coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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4hr ago
Politics in America is an enormous iceberg where all the weightiness exists under the surface. There are votes and then there are pre-votes and you can control the pre-votes by influencing media, news, algorithms, education, ad spending, and so on through advocacy groups. Mamdani is pretty clever because he allocated some money to Partners Against the Hate, which itself funds the Arab American Association of New York which itself funds anti-Muslim awareness campaigns. Of course, every possible category of person has these advocacy groups except for the people who actually created the country and bled for it, which makes quite literally zero sense, but I foresee this changing within the decade.
Recently I’ve been looking into the Indian advocacy network and it’s fascinating, just obviously fresh off the boat Hindus with clear ties to the Indian political state working in concert to weaponize thousands of Indian-origin advocacy groups for power —
unite Americans of Indian Origin on a single national platform to strengthen collaboration, community empowerment, advocacy […] bringing all Americans of Indian Origin onto one national platform, leveraging unity to empower the community, and strengthening Indo–U.S. relations through organized collaboration and engagement […] building a strong, unified national voice for Americans of Indian Origin
In the case of Mamdani, I imagine he feels that he has to set a good example so that future Muslim politicians can point to him as an example for the next couple decades to come. I do not think he actually believes the stuff he’s saying wrt antisemitism. He’s doing his own group’s advocacy, Jews are doing their own advocacy, it’s advocacy all the way down. I guess the original Americans in this extended metaphor are the passengers on the Titanic.
coffee_enjoyer
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8hr ago
The new weather graphics look amazing. This reminds me of a video where a streamer hears the Stormwind song for the first time.
And that is such a confusing statement to me. My brother in Christ, what was the point of playing TBC last month? This was never getting you laid or getting you paid. It's always been pixels on a screen, lusted over by us dorks, an utterly pointless but fun hobby.
Well, the pixels on the screen look better. That, and there are more people running around. Taken to the extreme, your criticism can extend to playing IRL and soon you’ll sound like a medieval Hand of Meditation: wealth shall vanish; what thou hast here another shall have…
It’s interesting that there seems to be a “biological minimum” of socialization that is simply required to enjoy an activity. Few would play chess or League all day against bots, but many would against humans, even though there is no actual socializing involved. Similarly, no one would play WoW-Retail if the realm were populated solely by bots, but there is so little socializing that it’s often indistinguishable from bots. Nevertheless, we have to know that there are other players around us.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
To me, loving neighbor means ensuring that the commons are clean and beautiful, that drugs and bad influences are exterminated from neighborhoods, that media for those under 20 are censored for morality, ensuring men get good jobs so that marital bliss increases, ensuring food is healthy, hanging fentanyl dealers publicly, that kind of stuff. The stuff that we can reasonably predict will lead to the happiness and peace of my neighbor, especially my poorest neighbor. There’s not really any benefit to someone just yapping about how much they love their neighbor, which is just worthless signaling at best, and actually a horrible illusion at worst.
Of course, that’s called hormesis. There are some interesting studies which concluded that small amounts of radiation are protective against larger radiation exposure and are conducive to longevity. I believe there was one interesting study about an apartment complex in Korea that had constant low levels of radioactivity. But it’s been a long time since I read about this. Probably back on SSC
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
The snapchat message is not indicative of anything. Plugging ["free pussy" until:2026-05-28] into x search, having picked a random date, I see that there are three usages of the phrase which convey consensual intercourse on May 27th alone. Two examples:
• “Free Pussy scare me, u don't want ya nails done or nothing ?” — a user indicating that he is afraid of women who offer intercourse without asking for something in return, like funding for a nail salon appointment
• “Men stay to get free pussy. Convert a serious girlfriend to friends with benefit. Why throw away the pussy when you can demote it.”
There are two more references on the 26th and two more on the 25th. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no online usage of this term to refer to non-consensual intercourse. Or perhaps it refers to non-consensual activity a small percentage of the time. But yeah, “free pussy” is how AAVE-influenced young White American refers to promiscuous women.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
You’re welcome to do a twin study on fraternity membership. You have my total support there. If modern American life involves a lot of humiliation, then training for humiliation is beneficial. Has nothing to do with Whataboutism.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
I would say that I take Christianity seriously, not that I take my personal faith seriously, which would involve a lot more activity etc.
goodwill toward one's fellow human, love one another, if he hath all this yet hath not charity
This was historically counterbalanced with a hatred against injustice. You can read where Paul says a true Christian “abhors evil”, or where Christ is enthroned because He loves righteousness and hates evil, or where Christ commends the Ephesians for their hatred. The absence of hatred in American churches is why so many suffer from all sorts of personal and civic problems. The passion-less modern Christianity doesn’t work, and it doesn’t even bring people into the religion. It is, IMHO, “fake and gay”.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
You’re liable to be replaced by H1B or passed over for AA hires, your tax dollars may go to a senseless war or random Somali / Haredi scams, your town might become +60 foreign in a decade, that sort of thing. There’s just a lot of humiliation involved with being an American today, so it’s good to get training in dealing with that early.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Than non-Greek students. But Greek members typically perform better than non-students
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
I mean that’s certainty one theory, but another theory would be that stressful experiences build brotherhood, which I recall reading in a study involving militant groups a long time ago. If fraternities selected and promoted suboptimal norms then we should expect to see members perform worse, but we see them perform better. In any case, America is one long humiliation ritual so it’s not actually a bad thing for young men to become habituated to this early, provided there is no actual harm being committed.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
What is your favorite dungeon crawler OST and why is it King’s Field IV?
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
benefit from additional ties between people that are willing to both undergo and perpetuate abuse?
Well, doctors in residency programs and the marines provide benefits. But the hazing incidents that have been publicized recently recently do not involve abuse like consistent sleep deprivation over months, just mild discomfort like “blindfolded in basement” or “covered in condiments”. We benefit a lot from this because society benefits from fraternity (consider the importance of the mystery cults for Roman society). If you were to make these guys run into each other at maximum speed so that you can guarantee mental disturbances later in life and ~10 injuries a semester, well, this is no longer abuse, these are VIPs whom we have to fund generously and build a stadium for.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
The reaction to fraternity hazing incidents is extremely funny to me. “These poor willing adult male participants were socially pressured to do something humiliating to strengthen the bonds of friendship. Such harm can’t go unnoticed; we must publicly humiliate them on the news for millions of people to see and comment on while showing their faces on video whenever possible.” It’s just so stupid.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
There’s no textual evidence of visual or Buddhist-like meditation practices among the early Christians. We have, at most, Paul’s “third heaven” passage and the Book of Revelation, but we don’t have any details as to whether Paul’s experience was due to a “practice” or a dream or God simply placing it within him, and we don’t know whether Revelation was inspired by a visual practice or if it was always intended to be symbolic. That doesn’t mean that such practices are bad or a Christian shouldn’t do it, but afaik it has no firm grounding in the first 300 years of Christianity. It may have existed among the Essenes or whatever, but if the apostles and post-apostolics approved of it, we should expect to see it somewhere in the early works (in Origen, Tertullian, Clement, etc).
The 100% authoritative, default, and obligatory Christian meditation is prayer. Using words and inner attention to ask for something with the expectation it will eventually be obtained. You find this everywhere, naturally. Then you have the hearing of scripture, which is actually a kind of meditation. You have the dwelling on God in worship, which is also meditative, and then you have the Passion. It’s probable that when the ancients were hearing or reading things, they were using their imaginative faculties, because they lived in a more stimuli-starved world.
that if you spend 10 minutes listening to a Buddhist teacher telling you to focus on breathing deeply, or focus on feelings of loving-kindness
Well we’re supposed to have lovingkindness for your brother, your neighbor, for God and for yourself. You don’t need a Buddhist to tell you to do this. It’s interesting, though, that there once was a practice of making oneself seem “pitiable” before God, asking for His pity / mercy, which in a weird sense is making oneself feel deservèd of love. In our insane and ridiculous culture, large swathes of the Left feel undeserved of love; if you’re White and come from a rich family you are essentially banned from feeling God’s love unless you become a new gender or whatever.
I think the Christian prayer method is more socially optimal than Buddhist meditation. There is an explicit and an implicit dimension to every spiritual practice. It’s true that, for both Buddhism and Christianity, the explicit content may be the same sometimes, eg wishing love and happiness upon a friend. But there is a whole other implicit dimension to Christian prayer:
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the use of social language, which acts as a soft practice for sociality, which is the bedrock of civilization and thus love for neighbor. The Christian uses his own words to direct the love, which increases the ease and frequency with which he communicates with these words to others. If you pray twice a day with loving words about a friend, after a month you might find yourself using there loving words to a friend, which is good.
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the trust aspect. The Christian is supposed to trust that his request will be answered. This builds generalized social trust which is the oil of civilization. The act of requesting makes it more likely that we will request from someone in a community.
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the implicit reminder that God is the Father and Boss and Christ is our heroic model. A year of praying twice a day and you’ve reminded yourself 700 times that God is your Father and Christ is your helping interceding High Priest. (I agree with Origen that all prayer ought to be directed to God alone, and we should understand Christ as praying with us and aiding our request to God
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the retrieval of information. Buddhism might emphasize a general feeling of compassion, but we are specific beings with specific connections and practical problems. Prayer retrieves our own life and that of another and our predicament, increasing our awareness of the practical ways we can help specific people. A general compassion might actually be worthless unless it can be delivered to someone in our community.
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The humility aspect. Prayer reminds us we are a servant and the subject of a humiliating rescue operation, and the most precious and costly antidote had to be expressly sent to keep our soul alive. I think this is something the traditional Catholic prayers always mention: the cross, the blood.
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good
IMO if HBD is true wrt intelligence (and there is a preponderance of evidence) then segregated schooling is actually favorable to the collective or common good. If you have a cohort who are never going to succeed academically and are destined to work in the service industry or similar, then their wellbeing is reduced if you seat them in classes with the exceptional due to demotivation and status reasons. Allowing them to have fun and socialize instead of learning biology is for the best. They are actual learning important lessons in those moments where they are…
running wild, chasing, hitting and pushing each other
as this teaches about important social cues that will help them deal with coworkers later on in their career. I’m not joking. Learning when you’ve pushed your classmate too hard because he flipped out is a skill that will carry over at 30 when you rib your coworker too hard, causing conflict. Learning how to deal with the monotony of classrooms through small talk will carry over to the Amazon warehouse. Etc. It’s better for these students to be segregated among income/lifestyle peers than to have peers who become absurdly successful relative to themselves. The latter does not feel good. But it feels good to be around those you can compete and compare yourself with.
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
In New Jersey, due to corruption, you need 900 hours of training / apprenticeship at a barber school to be able to cut men’s hair. This only really applies to Whites not in college and East Asians, as everyone else knows a guy who will just cut their hair under the table. So this is like a tax specifically on third places. I imagine there are also bizarre health code requirements that are not actually necessary on top of this. Of course there are still “third place” barbershops if you’re willing to spend more money, but I imagine the barbershop in Brazil doesn’t have the issue of retarded regulations making haircuts more expensive, so for the Brazilian it’s always worth the money. Also, when a chain takes over it does everything possible to increase customer turnover and you might be penalized for spending too long with a customer. The ambience is the brightest possible white light so that you aren’t sued if someone is cut, but this lighting is not conducive to bonding.
there is something to be said about barber shops of all places
The scents of the powders etc increase relaxation and it requires close personal touch and trust. Barbershops are probably unique among places for this.
these places are dead because men (and adults in general) no longer want them
This is another factor because men are fine making video games their third place
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
I miss the good old days where I could confidently throw 3 em-dashes in one sentence. In a way that stylistic choice was vindicated.
coffee_enjoyer
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9d ago
What is the biggest AI tell?
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
We should not consider the Strait “open” if shipping is down 70%, ships are struck every week, and most of the successful crossings use the Iranian corridor. Before Kpler nuked all their public posts they were claiming most known crossings were using Iranian corridor, with some mysterious amount using another corridor. This was in late August.
Two months ago you denied that America was escorting ships through the Strait
I denied that (1) they escorted many ships during the last closure, and (2) that they were currently escorting ships. This was in mid-July, and if you look at the Kpler historical crossing data for mid-July, there were barely any crossings and barely any escorted by the US:
Traffic has also concentrated on one route: among vessels still willing to cross, the Iranian unilateral route, announced in April but not approved by the IMO or recognised by the US or EU, carried around 60% of traffic versus 40% for the Omani route during the truce period. Between 15 and 22 July that split moved to roughly 90% Iranian, 10% Omani, and on the most recent day tracked, all eight vessels that crossed used the Iranian route
So yeah I think my previous estimations / predictions were pretty good
CNN quotes Centcom and says they achieved an 18M barrel day
I think they are probably telling the truth, but this doesn’t tell us the average mbps.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
Iran has brought down transit to ~30% of last year’s average. They don’t need to hit every single ship to make an impact.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
It’s fine if you think that’s happening but I hope you don’t invest your money on this assumption. Even TankerTrackers (imo a psy-op lite account) says it’s half the crude + products as 2025. Saudi East-West will take 1-1.5 months to repair. Houthis just struck Yasref refinery. Ships still being hit in strait and a ship may or may not have hit a mine yesterday.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
Iran’s strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations all focused on oil or military strikes. Their strategy was not to “level cities” which is why you wouldn’t be able to find a single US military report claiming this. Iran isn’t Israel, they don’t consciously try to level cities. Strikes aimed at military installations ≠ strikes aimed to level entire cities.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
We had the chance to normalize relations in 2003 through the “grand bargain” opportunity, actually.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
Their original strategy was to use an overwhelming missile barrage to level cities
It sounds like you got this from a call of duty mission plotline. Our intel predicted they would respond as they did respond:
https://www.dia.mil/Articles/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article/567085/2014-annual-threat-assessment/
Iran has threatened to temporarily impede international ship traffic transiting through the Strait of Hormuz if it is attacked or in response to further sanctions on its oil exports. Additionally, Iran has threatened to launch missiles against U.S. targets and our regional allies in response to an attack. Tehran could also employ its terrorist surrogates. However, it is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS26/20220317/114527/HHRG-117-AS26-Wstate-BerrierS-20220317.pdf
Tehran probably calibrates its attacks to pressure adversaries and proportionally retaliate for real or perceived transgressions against Iran, while attempting to prevent escalation to full-scale conflict. Iranian officials continue to perceive that they have not sufficiently retaliated for the 8 January 2020 death of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) Commander Qasem Soleimani, and probably are planning covert actions against U.S. officials to retaliate for his death while attempting to maintain plausible deniability and minimize escalation. Iran probably will continue to focus on unconventional attacks or minimally deniable actions, such as cyberoperations, rather than overt conventional retaliation to counter Western pressure.
Even if they were evilmaxxing, it would be the dumbest decision ever to target civilian centers as it would immediately grant America et al the moral right to do the same to them.
I disagree. The spectacle alone increased interest in opera, probably getting ~12mil views online across platforms. The lottery artificially makes opera appear more desirable, thus increasing interest further. So if opera is socially beneficial, a 70k ticket lottery is beneficial. And I’d say opera is socially beneficial for two reasons: (1) the selected emotions are higher and more pristine, (2) it trains delayed gratification and focus because there are only a few good moments of musicality and plot interest. How else can you train someone’s attention on one long point of focus for 4.5 hours today? You have a captive audience.
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