dasfoo
13d ago
If I'm hiring someone to reverse engineer the firmware of a competitor's product, I'm hiring whoever is the most competent for the job, even if it means hiring the sexually deranged catboy wearing programming socks. And for something like reverse engineering firmware, I'd venture a guess that somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 percent of the qualified candidates are catboys (or aesthetically similar).
The same goes for fixing the rot in Western Civilization.
Sure, when you're hiring a guy who will never leave his basement or some other coding lair, you'd hire whoever. But when you hire the face of the PR juggernaut to promote your new rip-off of your competitor's product, you're more likely to hire someone based on their aesthetic appeal to your target market. This isn't likely to be a deranged catboy.
dasfoo
13d ago
Part of the job of being a civic leader is instilling/perpatuating/reinforcing faith in the civic model, because without civics we have tribalism. Our leaders should not only promote positive policies, but they should create a sense of faith in the system and appear level-headed while doing difficult things.
Even if Trump doesn't trigger some kind of global apocalypse, his corrosive approach to his civic responsibilities is, IMO, absolutely cancerous and likely to poison our system for a generation or more.
As a conservo-libertarian, I assume that any politician is going to be somewhat corrupt given the size of our current government. While we shouldn't accept corruption, it is far better to have Dick Cheney-like corruption -- quiet, background corruption by adults who are otherwise concerned with oiling an effective civic machine -- than the loud, fuck you, baby-ish corrution of Trump, who clearly cares about nothing and no one other than what serves him in the moment.
dasfoo
13d ago
The persistant MAGA followers that I know personally think that the U.S./Global Elite are so far past the point of redemption (see: elite Satantic pedophile cults) that they theoretically welcome the Trumpian apocalypse while also failing to comprehend how terrible it could get. I suppose most airmchair revolutionaries suffer the common delusion that they will somehow emerge unscathed, or assume that they will be painlessly transported to their righteous place in heaven if things go shitward. So, yes, they love to see the liberals seethe and that feeds them, but they also feel like nothing is worth saving so why not back the bull in the china shop?
dasfoo
13d ago
The most notable progressive belief that serves the same function (feigned confusion toward or rejection of male/female definitions) is mostly harmless
I think you can find it anywhere that a progressive who is smugly "pro-science" will completely ignore inconvenient science when it gets in their way of supporting abortion, trans essentialism, or racial handouts.
dasfoo
25d ago
I think the connotation is "hot but at least a little dangerous or unsavory." I don't think they'd call a nice hot guy a "baddie;" there has to be a little bit of a "bad boy" or "bad girl" threat behind or informing the hotness.
dasfoo
25d ago
But I suspect it's just an extreme form of in-group availability signaling. By getting these surgeries, you signal to males in your in-group that you are available to them sexually. Males in your in-group start to associate those signals with sexual availability and eroticize them, consciously or subconsciously. Traits or choices that aren't inherently attractive become attractive because they signal sexual availability.
I'm not sure how much males have to do with it. I jumped back into single life last year as a guy in his 50s. What I discovered -- because I've never been on the kind of social media where this has been happening for two decades -- via online dating is just how contagious fashion/beauty/lifestyle trends are across women from their 30s-50s. A majority of women (I'm looking at middle-class professional women in a small U.S. urban and very liberal coastal area) present as having the same hobbies -- pickleball, hiking, standup paddle boarding -- all of which were created through social media or chosen for their social media photogenic-ness; they all have pictures at the same 5 photogenic local locations; all of their bios re-use the same phrases ("looking for a partner in crime for life's adventures"). They all love coffee on arainy Sunday morning and want someone with whom to dance in the kitchen. So many of them have nose rings and sleeve tattoos, like an absurd amount of 50 year old women, and unnaturally colored hair. And I highly doubt men have anything to do with any of this (most men certainly aren't suggesting nose rings and sleeve tattoos and hoping that their woman becomes obsessed with a dumb sport like pickleball). These are female feedback meme loops fed by social media, with a lot of older women following mom influencers who are trying to keep up with younger generations.
I'm only libertarian up to my country's borders. It may sound counterintuitive, but borders are the most important factor when it comes to freedom. I've realized just how little most people value actual freedom, and how important it is to guard with great vigilance, power, and might, the borders around whatever little pockets of freedom we are able to establish. The reason why the U.S. has a Constitution with a Bill of Rights is that, absent that, all of our natural rights will be traded away for short-sighted wants, and these laws are only as effective as the borders that protect them from interlopers with bad intentions.
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