coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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40m ago
There’s ample evidence that the Chinese consult history to a greater degree in their foreign policy deliberations. In 2126, in the First AI War, when China considers how to strike our techies (being the invaluable engine to the American war machine), they may decide on a strategy of targetting them in their sleep along with their wives and children and neighbors, because this is the exact strategy that America signed off on against the Persians. The Chinese would simply be following America’s rendition of customary international law and applying it against its very authors. Consider Kissinger:
Their history is longer than ours, but they have a different sense of history. I mention in the book, for example, that when Mao notified his associates that he was going to go to war with India in 1962, he did so by invoking a war that had been fought between China and India in the Tang Dynasty, which was a thousand years earlier, and then another war that had been fought 600 years earlier. And he told his assembled generals, from the first war, you can learn these lessons. From the second war you can learn the following lessons. Not even Europeans who have a more developed sense of history than we do, would you find a leader who says, let’s learn the following lessons from Charlemagne and an American president who would say, we can learn the following lessons from President Polk. Yes, it wouldn’t be conceivable.
I don’t know if our conduct comes from a certainty that we will always be on top (despite demographic-dysgenic catastrophe), or a hardness of heart for our own descendants, or just a general disregard for longterm thinking, but the acts committed today are written down as the standards applied against us tomorrow. And this is a decent stand-in thought for those who have dehumanized Iranians or otherwise can’t empathize with anyone outside their fold. If the Iranians are “third worldists”, then at least imagine your own great grandchildren preferring not to be destroyed by China in their sleep in the next century.
I think it would be great for mankind if Iran winds up controlling the strait, as this would constitute a powerful deterrence against future powers that plot unjustified wars without regard for humanitarian consequences. If this deterrence is permanently inked into history, then it could save millions of lives in the future when leaders read about the aggression of America and Israel against the underdog Iran. This would be good for Americans in America, because we will not be top dog forever; in a century or two we may find ourselves in Iran’s place with a more powerful China attempting to oppress us and conquer us. Giving Iran the strait would be a great reparative act for a country that does not deserve the families of its scientists blown up and its economy placed under crippling sanctions just because their civilization makes Israelis and Zionists uncomfortable and envious.
Ultimately there is nothing more important than justice and securing peace, at least not if you’re a member of the Christian West called to be peacemakers. If this reduces our power and prosperity, then that’s an adequate sacrifice for twenty years of mistakes we refuse to learn from. So perhaps we can learn from this one and boot the warmongers out of power. Obviously, we did not learn anything from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Palestine. So maybe those who worship power will learn something from a decline in American power, and maybe Israelis will learn something from relentless missile strikes on their cities. I’m doubtful, but it’s possible.
Appears to be a Cicada 3301-like decryption puzzle. There were two posted on their Twitter and Instagram but one was deleted from each platform; this is the remaining one. The deleted one seems to have audio to decrypt, while this seems to have text to decrypt. I bet there’s a talented Mottezan who can figure it out.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
peace-loving
How can you claim they are not peace-loving? Have you ever looked at their previous wars? They had to enter the Syrian Civil War because America’s warmongering caused literal ISIS to pop up in their neighborhood; they had to enter the Iraq War to defeat ISIS after they took over the Sunni regions (and they were asked); they had to fight Iraq in the 80s because we funded the Iraqi invasion where they used chemical weapons on 50,000 Iranians. America, 6000 miles away, compelled them to defend their regional interests. I’m not even sure what the last unjustifiable war is that Iran participated in when you exclude the Shah. You might have to go back to the 1800s.
liberal
Women do not need a mahram to travel freely in Iran. This makes them more liberal than our ally Saudi Arabia, and more liberal than parts of Syria (something we caused). Women can also get away with showing their real hair, which makes them more liberal than many parts of Haredi New York City and London! There are major parties in Israel that are less liberal than Iran; shall we sanction them? Iranian women can divorce their husbands while orthodox Jewish are forbidden to without their husband’s permission.
They could even ally themselves to the US outright
They tried that. Their offer was rebuffed, perhaps because of the Israel Lobby. https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/irans-proposal-for-a-grand-bargain/
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA587314.pdf ctrl-f “grand bargain”
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nuclear program cooperation
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ending support for Hamas and Hezbollah
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two-state solution
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cooperation destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan
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joint cooperation against Al-Qaeda
All declined. Our national security apparatus wanted it, Bush WH did not because they wanted to use an Israeli-funded militant group to foment regime change in Iran (MeK). And here we are.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
https://amp.dw.com/en/cuba-hit-by-island-wide-blackout-amid-trump-oil-blockade/a-76385816
There is no Venezuelan oil going to Cuba; Mexico is being threatened with tariffs for sending oil to Cuba; Cuba has not received any oil in three months. The article you’re posting is talking about a hypothetical deal to be reached in the future with Cuba. No such deal has been enacted.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Somewhat more complex than this. Turkey condemned Israel and America as instigators more so than Iran. The former Saudi intel chief / ambassador placed blame on Israel and America (it is significant that he is permitted to voice these things publicly). Egypt’s Eid sermon made a suspicious nod to Shia-Sunni unity while the Egyptian military builds up in the Sinai. Of course what is said in public may not be the true feelings of the important figures in private. I for one completely distrust anything I hear about Saudi Arabia ostensibly begging America to attack Iran, given fog of war / Zionist leanings in press (helpful to shift blame on KSA)
show how would you do better
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the first 10 million would be spent funding a group of young scholars and researchers wielding AI to determine precisely how Marxism originally won. The answer is some combination of (1) popular agitprop and (2) compelling status benefits for successful Marxist activists. An ideology does not need to be true or proven to successfully proliferate, it simply needs to be fun to express and exciting to believe at first pass; almost nobody, and certainly no young person, considers the consequences of their ideology beyond the first pass. The end result of this phase would not be some worthless boring thinktank paper that no one would ever read, but instead a dozen or so pages filled with bullet points on rules and recommendations for practical utilility. I would pay careful attention to the social ecosystem of Marxists prior to the Russian revolution and during Mao’s cultural Revolution. There were very concrete social rituals that were promulgated to increase the motivation and activity of Marxists, which are interesting to read about.
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the next 10 million would be spent determining who to champion as primary social influencers. One passionate social influencer can create 1000 passionate social influencers organically in turn, so this is the place to start. Ideally you would form small teams of one charismatic leader and 6 to 11 assistants; the assistants research all the information and implementation details while the charismatic leader focuses on honing his visceral persuasion skills. 2016-Trump and Obama are examples of charismatic leaders; in online spaces, Nick Fuentes and Dean Withers. The heyday of SJW occurred when the beautiful young elites signaled their allegiance; the decline corresponds to the ugly and unwell signaling their allegiance, and then being counter signaled by “Libs of Tik Tok” type accounts. There was never any rationality involved in either the rise or the decline. Just signals.
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the final 10 million would be spent funding the above groups so that they can spend all their time on persuasion and induction into the social ecosystem. The flowchart would be simple: someone comes across the attractive and compelling ideologue, and then are filtered into the social ecosystem, and later becomes an ideologue themselves. This is literally how Marxists grew originally, and how the Chinese cultural revolution became so energetic: there were thousands of “agitators” which would persuade new members to gradually become agitators too. Marxism et al is especially dangerous because it is such a primitively attractive ideology based on instinct: people have more than they need, so they should give it to those who need it. Hunter Gatherer tier feelings. This is how you would behave in a small group of friends, so why wouldn’t it apply generally and collectively? And it shifts the burden of (dis)proof to the capitalist, and it takes so much longer to explain why things are more complicated than Marxist ideology, meanwhile the Marxist can just repeat his slogans endlessly. (Today, we have the opposite problem where the capitalists lean into primitive feeling maxxing with their slogans revolving around the notion that “a person deserves what they can create”. Just as instinctive, and also a dangerous simplification, and again shifts the burden of proof to the opposition).
I would not need the remaining $220,000,000; I would donate the remainder to the poor.
That “only” a small percentage of women are on OnlyFans does not mean that the behavior is not rooted in a biological drive. Only a small amount of men become addicted to lootbox gambling, and yet addiction to gambling is a 100% real thing that is a result of both genetic factors and biology generally. The women not on OnlyFans may simply be raised well, have higher intelligence, are more cautious related to privacy, or are married or in a relationship. Yet OnlyFans is still exploiting the biology of some genetically at-risk women, just as lootbox gambling exploits the biology of at-risk men. (Similarly, some people are predisposed to alcoholism; my 23andme says I likely drink a lot of coffee, and it is right.)
Regarding the numbers, a 2024 filing showed 4.6 million creator accounts, of which a majority are naturally women, and nearly all of these women will be 18-30. This does not tell us how many had created an account and then deleted it; it is unlikely that the average creators sticks around very long. And this is not among American women only. So the percent of women 18-30 on OnlyFans is not certain.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
On the reward circuitry level there is no difference between obtaining cash from variable posting of nudity and obtaining in-game rewards (often tradeable to cash) from variable shooting of an opponent or clicking of a treasure chest
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
OnlyFans is structured to hit on those same neural correlates, as likes and payments and praise come immediately after a sexual display or act. Women may truly be “addicted” within this specific context which minimizes reputational checks and where they receive compliments and coins concomitant to the primitive sexual display behavioral loop. Mainstream social media use among young women parallels this addictive loop, because they receive points and adulation for dancing and less overt displays of their body like the wearing of revealing clothes.
IMO OnlyFans is to women what video game lootboxes / sportsbetting are to men. Deep in male nature is the desire to seek fortune through competition / warring, and deep in female nature is the desire to present themselves for sex and obtain resources from the wealthy. These are primitive drives, millions of years old, predating modern human evolution. In both instances it triggers an urge that can overpower rational risk-reward calculation in many people. These things should be banned just like cocaine is banned. They are physiologically the same as cocaine. Cocaine is an endogenous dopamine hack, OF / gambling are exogenous dopamine hacks.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
I really want to visit now. Seems really cool.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
For some reason my memory of Chuck Norris was blended with my memory of WoW. Maybe because of Barrens Chat?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/249062-world-of-warcraft-classic/41897772
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
The word meme was was not commonly used to refer to internet memes until ~2008, and then only in contexts outside of where memes developed. There was a period where no one who made or disseminated memes ever referred to them as “memes” and doing so was seen as passé. This changed with the popularity of Reddit, but we have now returned to a period where memes are no longer referred to as such — contagious social transmissions are now “trends”, or just “images” if referring to images that go viral as reaction comments on shortform social media. It is an interesting fact to explore that the surest way to disrupt the popularity of a meme is to call it a “meme”, filing it away immediately at a category of ephemeral expression soon to be forgotten.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I’m of the opinion that the more “competition” between traditional churches the better. I would even like the Catholic Church to split into different denominations so that the one with the best spirit and art can triumph. There should be factions among Christendom so that we can measure who produces the greatest fruit somewhat-empirically, and which produces the greatest art and spiritual change according to the opinion of Sensitive Young Men (and I wonder if this explains some of the rise of the Church in Georgia). I think, also, that Israel is a fair example of how you can have national and religio-political unity without having any semblance of organizational unity among the competing strains of the religion. I mean there’s controversy with the Haredi, but otherwise no one can claim that they are socially or politically disorganized. And it does not appear that each of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence are “organized” in any way that aids their defense or prosperity despite having so many precise areas of agreement.
Orthodoxy in America may be one of the few denominations which have a genuine rise in attendance (1, 2), and while the converts might claim it is due to the history and liturgy and theology, I think instead it is an aesthetic-spiritual-vibe-feel sort of thing. (Would they attend if it was in a strip mall, there was no incense, the robes were a fugly purple, and the priest sang in gay voice? I don’t think so). However, they are starting from such low numbers that I don’t think it will really matters for a number of decades.
The significant life and death of Patriarch Ilia II of the insignificant country of Georgia
The Head of the Georgian Orthodox Church just passed away, leading the officially secular government to institute five days of national mourning. According to surveys, Ilia was the most trusted man in the Caucasus. The public’s trust in his “patriarchy” peaked at 94% in 2010, at a time when trust in the parliament stood at a pitiful 34%. Ilia presided over the most interesting rise of religiosity ever recorded. In 1977, when he entered his position, Geogia was in possession of only a few dozen churches. Youth church attendance sat at 7%, and the perceived importance of religion was somewhere below 50% (likely quite far below, but there is little data before 1993). By the end of his life, 2500 orthodox churches were built, youth attendance rose to 60% by 2010, perceived importance of religion rose to 85% in 2014, and general weekly attendance jumped from 27% in 1996 to 44% in 2014. Even well past the end of Soviet atheism, religiosity continued to rose, with monthly prayer increasing from 57% in 2007 to 75% in 2020. Much of this data is explored in the interesting paper, “A counterexample to secularization theory? Assessing the Georgian religious revival”.
Serendipitously, I was exploring Georgian Orthodox music at the time of patriarch’s passing. The god of the algorithm and the God of the gods rewarded my search for good music and led me to the mass held in honor of the Patriarch. If you like choral music, or the aesthetics of Game of Thrones, you might like it. I personally think the aesthetics are peak. The godchildren of the Patriarch led his procession throughout the capital city, though it’s hard to know how many gathered for the occasion because he had 50,000 godchildren. Why so many? In an effort to increase the Georgian TFR, the patriarch promised to be the Godfather of every third child born to an Orthodox Christian family. The result was an enormous religiously inspired baby boom:
We find a 17% increase (0.3 children per woman) in the national total fertility rate, a 42% increase in Georgian Orthodox women’s birth rate within marriage, and a 100% increase in their 3 and higher-order birth rate within marriage. The impact of the intervention also correlates with higher marriage rates and reduced reported abortions, aligning with the church’s goals
The speaker of the Georgian parliament honored him as follows: “Georgia has lost a spiritual father, our most Holy Patriarch, who dedicated every minute and second of his life to serving Christ, defending the homeland, and caring for his flock.”
I don’t worship power, maybe because of my portion of old American heritage. Most of us have worshipped God, and this means understanding certain acts as beneath us. When George Washington was accused by the French of allowing the assassination of a negotiating party, it was a severe mark of disgrace that haunted him for the rest of his life and stained his reputation across Europe. This is my culture, and I think any foreign value system that worships power is a fundamentally anti-American influence that must be excised, just as much as any dangerous entanglement in foreign nations must be excised. I don’t know if you’re familiar with American culture so I will quote to you something from our first President and Founding Father:
Real patriots — in the eyes of the Founding Fathers — don’t start unjust and unnecessary wars for a random foreign tribe 6000 miles away. This is just not what we do. That’s why none of the American security apparatus supported this war. That’s why Israel had to put pressure on Trump to start the war. That’s why the #1 authority on terrorism in the American security state, Joe Kent, resigned to speak to Americans on the dangerous and subversive influence of Israel on American soil. Allowing Iran to become a little stronger is a great punishment and deterrence against the foreign tribe bringing us to war, but even more importantly, it is something that future powers will read about when deciding whether to commit acts of aggression.
I don’t know if you’re trolling when you ask whether history informs the decision of modern nations to go to war. That’s the basic curricula at any war college. I also don’t know if you’re trolling when you say Iran was building nuclear weapons, because that’s not the assessment of American intelligence, which means you trust Israel more than America, which seems slightly treasonous to me and very strange. But perhaps you’re not an American, I don’t know. But if you’re not an American, why are you pretending to speak for our nation?
No, in this religion justice and peace are getting right with God; they are one and the same thing; we will be judged by how we treat strangers and neighbors and others. There is a long history of Christian Just War philosophy, and it all concurs that our act of war against Iran was unjustified. And the Just God may punish those who support it; He will certainly punish those who promote “no mercy” and “no quarter”.
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