doglatine
1yr ago
I remember that interaction! It's always nice to see a familiar face outside of context, and I had been meaning to reply to you (let no sin of omission go unpunished). To be clear, what you were taking umbrage at was a procedural point - I was upbraiding Glideer on his dropping a quote without context, rather than presupposing that the context was misleading or that no such context could be provided. He (and you) provided that context, and I think it definitely diminishes the moral weight of the passage that another redditor had earlier quoted from. As you probably know, Glideer is the resident Russo-apologist of CredibleDefense, and I like to think I give him a fair shout - I actively upvote him as long as he's saying something informative or sensible, contrary to most of the lurkers on the sub. And I remember the Odessa arson quite well - it was a good example of those awful acts that get swept away by the awfulness of other acts at the time. I certainly didn't intend to be an apologist for thoroughgoing Russophobia.
That said... I'm not too disinclined to own the label of Russophobe. I should tell you about my ten days in St Petersburg, and this seems as good a time as any. In short, to get over a girl (and get over some new ones), back in 2008 I decided to fly to Estonia and get the bus from Tallinn to St P. I had a wonderful 10 days in the city, but it was also an extreme experience. On the one hand, the abundance of architecture and beauty was breathtaking - the Spas na Kravi alone is a marvel. But the Hermitage was my favourite: a wonder, full of wonders (many of them plundered, admittedly). But in my time there I was also (lightly) assaulted a couple of times on the street; apparently the English fop look is an invitation to being shoved, punched in the back, and otherwise disrespected. Many clubs I tried to get into thought I was from the Caucasus, amusingly enough, and I had to feign being Italian to get in (apparently I'm too olive-skinned for the English story to be believable). I had my bag ripped off while I was in the subway (another marvel, although perhaps at that point I would have benefitted from doing less marveling). And best of all, I got arrested! I'd met a friend of one of my Russian expat pals at a punk bar, and one thing had led to another and I was drunkenly heading home with her for a night of cross-cultural communication. We were stopped by police, who found my identity documents insufficient (I had a photocopy of my passport, as per Lonely Planet advice, but this was insufficient). The situation probably wasn't helped by the fact that my new friend was outspoken, and from what I latterly gleaned, had told the police they were acting shamefully. Anyway, I was taken into the station, my possessions were taken from me, and I was put in a cell. My possessions were returned to me a few hours later and I was released, though not without all my English and US currency being swiped from my wallet (with enough of the night remaining for some cross-cultural activities, thankfully).
In any case, it left a significant imprint on me, and when I crossed back over the Estonian border back into Tallinn, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. But it was the little things that most annoyed me. The fact that everyone in St Petersburg seemed to dress the same way - furs for women, leather jackets for men - and the way that nobody smiled. By contrast, Tallinn was a riot of colour and gaiety. The obsession with the latest gadgets and brands, with very little intellectual substance, despite the incredible weight of history on every street corner. The urban decrepitude alongside gaudy conspicuous consumption. All of this was in stark contrast to my experience in Tallinn, and made me incredibly grateful that the rest of Europe was now being spared the turpitude of contemporary mainstream Russian culture.
All that being said, I think the Russian intelligentsiya are some of the best (and smartest) people I've ever met. As much as you might despise the people I mentioned, I should stress that these were children of relatively modest privilege. My closest Russian friend is the child of a physics professor and a geologist, who managed to snag a British guy and get into an Oxbridge PhD on the back of her monstrously high IQ, rather than connections or money. I have zero patience for the corrupt gangsters of Russia's true monetary elite, but my impression is that - for a time - the USSR genuinely cherished and rewarded at least some scientific minds, and my expats contacts are drawn almost entirely from their sons and daughters.
doglatine
1yr ago
For some reason you can get away with having originally East Asian and SE Asian characters played white actors; you couldn't possibly do it with black characters. This is blatant double-standards, and I feel it especially acutely as the father of two half-pinoy kids.
There isn't really a systematic difference. Both "ethics" and "morality" can refer to norms of human conduct, e.g., "John has no ethics" (=John is immoral). One clearcut difference is that "ethics" can refer to the philosophical study of norms of human conduct, including things like meta-ethics and descriptive ethics, whereas "morality" fills this role rather more awkwardly. For example, it's natural to say that "ethics is the study of morality" (even though this isn't the only use of the term "ethics"), whereas "morality is the study of ethics" doesn't make much sense at all. In this very specific reading of the terms, one might analogise "ethics" and "morality" to "linguistics" and "language", though I'd emphasise again that "ethics" is frequently (if inexactly) used synonymously with "morality" to refer directly to appropriate norms of human behaviour.
doglatine
2mo ago
Fascinating; I seem to see quite a lot of small Ford Focuses, Fiestas, and Mondeos here in the UK.
doglatine
3mo ago
Couldn’t Abbot announce that state law enforcement would prevent federal agents from making arrests of guardsmen in that case? Obviously it would be an escalation but seems like there’s a whole ladder here with progressively more extreme rungs for both players.
doglatine
4mo ago
Before I even clicked, I knew this would either be NileRed or Action Lab 🤣
doglatine
4mo ago
The UK is particularly bad here. At this point I’m no longer shocked by how much American friends make compared to British friends in similar jobs, often 2-3 times as much.
doglatine
8mo ago
Yep, it’s a GPT-2.5 level base model combined with genuinely useful/interesting proprietary plug-ins (eg, decent autobiographical memory functions, ability to send texts unprompted, etc.). Right now no-one has bothered to hook up a decent base model to a good romance simulator overlay/plug-in system. Now that LLaMA 2 is out there I imagine it’s only a matter of time. It’s a multi-billion dollar business for whoever gets it right.
doglatine
1yr ago
I had exactly the opposite take — first book okay, second book good, third book excellent.Liu can’t write characters or plausible motives for shit, but his ideas are absolutely wild. Book 1 is mostly badly written characters doing stuff. Book 2 is badly written characters doing stuff with a great reveal at the end. Book 3 is Liu coming up with insane genius explanations for string theory, matter-antimatter asymmetry, entropy, etc..
doglatine
1yr ago
cf. Proclus, Ten doubts concerning providence (De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam), 5th century AD:
Such being the problems regarding [ancestral sin], let us first say that every city and every family constitutes one single living being, more so than every single person, being to a larger degree immortal and sacred. Indeed, one single mayor presides over the city as over one single being, one relative over the family as one whole. And there is a single [life] cycle in common for the city and [one] for the family, making the life and the customs of each of them converge, different ones for different cities and families – as their lives are simultaneous as it were – and their different body sizes, different resources, postures and motions – as if one single nature were pervading the whole city and every single family in it, making both that city and that family one.
If, then, also providence is one and fate, with respect to these things, is one, if their life is of the same form and their nature from the same root, how could one refuse to call the city and the family one living being, and from now on to talk specifically about each of them as one, since, when compared to any one of us, [each of them] is a living being that is longer-lived, more divine and more like the universe in that it encompasses the other, smaller living beings and is akin to the everlasting?
So if, as has been shown, every city and every family is a single living being, why wonder if the [deeds] of the forefathers are paid out to the progeny and if the life of the cities, being one, spread out from above [over the citizens] like a canvas, encompasses the compensation, in other times, for actions, be they good or bad, committed in other times? For providence shows not only that every one of us bears the fruit of the things that he did in another time [of his life] and receives the penalty for them, but also that [this is the case for] the city as a unity and the family as a unity – and as a living being, at that – whereby the first to act are not disregarded either (for it is not allowed that something is overlooked, given that providence exists) and the later-born because of the co-affection to the first as to their founding fathers and by the fact that together with them they complete, as it were, one single living being, inherit from them the share that they deserve. For their origin is from them and they share a life and nature in common with them, so that it is obvious that because of them they receive honour and punishment.
doglatine
1yr ago
I usually moisturise my face after every shower these days, but I have naturally quite oily skin and never get dry skin on my body regardless of how much I shower. Re: shampooing, I usually shampoo and condition once a day. I have done the "no-poo" thing and it worked insofar as my hair found a natural balance without shampoo and conditioner, but I don't think it actually improved the appearance; it just saved me a few minutes a day, and I missed the pleasant experience of scrubbing my scalp and having my hair smell like strawberries or tea tree or whatever.
doglatine
1yr ago
The same with any political t-shirts, tbh, or even social media. Being too public with your politics is a sign of poor judgement. An occasional thoughtful Facebook post is fine, but people whose feed is a torrent of political complaints (regardless of orientation) tend to be very difficult people (eg borderline, BPD, narcissists).
doglatine
1yr ago
Would wearing a MAGA hat mark you out as a sperg? I feel that’s an example of something that very few men would get away with while trying to date liberal women. I guess that’s partly because it’s associated with so many low-status attributes.
doglatine
1yr ago
This really rings true to me. I had a broadly similar taste profile as a teen, enjoying weird and esoteric but critically acclaimed stuff regardless of recency (example: I took my ever proper date to watch Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, a 2.5 hour film spoken entirely in Inuktitut, just because I heard it had good reviews from critics. I don't even live in Canada). Similarly with music.
doglatine
1yr ago
I don't see the clarity of this
It wasn't immediately clear to me whether you were talking about the advisability for Russia of the removal of Putin or the suing for peace. Re: Putin, any deal that Russia could get with Putin still in place would be inferior to the kind of deal they could get with a successor in place. This is widely regarded in the West as "Putin's War", and while Russia will bear the bulk of perceived responsibility even if he goes, he will at least take some of it with him. As for the hunkering down option, that could be relatively palatable for Russia, but it's not clear it's going to be strategically sustainable if Ukraine continues to have operational victories and the West continues to pour weapons and money into the conflict.
Like what, say "we'll make it meltdown unless you do X"?
I was thinking instead that Russia would publicly signal something like "the war is endangering ZPP!" while privately signaling to Ukraine and Western governments "we'll shit on the carpet if you try to get us to leave". The advantage this would have over use of nukes is semi-plausible deniability; a major radiation incident at ZPP could simultaneously freeze all parties' military operations in the region and could be passed off as an unintended consequence of Ukrainian aggression. To be clear though, I don't think this is a very sensible option.
doglatine
1yr ago
It still could, but the likelihood of a long-term frozen conflict a la Korea looks a lot lower today than it did last week.
doglatine
4mo ago
My understanding is also that any airline that was perceived as doing anything other than maximally cooperating with immigration authorities in a given country would probably be denied landing slots in future.
doglatine
8mo ago
That’s not an especially hard one for the ancap to resolve; you can just let private medical licensing authorities award medical-qualification ratings based on their preferred criteria and create an accreditation marketplace. If I choose to go to an amateur surgeon despite him having low ratings, that’s up to me.
doglatine
8mo ago
If Rubiales is guilty of anything here (besides plausibly being coked off his face), it’s of a failure to “read the room” and adapt to the etiquette of high status individuals in his communities. In some cultures, he’d be quite appropriately excoriated simply for shaking hands with any of the female players. In others, an affectionate mouth-to-mouth kiss would be appropriate between him and all the male players.
As it is, social forces have been rapidly moving towards a new set of norms that emphasise female bodily autonomy to the exclusion of unsolicited signs of warmth and affection. Rubiales was going slow in the fast lane of cultural change, and got rear-ended for his slowness, stupidity, or arrogance.
doglatine
9mo ago
Agreed. Under his old alias he expressed explicit support for ideas that are so far outside the Overton Window that even Putin or Xi Jinping wouldn’t publicly endorse them (even if they carried them out in practice).
doglatine
10mo ago
It’s £250/month for a family of four with a £150 annual deductible, and it’s specifically to allow us to get electives done quickly in fancy hospitals.
doglatine
1yr ago
Absolutely fair, but obviously hard to disentangle cause and effect here; the medieval era was desperately poor and ideologically fanatical by modern standards with an incredibly poorly educated population. I guess my main point was not that private justice systems are necessarily desirable from a niceness and human civilisation point of view, but merely that there are indeed stable equilibria involving them that don't immediately turn into the war of all against all. Also note Scott's discussion in his NRx explainer post about the bizarrely low crime rates in Victorian England that existed alongside high poverty and very low per-capita policing.
doglatine
1yr ago
Maybe I'm putting too much weight on my social experience here, but when I think of "guy who can't get a girl" I imagine someone making decent-but-not-great money in IT or business (say $45,000 a year) who's just a bit of an introverted loser. That kind of guy can definitely say "fuck it, I'm going to do a one month CELTA course and move to Manila", and if their lack of romantic success is the main source of pain in their life, they probably should.
In my case the power of horniness won through and helped galvanise my loins through the technical parts. I’ve now found a 0.3/0.7 merge of f111’s female anatomy model and SD 1.5 gives some very impressive results.
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