coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Aren’t there esoteric neo-nazis who have a legitimate deeply-held belief that Hitler was a moral paragon? Unless we want our Capitol buildings adorned in statues of Adolf Hitler and his sieg heil, we are going to need a more sophisticated test of authentic religious expression — which would not be met by the Satanic Temple.
(By the way, Satan is to Christians what Hitler is to American liberal boomers, except amplified 100. Satan is the one who influenced and tempts Man to evil, just like he entered Judas. A Christian is obligated to hate Satan more than Hitler, as Hitler is still a hypothetically redeemable man, whereas Satan is evil itself personified. So, no, you can’t make an authentic religion founded on the personification of evil, any more than you can in praise of genocidal leaders.)
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Men compete over attractive women regardless of how many men there are, though. If you’re in a school and 5% of the women are hyper-attractive, you could easily see 40% of the men compete over them. You see this with the phenomenon of DMs / Snapchat / social media likes, and decades before there would be a line of boys asking them to dance. So regardless of how many men there are, there will always be ruthless competition over the most attractive women and most attractive men.
The distinct problems of the decline in slut-shaming and the move away from reputational status as a gauge of sexual worth don’t have anything to do with how many men there are. You could cut the male population in half and online dating will still favor the 5-10% of men who know how to rig it and are attractive enough to do so.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Alt-right people dressing up in Hawaiian shirts and carrying Tiki torches
This was cringe because of the selectively-edited presentation of the event by journalists, some of whom are Jewish but most of whom are not. “Elites” factor in only insofar as the elites influence the biases of journalists. There’s actually nothing aesthetically unpleasing about your typical yard torch (2), but the journalists focused on “tiki torch” because it has feminine diminutive alliteration, and a connotation of out-of-fashion Hawaiian parties (which obviously conflicts with the European-centered aesthetic). This focus was so strong that you believed they all wore Hawaiian shirts. Then the journalists chose the ugliest photos of the ugliest people there. We pretty much expect them to do this for negative-valence events, but imagine them doing this at an Obama rally and you immediately see that it’s rooted in bias (they would do the opposite, usually panning to the most attractive young people, and the smartest interviewed people, and so on).
The “elites” theory, by the way, totally conflicts with the black culture currently in vogue among white people, unless you think that black criminals who rap about robbing Versace are the elites.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Wouldn’t faking a chemical weapons trove require the participation or passive consent of the other countries involve in the invasion (Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Great Britain)? Then you have the issue of the hundreds of personnel involved in hauling the chemical weapons to a location that is a hotbed for IEDs (up to 100 IED attacks a day), which would pose such enormous risk that it would require even more personnel involved in supporting the operation (aerial reconnaissance and large troop movements). Lastly, I think you would need to convince thr third party inspectors that the chemical weapons were indeed Iraqi, which may not be easy because per leaked UN emails they had difficulty being convinced that Assad used poison gas during the Syrian conflict.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
In an escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and associated culture war, we now have one of the first(?) terroristic threat charges brought against someone in the States. A teacher felt that a student’s comment about his flag was disrespectful and responded by threatening to behead her. It is reported that the teacher shouted:
You motherfucking piece of shit! I'll kick your ass. I should cut your motherfing head off
And students report hearing that
"he would kick her fucking ass, slit her goddamn throat and drag her ass outside and cut her head off."
The teacher who made this terroristic threat is Benjamin Reese, a Jewish man from Georgia, and the flag he had in his room was an Israeli flag [1] [2]. I find this noteworthy for two reasons. A Jewish man is making threats that I would have guessed came from a Muslim, which tells me about my bias and the level of passion on both sides of the conflict right now. But I’m also surprised that, despite the story first being published 24hrs ago, it’s untouched by mainstream news except RawStory. There’s local affiliates, RawStory, and YahooFinance Canada. But there’s no CNN, Fox, NYTimes, etc. They can’t be waiting for more information, because we already have the police reports. I predict that this story will not gain the traction that it would had the threat been made by a Palestinian man, or Muslim generally. Certainly that would be brought up on prime time Fox.
This instantly reminded me of the Day of Hate news blitz, when the Chabad-affiliated Barry (Baruch) Nockowitz picked up a toddler and threw him against a wall because of “anti-semitism”, telling police he would find another kid to attack [3]. Besides Miami Herald, this had zero news coverage, all the while coinciding with the “day of hate” which received George Floyd levels of news coverage and zero crimes committed. (As proof of how little coverage it got, themotte is on the first page of google results for his name, linking to the last time I mentioned this crime).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I feel like the topic of the discussion has moved from “Gay’s comments indicate calling for genocide is okay” all the way to “statements about Palestinians reclaiming land count as genocide and should be punished”. (The Hooven thing was supposed to prove that someone was punished according to the rules mentioned in Gay’s answer, but that did not happen.) This wasn’t really my interest, but can you see why it is problematic to punish Palestinians who want their land back, or a one-state solution, or to have a West Bank free from settlements per international law? We would also need to punish Jewish students who verbalize support for settlements, either in West Bank or Golan, if we are intent on punishing students who verbalize opposition against them, both counting as genocide. Or any Jewish student who supports Likud (who believe “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”).
But sure, I mean, if some Palestinians are shouting “from the river to the sea, there will be no Jews”, that should certainly be punished and classified as call to genocide… but is anything like that happening? I don’t know of every protest call that’s happened this year, but I’m going to say no.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Well the FBI thing is irrelevant. The university professors are telling the senator what (to the best of their knowledge) constitutes bullying and harassment in the code of conduct, which they did not write.
because they were a threat
Note that this would not fall under bullying, nor harassment, in the code of conduct.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Actually, this proved the exact opposite. Hooven was never disciplined by the university at all, and instead was “boycotted” by graduate students.
https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Carole-Hooven-transcript.pdf
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Okay, so do you have proof that these Ivy League schools have disciplined “it’s okay to be white” or similar remarks as bullying or harassment per the code of conduct when it occurred outside the context of teaching? You are making a claim that this occurred. (The “outside the context of teaching” is essential, because the question was asked so broadly that it includes any single context involving the employee of the university. A self-published work, a comment to an agreeing party, an article in an obscure journal…).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It was a new speaker’s turn to ask questions, and the question was
Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"
This broad question exists outside of any previous context, and had the speaker wanted (she did not and succeeded in her actual desire) she could have qualified her question relevantly. The Collins American entry simply defines it as demand, but I think the actual definition of “calling for” in an academic context is “desiring / hoping for the action to be completed”. Greta Thunberg can call for lower emissions, and that’s really what she’s doing, with “demand” not accurately conveying that a call for something can be totally wishful and ineffectual. Academics and politicians do this all the time, eg “we call for an equal number of black astrophysicists” does not imply an effectual action or completed action.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Where is the part about the rape? I can’t find it searching through the CSPAN archives
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I’m defending precise language when under oath to Congress, which everyone should be doing regardless of the surrounding details.
Calling for genocide is obviously “harassment”
How can speech that is not spoken to someone, or even in earshot, constitute bullying or harassment?
citing statistics is “harassment”
In the context of teaching students, it may, but not in the context of a published work or some other context. In other words, it depends on the context.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
If what you’re saying is true, there should be a case of someone being disciplined or fired specifically on the grounds of bullying and harassment for making an anti-black or anti-gay comment entirely outside a teacher-student context [eg, in a professor’s own self-published work]. I do not know of any case of this happening, but if you know of a case then it would prove your argument.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It was a manipulative question. It’s akin to, “does calling for the rape of women violate Harvard’s rules on domestic assault?” Of course it wouldn’t, because inappropriate statements against the values of Harvard are not in the category of domestic assault, but a different category of infraction. In the same way, bullying and harassment are targeted actions against individuals or groups of individuals, and not every infraction is in the category of harassment. So Gay’s answer was correct, and also morally correct. The pressure of billionaire Jews and the World Jewish Congress to make people lie in front of Congress is a horrible look. Calling for the genocide of Jews would be against norms of every major university in America, but that doesn’t mean that it constitutes “harassment” any more than it constitutes tax fraud. Not to mention, it’s a new type of crime that hadn’t had time to be adjudicated. (“Miss Gay, does calling for Armenians to eat so many hot dogs that they internally implode violate Harvard’s rules on harassment?”)
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
No, I’m saying that learning chess enhances certain parts of cognition, most of which are limited to chess. In other words, they learn chess and implicit secondary things in the process of learning chess.
The question being asked is about the significance of trading off “unmeasurable learning” in favor of chess-related learning. The broader question outside of this specifically would be, “what are the unmeasurable trade-odds when we raise a child to be prodigious in only obvious measurable skills”?
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
But chess today, being predominately online, makes it the least social sport/game. These benefits are secondary, and most of the learning taking place involves looking at pieces and patterns on the board. Reactions and mentorship are found in many activities and are not unique to chess, so we’re still left with the question of trade-offs.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It’s well-known that children learn chess and languages faster than adults. I’m curious: if you take a kid and put him through an intensive chess program, what are the trade-off costs for other aspects of cognitive development?
For instance, you can do two hours of chess, or you can do two hours of social interaction where they will learn visual-facial cues and auditory-expressive cues and other valuable information. You can do two hours of Spanish, or you can do two hours of self-reflection on a long walk, where they will learn how to filter and organize their past memories and discern what they actually like and dislike.
Some of the traded-off benefits are significant but impossible to measure. Spending time “listening to your body” before and after activities, eg eating certain things or spending time with certain people, builds a valuable collection of associations between activities and wellbeing. Spending time socializing will teach a kid how to recognize cues of trust and distrust, who to imitate and who not to, and so on.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
This was worth posting in main thread IMO.
I have a friend who, for his honeymoon and at his wife’s request, went on a very expensive Disney cruise to a Disney island. When I heard this, I did feel an intuitive sense of disgust, but I had a difficult time justifying the feeling. What’s so bad about Disney that isn’t bad about going to Burning Man? What’s the difference between someone going to Disney, and someone buying an expensive car? And hell, what’s the actual substantive difference in consequence between going to Disney and going to the Sistine Chapel, or to the Eiffel Tower?
It irks me because for a normal adult American, there really is no difference in personal benefit. And actually, there’s probably a greater benefit to going to Disney than the Eiffel Tower — the tower is ugly and irrelevant to one’s life experiences, but the one who pilgrimages to Disney is reigniting and reexperiencing the fervent and innocent feelings of youth. Someone goes to the Eiffel Tower simply because of its cultural connotation (if not I have a cell phone tower to sell you), but Disney has even greater cultural connotation plus more. Not to mention less vagrants and peddlers. Is the difference that the socially advantageous trip to the Eiffel Tower is concealed as an interest in culture and not status? But wait, are we now on the same page of treasuring and hyping Western culture? And waiting even longer (as if a Disney ride) since when is Snow White and Fantasia and so forth not frankly wonderful pieces of Western culture? Better than a glorified cell phone tower, to be Frankish.
There’s a lot of tangents I want to go on here, but instead I’ll just briefly list two attractions: the key difference is indeed whether one adjoins his identity to a cultural tradition, which we all intuitively know is valuable; another key difference is whether there is a deeply substantive benefit to one’s soul (deepest level of personality), and cathedrals can do this better than Disney, but perhaps not by as much as we wish.
demanding an end to the Jewish state
Should we only call Israel the Jewish state when painting them as a victim? I never hear the news write articles like this: “In 2014 alone, the Jewish nation killed more than one thousand Gazans in their bombing campaign against Gaza, 65% of which were civilians — nearly the same number of civilians killed in the Hamas incursion.” Would this be an acceptable way to write about Israel when they are being accused of misdeeds? “Questions arise as to whether the only officially Jewish country has bombed a hospital”. “The only country that is officially Jewish and run by Jews has been sanctioned by the UN more than any other country”. [edited spelling]
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Implying this is sarcasm, Palestine can recover its ancestral territory without deleting all the Jews therein. And deleting Israel the political entity does not establish genocide. Jews would still exist without the country of Israel. From the Wikipedia article:
In the 1960s, the PLO used it to call for a democratic secular state encompassing the entirety of mandatory Palestine which was initially stated to only include the Palestinians and the descendants of Jews who had lived in Palestine before the first Aliyah, although this was later expanded.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Congrats! that first photo is badass + tasteful.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Anyone know a deep study or write-up on trustworthy faces and their characteristics? Or have any thoughts on this topic generally?
My intuition is that trustworthy faces usually have larger eyes and also less tense eyes. For some reason people who tense their eyes widely come off as less trustworthy to me. I think they are also more expressive and “reactive” generally. Think of the actors Paul Rudd or Timothee Chalamet (just for common facial references). These faces seem deeply trustworthy to me in a way that I don’t find in a John Krasinski. I don’t think attractiveness is biasing me here, as I would also find Steve Buscemi and Michael Cera trustworthy.
I wonder if trustworthiness is correlated to inability to lie well. And perhaps also to “emotional response reactivity” — if your face reacts to information stimuli immediately it becomes difficult to lie. Something that gives me an uncanny feeling is watching Eastern Europeans communicate without expressiveness. Cultural differences blah blah blah aside, how can you possibly gauge if someone is trustworthy if everyone holds an expression-less face? And yeah this is abused by sociopaths who cultivate charisma and expression on purpose, but I think these people are easy to spot due to facial tension and pauses after stimuli.
If there’s a way to measure trustworthy faces with high accuracy then we should probably be putting these people in all of our important leadership and security positions.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Nominally. They were/are actually wealthy as far as quality of life is concerned (highest birth rate in country; their own private security; their own maternity clinic; governors speaking specifically in their town)
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Maybe the motive was bad, but the removal of Hanukkah from public celebration makes sense. It’s a minor Jewish holiday, not one of the six mandated festivals in the Torah or one of the high holy days. It commemorates a small middle eastern nation defeating their enemy in war. There’s nothing morally or culturally interesting about it, either for humanity entirely or for Canadians specifically.
On the other hand, Christmas celebrates the birth of a new religion and ethical system, which was so important that it restarted our calendars and indirectly inspired developments like global abolition and the Magna Carta. All of the important founding Canadians were Christian afaik, which means they believed Christmas to be the most important day in human history. It’s poetically and symbolically beautiful even if you think it’s just a fable, and it was a mainstay of Western art and music for 1500+ years.
If the Ukrainians do end up verging toward cultural and ethnic extinction, I wonder how this will affect the decision-making of other low fertility nations that neighbor great powers. Will Taiwan quickly decide that standing up against China isn’t in their actual interest? Could a joint Chinese / NK force influence South Korea’s sovereignty? Etc. It seems that anyone who has survival in mind (let alone thriving) will recalculate how much they actually value sovereignty over capitulation. But then again, maybe the leaders of these countries simply don’t value “peoplehood” and have already made plans to send their families to America if things go sour.
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