
The only (practically) people who think of Mormons as Christian are Mormons who are being dishonest (hence: the motte and Bailey).
No. Most people in the world, non-christians, think mormons are christians. It's difficult to tell them apart if you're not in it. They fit in the broad category "christians".
Tree
1yr ago
Well, truth be told, I was thinking of my native germany, where job offers as well as official new language guidelines require phrasing of the type “workers …. and workerinnen” for everything.
Tree
1yr ago
Why should women take more risks? What kinds of risks should they take more of? We've probably gone a bit too far into saftyism, but high risk taking in men pays off in winning wars or having lots of sex with women they're attracted to. What does it get women?
I suspect we’d all be super-rich. If you think about it, a very large part of society is structured as a giant insurance scheme, designed purely to mitigate the irrational loss aversion of people (especially women, but also men of course). Naturally, a lot of money gets lost in the pipes.
If I work in a developed european country, roughly half of my paycheck is immediately and largely unavoidably funnelled to insurance-like institutions to quiet the neurotic voice that goes ”What if you’re unemployed? What if you’re sick? What if you’re old? What if you die?”.
Well, what about it? I’d be worse off. Trying to financially compensate for the hypothetical loss is not rationally required. There is no good economic reason why one’s standard of living should never, ever sink.
All kinds of different things get thrown into the ‘risk aversion’ bucket. Driving a motorcycle drunk and naked and other young male antics are not low risk aversion, they’re high idiocy. The insurance problem strangling society should have its own term, ‘small loss aversion’. Financially, risk has been defined as volatility, which Warren Buffett and I think makes no sense.
Tree
1yr ago
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In that scenario, Xi doesn’t care enough to even pay lip service to his ally, and to the idea of peace? For what, trying to humiliate Putin for his domestic audience (“have you even said thank you once?”)?
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That’s a stupid idea that will never work, so it would be a normal day at the golf course for TRUMP. But it would be one more reason why Xi wouldn't snub Putin in the first place. Personally I think the americans would be better off (re)-peeling peaceful China away from global nuclear threat Russia. They're like Pakistan, they threaten to destroy the world every time things don't go their way ("what's the use of a world without Russia?" - Vlad P., Moscow).
Tree
1yr ago
I don't know in what world Xi would not endorse his ally's peace talks offer. Also why trump would be swung by Xi's endorsement in putin's favour.
An offer to talk is worth zilch, as the tariff talks clownshow has demonstrated. I like kasparov’s take of calling the americans chicken, Ukraine's best hope is that Trump throws a fit at Putin's refusal. Someone tell him heavily subventioned arms exports lead to trade surplus, it's like chinese EVs.
Tree
1yr ago
They made us add the feminine version to every job description, but took it from the races (jewess, negress) and any other romantically relevant context (can’t tell compatibility from pronouns anymore). They de-sexed the sex and sexed the work.
Tree
1yr ago
They should make it a movie. For once I think the social justice spin would hit the mark, netflix if you’re listening. All along the way, innocent poor people get publically executed like signposts while the 1 % indulges in highly entertaining madcap monstrous buffoonery with no consequence.
Meanwhile, the people were also getting raped and pillaged and starved by the english, and the entire aristocratic warrior class was even more delegitimized by getting its ass repeatedly handed to itself on the battlefield by the commoner english longbowman, and their own stupidity.
For another anecdote: At the first big battle of the hundred years war, Crecy, the french king had brought genoese crossbowmen. Partly because of the rain, they were outranged and outshot by the english longbowmen, so they retreated. The glistening french sons of the aristocracy on their horses, thought this was treason or cowardice and cut most of them down, before charging into the fray and losing horribly (usually ransomed if they survived the battle, unlike commoners). A few days later, the king signed an order that any surviving genoese crossbowmen found on his land should be executed.
I see Craon more as a barry lyndon / becky sharp type zany amoral protagonist, lost in a cruel world, crumbling into the absurd. I do love the end, when the valiant hero finds redemption by the ever-lasting good deed of providing a monk so he can listen to the confessions of a bunch of other monks before they get their heads chopped off for casting a spell on the murderous madman ruling the country by divine grace.
Tree
1yr ago
In the series: Chads living their best lives (translated and truncated from the french wiki, clarifications in parentheses):
Pierre de Craon (circa 1345-1409), nicknamed the Great, lord of La Ferté-Bernard, of Sablé and Précigné , Viscount of Châteaudun, etc, etc.
Craon became attached to the Duke of Anjou, who was marching to conquer the Kingdom of Naples in 1384. This prince (brother of the previous french King) had only been able to keep the multitude of warriors who formed his retinue, and followed his fortune, by exhausting his immense treasury, which he had gotten by despoiling the corpse of France (in the middle of the hundred years war).
The Duke sent Craon back to the duchess, where he received considerable sums from her, and instead of taking the money to his lord, spent them foolishly in Venice, on gambling and debauchery, while the French army was besieged by famine and disease. Craon's infidelity completed the Duke of Anjou's misfortunes, and he died of grief.
The expedition was one long disaster, and when leaders and soldiers returned from Italy, staff in hand and begging for alms, the Lord of Craon dared to reappear at court in magnificent attire. The Duke of Berry (another uncle of the king), seeing him enter the council, cried out, transported with fury: "Ah! false traitor, wicked and disloyal, you are the cause of my brother's death. Take him, and let justice be done." » But no one stepped forward to carry out this order, and Craon hastened to disappear.
His influence and wealth saved him. He had won the favor of Louis, Duke of Orléans, younger brother of Charles VI (King of France) and nephew of Louis I of Anjou and John I of Berry. With this support, he returned to court and filled it with intrigue. He maintained secret relations with John IV, Duke of Brittany, his relative, and sought to destroy the Constable of Clisson, having no other cause for hatred against him than his reputation and authority.
Suddenly, Craon was expelled from court (1391), without anyone even deigning to reveal the cause of his disgrace. It was Louis, the king's brother, who had requested the exile of this dangerous confidant, to punish him for having revealed to Valentine of Milan, his wife, a romantic affair he was having with another lady.
Craon retired to Brittany. The Duke of brittany, who hated the Constable, represented him as the sole cause of Craon's misfortune. Craon believed him and swore revenge. While the court was occupied only with festivities and pleasures, he secretly brought into Paris weapons and a troop of adventurers devoted to him. He himself mysteriously entered this city, and on June 14, 1392, when the constable was returning at one o'clock after midnight from the Hôtel Saint-Pol, where the king held his court, the Sire de Craon and his mounted troop awaited him in the rue de la Culture-Sainte-Catherine, mingled among his people, and extinguished the torches they were carrying.
Clisson at first believed that it was a joke of the Duke of Orleans; but Craon did not leave him long in this error, and cried out to him in a terrible voice: "to Death, to Death, Clisson, you must die." - Who are you, said the constable? - « I am Pierre de Craon, your enemy. You have irritated me so many times that you must make amends."
Clisson had only eight of his men with him, who were unarmed and who dispersed. He wore a coat of mail under his uniform and was defending himself like a hero when a mighty sword thrust, hurling him from his horse, caused him to fall against a baker's door, which was not quite closed and which his fall finally opened. Craon, seeing him unconscious and bathed in blood, believed him dead, and, without dismounting, thought only of escaping.
The provost of Paris was immediately summoned by the king and ordered to pursue him and his accomplices. Craon arrived in Chartres at eight o'clock in the morning. Twenty horses were waiting for him, and he reached his castle in Sablé. However, one of his squires and one of his pages were arrested, beheaded in the market hall and hanged on the gallows. The concierge of the Hôtel de Craon had his head cut off for not having denounced the arrival of his master in Paris, and a canon of Chartres, with whom Craon had lodged, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
All of Craon's property was confiscated. His private mansion, located on rue du Bourg-Tibourg, was razed and the site given to the parish of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, to be converted into a cemetery. The street that bordered his paris residence, and which bore the name of Craon, was renamed. His castle of Porchefontaine was also razed.
Craon, not believing himself safe in his fortress of Sablé, withdrew to the Duke of Brittany, who said to him: "You are a puny creature when you were unable to kill a man whom you were above. You committed two faults, the first of having attacked him; the second, of having missed." "That is truly diabolical," replied Craon. "I believe that all the devils of hell, to whom he belongs, guarded him and delivered him from the hands of me and my men, for more than sixty sword and knife blows were hurled and inflicted upon him; and when he fell from his horse, in all truth, I thought he was dead."
Charles VI, encouraged by the Constable and his supporters, decided to take the war to Brittany, because the Duke Jean IV of Brittany refused to hand Craon over to him, and protested that he neither knew nor wanted to know anything about where he was hiding. The rendezvous of the royal army was arranged at Le Mans. It is known that, while crossing a nearby forest, Charles VI fell into madness (August 1392) (killing 4 of his subjects/servants, but who’s counting) (The King’s insanity, brought on by Craon’s antics, lead to a fight over the regency by his uncles and brothers, plunging France into a civil war and a new, more horrible, phase of the hundred years war).
The Dukes of Berry and Burgundy took the reins of government, and the latter began by declaring himself against Olivier V de Clisson, even having the king sign the order to arrest him. Meanwhile, Pierre de Craon had taken refuge in Barcelona, in the hope of leaving for Jerusalem. He was imprisoned by the Queen of Aragon but probably escaped in December 1392, returned to Brittany where Duke Jean, in February 1393, "put him at the head of one of the army corps charged with besieging the stronghold of Josselin, belonging to Clisson".
Clisson subsequently signed (1395) a suspension of arms with the Duke of Brittany, and expressed himself in these terms: "We want all acts of violence to cease, except against this wicked man Pierre de Craon." Craon led a wandering life for several years, to hide his head from the severity of the law. He was secretly protected by the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, even though they despised him.
Fearing the consequences of his crime, he placed himself under the protection of Richard II, King of England, paid homage to this monarch, who assigned him a pension, and obtained a pardon in 1396. He then returned to court; but now safe from prosecution for the assassination of the Constable, he could not be protected from those pursued by the Queen of Sicily to obtain the restitution of the sums she had entrusted to him during the Naples expedition, and the Parliament of Paris sentenced him to pay 400,000 livres.
Craon was arrested and taken to the Louvre Tower, but he remained there for a short time; and, through the intervention of the Queen of England and the Duchess of Burgundy, the matter was settled.
Craon's misfortunes had brought him to his senses. After monks were sentenced to death as sorcerers and convicted of casting a spell on Charles VI, the Lord of Craon obtained that confessors would henceforth be granted to convicted criminals, something that had not previously been done. Craon then did voluntary penance for his crimes. He had a stone cross with his coat of arms erected near the gallows in Paris. It was at the foot of this cross that criminals confessed before their execution.
Craon bequeathed a sum of money to the Franciscan friars, charging them with this work of mercy in perpetuity. Historians of France and Brittany do not provide the date of Craon's death, which was probably in 1409.
Tree
1yr ago
Are there any non-muslim immigrants doing this at scale? You don’t hear about the vietnamese or mexican rape gangs. You need the islamic peculiarities of :
- cultural insularity
- religious ingroup morality that fuels ethnic hatred
- general sexual repressiveness
- a sexual ‘ethic’ that considers all western women whores
- ok, fine, extra misogyny (reluctantly included, because I’m tired of hearing that the problem with islam is how misognynistic it is. It is far down the list of its problems)
Anyway, looks like germany will close the border so this insanity can finally end, or at least, not get worse.
Tree
1yr ago
The only reason we let russians blame the west/liberalism for their 90s economic woes is pity for being so shameless and pathetic. The awareness and agency of an 8-year old kid. They really thought that if they mouthed magical words like capitalism and liberalism, their crumbling garbage economy would be instantly fixed, and if not, they would be freed from all responsibility. They’re still there now, taking no responsibility, obsequiously following and approving whatever their rulers tell them, as if it were a religious ritual.
The anti-west allies of russia (cuba, north korea) got it worse, an entire generation of malnourished dwarves.
You’re not citing these better-run countries you are admiring and enjoying, I can’t argue against a figment of your imagination.
Try to have a honest discussion of the heresies of biology in the West, see what happens to you.
We have them here, and nothing happens. I’m very much anti-censorship, but even with it, I think you can stack liberal democracies against its credible rivals and they come out ahead on individual liberty.
I think your entire ideology is based on a strawman of liberalism. For example, you guys rail against the ‘liberal rules-based international order’, and when russia invades some country you say: “you see, there is no such thing”, as if the LIO was a supernatural being or a ‘sacred covenant’ whose existence was disproven by the lack of a miraculous intervention. And so, seemingly, everything is still alright and we should do nothing.
But of course the LIO was never real in that sense. Real are the consequences that follow the realization that russia is not an economic partner, but a threat and an enemy. If there was no LIO, or if we were in the past, we would already be at war with russia for attacking our vassal.
And that's to say nothing of the utter self betrayal that liberal economics has become. Bastiat has been rolling in his grave, and not because of some populist's tariffs.
I live in the real world, not in the construct of philosophers, and down here, liberal democracies are the most economically successful.
Tree
1yr ago
Makes sense because traditional film criticism got unreadable right around that time. It was either marvel-fried brain « things asplode good ! » or rigid DEI point-counting in the style of christian film criticism for children : swearing -1 point, ignoring parents’ advice -2 points, etc.
Tree
1yr ago
You think the russian people are flourishing ? As bad as our elites possibly are, they have not sent us to die in some ditch for some retarded historical larp.
Our elites may not differ in kind, especially if you compare them to some ideal of incorruptible honesty and virtue, but they differ in degree. They may lie here and there, but trump lies more because he does not care at all about the truth. And Putin does not care at all if his people die.
I understand your frustrations with being insulted and stuff (although really, the worse offenders are your postmodern cousins. It’s not me and my people’s doing ; if anything, we were sorry to lose you), but one can always do way worse than government by liberal elites. Just look anywhere else.
Tree
1yr ago
That does not explain our different positions, iggy, old branch. When I denounce someone like putin, which you sort of support, as a corrupt murderer, my criticism does not rely on him breaking a ‘sacred covenant’. And when I call trump a liar, the truth he tramples on is not an illusion.
Tree
1yr ago
Defend your postmodern beliefs directly, instead of appealing to their popularity.
How do you retvrn to hobbes and bentham if foucault’s right, exactly ?
A, it’s not true, and B, even if, I’m not in the habit of surrendering my beliefs to the zeitgeist.
I think Trump II being so very unbounded in its trumpism has the potential to flush out a lot of postmodernist rot on both sides out of the west’s system. Step 1 : conscious sledgehammer to woke institutions. Step 2 : unintentionally fuck the rest up with post-truth populism. Step 3 : everyone’s back in the happy happy modernist center.
That is the high brow justification for it, but I disagree with how they model people’s utility functions, and besides, people’s utility functions are neither set in stone nor economically justified.
People would be far better off with a flatter, less utility-diminishing curve, given that they spend near half their income to slightly reduce lifetime income volatility, and if the last century is any guide, they want to spend even more, no future loss is too small to be tolerated, should it cost half of gdp.
There’s no real difference between the TV insurance and home insurance, it all depends on the assumed steepness of the diminishing utility curve.
People’s utility gets modeled as a steadily diminishing curve. In reality there should be one huge drop in utility when you go from from starving to non-starving income, and then very very flat. Because the only way to lose all future utility, to get wiped out in the kelly sense, is to die irl.
And on that subject, people also gamble. A lottery is very similar to insurance. You pay a small sum, and after a random event you sometimes get paid a multiple. It’s a negative EV transaction because the losses in the pipes are large. Any rational man with a sufficiently flat utility curve would reject them.
But one of the two is supposedly justified while the other breaks their model and makes no sense whatsoever. Gambling people are spending good, high utility money, then losing some in the pipes, and for what? To get low utility money.
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