erwgv3g34
My Quality Contributions:
User ID: 240
I stand by my assertion. There are plenty of young men in minimum wage roles who would love the chance to give thieves a good beating if the only risk were physical; if they knew for a fact that they would not be arrested or fired or sued after the act, but given a pat on the back and told "good job!".
Take a look at /r/crazyfuckingvideos. You can see several examples of employees fighting back against robbers, and people in the comment section cheering them for it. It is not in the nature of men to stand by with folded hands and meekly watch some asshole get away with defecting against the social order; it is as infuriating as it is emasculating.
Police and judges exist to protect criminals. Honest people know how to keep order; lynchings.
erwgv3g34
11hr ago
Well, no. But I did manage to stop the thief from stealing breakfast, and, in the end, isn't that what's really important?
Plenty would do it if they were just allowed to, if for no other reason than because winning a fight is a good way to get laid.
I once got into a scuffle with a breakfast thief at my hotel, because I was having a bad day and wanted an excuse to fight someone, and he kindly volunteered.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
As they say, "Press X to doubt." What I've seen of AI-written fiction is barely fanfic tier at best.
Here's some samples of Fable 5 writing:
- https://rentry.co/fable5
- https://rentry.co/fable52
- https://rentry.co/fable53
- https://rentry.co/fable54
If you know any fanfic like that, hook me up; I'm always looking for good authors.
But, honestly? Looking at this and your other replies, I think that your problem is that you just don't want to do anything.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
Most of what I use LLMs for is creating bespoke fiction. Have you ever had a story you wanted to read, but nobody has written? AI can do that. The top creative writing models (claude-fable-5, claude-opus-4-6-thinking, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, etc.) are really good at this. If you want smut, then your best bet is grok-4.20-beta1.
Alternatively, you can use them to create explainers in the style of your favorite authors (also a creative writing capability). Go ahead and ask them to explain economics like they are Scott Alexander, or write a moving guide in the voice of Eliezer Yudkowsky, or an introduction to anime in the style of Robin Hanson.
They can also do your research for you. Suppose you want a list of 1950s science fiction movies in color along with a short review written in the format of Leonard Maltin, including runtime and year of release? Done.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
"Twice nothing is still nothing."
--Cyrano Jones, The Trouble with Tribbles
Doubling over 10 years is pathetic. During WWII, the US restructured its entire economy to produce planes and tanks and ships over 4 years. The housing crisis is our great war, and we are losing. It is not an economic problem; it is a political problem. The capacity is there.
Those immigrants could be helping to build enough housing for everyone; the construction industry is heavily Hispanic. They are just not allowed to, because nobody is allowed to solve the problem.
Is the rent affordable? No? Then there is not enough housing being built. If the rate is increasing, then it is not increasing fast enough.
The only state that has affordable rent because of an increase in supply (as opposed to affordable houses because of a lack of demand, which is to say, because nobody wants to live there) is Texas. Even Austin, its most heavily regulated city, is experiencing an incredible reduction in rent year after year. Let alone other, less regulated, cities, like Dallas and Houston.
Every other state has this issue, including Republican states like Florida. Zoning is the problem. Building is the solution.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
Spy x Family has got to be some kind of pro-natalist psyop. Shinzo Abe would be proud.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
It was saved on the Wayback Machine:
Is there any hope for a proper right in the west? I don't think so, yet, and there is little time remaining.
Cthulhu only swims left because he has nowhere else to go -- Where will hope come from?
The mainstream right
I've been following UK politics developments of right wing parties and saw that Reform UK is leading the parliament polls though by a meager margin and also with only 24%. This party is led by the (In)famous Nigel Farage.
Now, as a right party, the primary concern of voters are immigration policies, what do they offer?
Illegal immigration is out of control because politicians choose not to enforce the law, and let foreign courts rob British citizens of a border.
A Reform government will stop the boats by immediately leaving the ECHR, restoring full control of our borders, intercepting and detaining all illegal arrivals, and deporting them.
Reform UK will implement a five-year emergency programme to identify, detain, and deport illegal migrants in the UK. We will leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and pass the Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill to ensure that anyone who enters the country illegally will be ineligible for asylum.
Let us assume they're not lying in here, that's all fine... but this isn't exactly what one would consider necessarily a conservative policy. I can see how far left we've gone such that deporting illegals is seen as right wing. Deporting illegals should be a mainstream view. Border control likewise.
But there is a whole treaty there preventing such things, the ECHR. Which is from 1950's and that makes me think, if those sort of treaties existed at that time, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say, since we are further left now than in the 50s, that we are now full blown communists, or at least, the policymakers are.
The far-right
Well, regardless, reform isn't the only alternative for conservatives, there is a further right party, Restore Britain, which is seen as the "far right" party of Britain. Recently, their leader, Rupert Lowe, made a proposal/Ultimatum, offering support for reform IF they agreed to 5 basic principles of policy. You can watch the video to see him talk about it, but in another tweet, he wrote it down in short.
Our five conditions are principles the overwhelming majority of the Reform membership, and the wider country, believe in.
Mass deportations of illegals, and deporting millions of foreigners who are a drain on our society.
Securing our country’s demographic security, reversing the Islamification of Britain and implementing the recommendations of our Rape Gang Inquiry - this includes deporting foreign national accomplices of the rapists - my backing of that was the very reason Farage removed me to begin with.
Giving the British people a referendum on the death penalty.
Restoring a self-sufficient Britain through the difficult decisions that will require delivering a country that can feed, power and defend itself.
No failed Conservative ministers, who are responsible for the destruction of Britain, in any future cabinet. Not sack them, or remove them, just not hand them the same power they previously abused to demographically vandalise Britain.
These principles are essential to the restoration of the country we all love.
Now, this looks similar to what is proposed by reform, but goes deeper, addressing the demographic and islamic issue. This position is the "far right" position. And again, a centrist could easily accept these terms, well, if we go back in time, even some communists would be fine with these.
Now, will Farage accept? I don't know, but i don't think he will, because he has said in interviews that alienating islamic voters is not possible anymore, because they will become a huge portion of the voting base in the future: "If we alienate islam, we lose"
I am not against pragmatism, but i don't think that being pragmatic is accepting a slow death where each concession you make chops off a part of your body, until the point where you actually die and just join the status quo you're fighting against. It's quite baffling that "far right" is "mass deportation of illegals" or "opposing islam", i can make a very quick list of right wing thoughts on immigration from most extreme to most moderate
- Being openly racist/xenophobic and accepting no foreigners
- Being totally closed to immigration
- Allowing tourism only
- Allowing tourism and temporary residence/work visas
- Allowing permanent residency without citizenship/voting rights
- Allowing citizenship with a through background assimilation check aswell as having at least a certain number of years living in the country.
- Allowing citizenship for third generation migrants married to a native.
I didn't reach the actual part of deporting illegals yet... and so far, at points 6 and 7, we are in Switzerland
Ordinary naturalisation is the option for foreign citizens who have lived for at least 10 years in Switzerland, three of which must be in the five years before they file their application for citizenship, and who hold a permanent residence permit (C permit); Simplified naturalisation is the option primarily for persons who:
- are married to a Swiss citizen;
- were born in Switzerland and belong to the third generation of a family of foreign citizens living in Switzerland.
How far right is Switzerland? A lot apparently. Well, to drive the point home, when farage responded to Lowe today, he said that he wished to form a center-right alliance
The Reform UK chief said he would “do whatever I could for us to have a sane center-right alliance to beat Labour at the next general election”
So... even the proeminent right wing party does not consider itself right wing... because indeed they aren't. One could argue that they are playing around the overton window and in time the discourse goes further right, but there's little time for this. Britain's population will be minority white by 2060, and probably even earlier if we consider White and british, as they're already a minority in London. Soon the foreign descent citizens will be big enough to essentially block any sort of nationalist move.
Without enduring policies, things are not going to work out
With only a few decades to spare, the right still has to
- Crack down illegal arrivals
- Crack down illegal immigrants within the country
- Deal with poorly integrated migrants
- Adress the islam issue
- Adress the race and ancestry issue.
Which means, effectively, that the right does not exist. And it's very difficult to believe it will in any meaningful form, because it would need unprecedent political domination in order to sustain enough mandates to bring all of those things to light. Enduring policies are needed, coming in like Trump, deporting millions, but then losing the next election and have all the progress undone, is effectively worthless. Thus, i think it's quite Hopeless that, even with a near political victory, to be able to sustain long enough and put policies that will last through the center-left/left governments. There needs to be treaties, laws and a colaborative judiciary branch to prevent everything from being undone and be yet again, be a kind of conservatism that is just begging for progressivism to just "stop right here".
And, back to the ECHR, this thing is from the 1950's and is strong enough to cause conservative nightmares, how much political power it is required to, in a time where everything is orders of magnitude more liberal and progressive than the 50s, to create a "counter" ECHR? We might aswell just join the ones that still believe in a communist revolution.
Other "far-right" and conclusions
Afd in Germany is also leading polls, but it's very much similar to what Reform UK presents, tighten citizenship, asylum, modify the human rights agreements. I have a hard time believing parties within the EU can actually move torwards a Hungary-like immigration policy, which is in open defiance to EU legislation, but, given Germany's economic dominance in the EU, maybe the Afd could be the one party needed to tip the scales, though this is just a coping mechanism.
Giorgia Meloni in Italy has come a few steps on cracking down illegal immigration, but is still having net immigration on the hundreds of thousands via worker visas, adding to the doubts that it will ever be possible to do more than the bare minimum.
Now, Trump, i don't have a good understanding of how American politics work to comment much, but it seems that his policies are more of the same, executive orders to deport a lot of people, no real effort to bring down legal immigration. Things that can be very much undone in a future democratic government.
The biggest win in terms of institutions that the right has gotten in the west was... The overturn of roe v wade, which was merely something allowing the states to make their own laws. So, trade a full left-wing/liberal law forced upon all states to not forcing it, but not doing anything else to further push conservative policies forward, a softening of the chokehold, not a reversal. Meanwhile, birthright citizenship was maintained in the broad interpretation, again, showing that mass changes in legislation and institutions are needed, and Trump either has no power or doesn't want to press much.
All in all, it's hard to be hopeful anything will change until it's too late, if changing legislation is already hard enough, if not done in time, there's no legislating against demographics. In the end, the right isn't in the west yet, and it's probably too late already.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
Disagree; dread game is a PUA staple.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
I don't know; the Royal Marines look pretty good to me.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
Classic Opus Dissonance. Happens to every writer.
Seconded. I’ll add that as a lover of European-style fantasy, the only game in town (outside of mediums with zero or near-zero production costs like webfic) is anime and JRPGs and their Korean/Chinese equivalents. What are your options for modern fantasy in the west these days? The Rings of Power or the Wheel of Time show (is this the worst time in history to see something you like get an adaptation announced?)? Dragon Age Veilguard? If you are fine with out of place diversity, progressive axe grinding, and the host of modern western neuroses on race, gender, and sexuality and the inherent storytelling compromises they demand, I guess you are not wanting for content.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) was pretty good. There are a couple of black characters and a female barbarian, but it's done in a very 90's way; colorblind, gender neutral, never drawing attention to itself. But that's only one movie, and it was horribly screwed over by marketing which implied that it was a woke film, so point taken.
These days, I get most of my fantasy fix from glowfic, which is a kind of web novel written collaboratively by two or more authors taking turns roleplaying as their characters; near-zero production costs, indeed. I strongly recommend Project Lawful, the epic co-authored by Iarwain (Eliezer Yudkowsky/Less Wrong) and lintamande (Kelsey Piper/The Unit of Caring). The ending made me cry; I never thought I would respect
Shonen is a demographic, not a genre. There are plenty of shonens that aren't about fighting, from sportsball shows like Haikyu!! to romcoms like Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro. The specific subset of shonen that focuses on combat is properly called battle shonen.
The five demographics of anime are shonen (young men), shoujo (young women), seinen (grown men), josei (grown women), and kodomomuke (little kids). "Young" here is used in the same sense that "Young Adult" is used for novels in the West; middle and high schoolers.
erwgv3g34
2d ago
Dragon Ball Z and YuYu Hakusho are standard battle shonen shows (men beating the tar out of each other, training to become stronger, tournament arcs, etc.). If you liked them, you will probably enjoy similar titles like Naruto and My Hero Academia. MHA in particular has two notable advantages over older works; modern animation techniques (the fight scenes are gorgeous) and a seasonal episode structure (meaning less filler), so I'd start with that one.
Death Note is a very unique show; there is nothing else quite like it. Still, if you enjoy watching characters solve their problems by thinking, I'd recommend The Promised Neverland. Season 1 only; the second season is legendary for how bad it was, and the first season stops at a nice spot and gives enough closure. I wrote a longer review on /r/rational.
You don't have to worry about looking for specifically conservative anime, because anime as a whole is inherently conservative, especially compared with woke Hollywood; there is a reason why men fall in love with anime girls and Demon Slayer can outsell the entire American comic book industry. As AntiDem put it:
The appeal of anime is simple: It depicts a world with intact families, high trust, feminine women, politeness and good manners, public order, low crime, and a sense of mutual obligation between neighbors in a community - a world not slathered in gratuitous degeneracy and consumerism, peopled by unmarriageable women and increasingly angry men, which is in the process of careening toward disaster because a corrupt, ineffectual government is helpless in containing an uprising by violent lunatics hopped up on a fanatical ideology.
In the 20th century, people longed for a galaxy full of advanced technology which would take us to unknown worlds beyond the stars, and were inspired by television which showed it to us. In the 21st century, people long only for home and family, for peace and stability, for connection and friendship. To hell with the stars - just give us back the hearth and the dinner table. That is all we dream of now.
I encountered anime in the first year of my adulthood. It taught me that there was another path available - that people could behave differently than they had in my shattered family and the cold, brutal place where I grew up. That there were other ways to go through life than being selfish and angry all the time. That not every love between a man and a woman was doomed to end in bitterness and hatred. That people could be your friend for reasons other than wanting something out of you. That behaving honorably and sacrificing for the good of people around you isn’t just a thing that suckers do for ingrates. That not everybody breaks promises whenever they become inconvenient. That there are other approaches to the world than cynicism and irony. That not everything is a scam, and not everybody is out to hustle you.
Nothing in my life up to then had taught me any of that.
Still, if you are looking for something pastoral, try Princess Mononoke or Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.
erwgv3g34
2d ago
From Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 111:
Slowly, Harry's mind tried to recover itself a final time. Very possibly final, if he was right about the Dark Lord killing him after this... though the Dark Lord had said that he would resurrect Hermione, which seemed pointless if that was true... was that simply the Dark Lord following through on a promise he would not otherwise have been able to make in Parseltongue... why had he not just shot Harry on the spot...
Seriously, some last functioning part of his brain said to all the other parts, this would be a good time to think of something, something that the Dark Lord has not already thought of, something we can do without our pouch or our wand or our Time-Turner, something that Professor Quirrell has not imagined we can do... think, think, pretty pretty please think of something? Don't shut down now, even if you're scared, even if we've never really really faced death before in the sense of being about to die in the next hour, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO SHUT DOWN -
Harry's mind stayed blank.
Suppose, said that last remaining part, suppose we try to condition on the fact that we win this, or at least get out of this alive. If someone TOLD YOU AS A FACT that you had survived, or even won, somehow made everything turn out okay, what would you think had happened -
Not legitimate procedure, whispered Ravenclaw, the universe doesn't work like that, we're just going to die.
Someone realises we're missing, thought Hufflepuff, and Mad-Eye Moody shows up with a squad of Aurors and rescues us. I think the time has come to admit we're not more competent than the standard authorities.
The saving factor does have to be something we do somehow, said the last voice. Otherwise there's no point in our thinking about it.
Suppose a time traveler came back from the year 2100 and told you that, in his time, Britain (or Germany, or France) was 99% white and 94% Christian, the way it was in 1951. Unfortunately, before he could explain how such a thing came to pass, he gets hit by a lorry, dying instantly.
What would you think had happened?
Well, first, I would have been shocked that the singularity didn't happen, and that there were still biological humans walking around in 75 years' time. But leaving that aside...
I would not think that the remaining white population of Britain had woken up, voted harder, elected a right-wing government, and peacefully fixed their problems.
I would think that a far-right coup had overthrown the government, enacted martial law, and physically removed the Muslims, or something along those lines.
We are not voting our way out of this.
erwgv3g34
2d ago
Haven't seen that one because I can't take Brad Pitt as Achilles seriously
Are you kidding me? He looks like a statue of a Greek god come to life, with a face carved out of diamond by angels and a head adorned with luscious threads of golden sunlight; he was perfect for the role!
erwgv3g34
15d ago
I tried the S&W M&P Shield 9mm at first, but I hated it. Racking the slide and loading the magazines was so hard, and there were too many buttons I didn't know how to use.
So I got a hammerless S&W Bodyguard 38 Special next. Much better! It's so simple; there isn't even a safety! The single button is for unlocking the cylinder, and then you just push a rod to remove the rounds.
Most people look at me weird for carrying a revolver in the age of semi-autos, but it's just right for me. Besides, revolvers have a noble history; American police officers were using them well into the 80s (as seen in Lethal Weapon) and Korean cops still use them (as seen in Squid Game).
I'm not a programmer either, and I do get annoyed at the way 90% of AI discussion is centered around coding, but come on. Software is eating the world. Anything we do, we do with software. Cars have software, TVs have software, phones have software, books are increasingly read in e-ink readers, etc. Software is as fundamental to our life as oil, or electricity. Imagine a technology that made oil workers 5x more productive, and thereby made oil cost 1/5th as much. It would not just be about how much you save at the pump; it would mean cheaper groceries and plastics and plane tickets and probably entire new applications that nobody has ever implemented because they did not make sense at the previous price level. That's what AI is.
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