That's a devastating point there.
Any given woman is certainly going to have at least 4+ potential suitors in place she could select at one time, and if a 50-year-old guy propositions her she can say 'no' and pick another male regardless of any 'power imbalance.' There's some reason she says no to all the others and YES to this one, and power imbalance is only one possible explanation and not a likely one, since she would have had to say no to a lot of guys before hitting the older one she said 'yes' to.
The cheerleader who Bill Belicheck is banging undoubtedly had dozens of possible options blowing up her cell phone. Literally could have her pick of men and could leave Bill on read. Regardless of the age difference, wealth difference, experience difference, whatever, some factor got her to pick him as her 'best' option among MANY.
Perhaps those alternative suitors WANT to support the 'power imbalance' explanation as it is a bit less painful way to accept rejection than "she just picked the richest, most high status guy she had available and that wasn't you."
I think one can end up constructing a mostly cohesive internal narrative where the context of what they're preaching as social norms and the context of what you're doing in individual interaction can be considered different enough that there's no actual contradiction of words and behavior.
For a very rough example, you can imagine someone who is a staunch anti-gambling advocate, campaigns hard to keep gambling and similar vices out of their town and state, to keep kids from engaging in gambling activities, etc. And yet takes their yearly trip to Vegas and goes on a moderate gambling spree while there, and justifies in on the idea that it's fine to do gambling when you go to Las Vegas but you are still against its spread and consider it, overall, a social ill.
Its worth noting that the reason the problem exists is because women often won't be publicly honest about what they actually find attractive and actually want from males when interacting with them.
Its the collision of female-driven social standards with the female-driven desire to get high status males to give them attention. Hard to satisfy both at once, where attractive males give attention to women but only within the (boring) socially permissible ways.
Okay, that's oversimplifying, but if you frame it like that, a famous man who is preaching the female-preferred social standards AND engaging in the female-preferred behaviors when dealing with a romantic partner is still being consistent as to the female perspective.
faceh
10mo ago
I have noticed a LOT in recent years how almost all of young females' major complaints about how they're treated by men would dissolve if they had a strong, trustworthy male figure in their life who could act as a simple disincentive for outsider males to behave badly. Not that women should have a male escort where-ever they go, but if they could simply text said male and say "hey I'm feeling uncomfortable about this situation, what should I do?" and get some advice or, if needed, immediate intervention, then there'd probably be a LOT less regret in their lives later on.
A lot can be said about fatherless women, but really I'd also guess that smaller average family size in the west makes it such that women are less likely to have brothers, male cousins, etc. who can step into such a role if needed, so they're trying to find some other male outside the family that might suffice, but other males are just as likely as not to exploit that situation for their own gain.
I'll go ahead and say it: it is increasingly difficult to take allegations of this nature seriously in this world where women are simultaneously demanding to be treated as fully agentic adults in every other decision they make, ESPECIALLY those involving their own bodies, but are infantilized when it comes to sexual interactions with an older male.
The allegations against Brett Kavanaugh were at least serious enough in nature to warrant serious disdain and distrust if proven and there was no component of 'asking for it' on the victim's part whatsoever. I can attach moral approbation to my judgment of the situation.
But hearing that a woman absolutely sought out interactions with a famous guy, made her fawning interest in him clear, expressed positive affect about the interaction(s) after the fact, and perhaps most obviously continued to seek his attentions, only to express regret years later is like a kid indulging in a candy binge and then, hours later, crying aloud that they have an upset stomach and it hurts.
I can even agree that maybe a young woman can grow and mature and look back at interactions from her earlier years in a new light and realize how her decisions were informed by unhealthy influences and urges she didn't fully understand or control.
But it'd be nice if they would express it as just that. Ill-advised flings, perhaps based on a childish crush and a naivete about human sexual politics, and while they were 'positive' experiences at the time they would absolutely NOT repeat them. Maybe demand an apology and a promise to change behavior.
If we're instead going with the idea that 21-year-olds can be 'groomed' and are too easily susceptible to the wiles of older experienced men to be allowed to interact with them, then lets build some social standards and tech around that assumption. They're just not going to like where that goes if taken to any kind of logical conclusion.
And ultimately I am having a harder time accepting that a famous, talented, otherwise beloved figure should have their legacy demolished and shunned from the public eye so that everyone else is 'deprived' of their work for behavior that isn't criminal and indeed it is doubtful has left any lasting harm on the alleged 'victim.' The loss to society is probably larger than the loss to the victim in many cases, and so economically speaking seems like a deadweight loss.
Attractive young women are functionally the most sought-after resource on the planet, and their supply is tightly constrained. Allowing these same women to 'regulate' their own market seems to be creating a lot of externalities.
Thing with Cas Anvar is he was the guy who seemed the most enthusiastic about the show and his role on it and portrayed himself as this honest, approachable guy who was a genuine part of the fandom.
Saw him at a convention once and he was playing up the enthusiasm, hyping the audience, acting like the biggest fanboy in general.
But how much of that was him literally just him leaning into the spotlight so as to grab the attention of female fans? Hard to say.
From the perspective of the books, Alex IS actually the least 'critical' character to the plot. He is literally just the guy who ferries them all around to do the stuff they need to do. He has no major arcs after like, book 7. Killing him does not alter the story's outcome one iota.
Contrast to say, if Holden or Amos had to get killed off because of the actors' misconduct.
Indeed. We're at the point where I genuinely assume that any famous male who boldly adopts the 'feminist' mantle is going to be outed as having a sordid sexual history even if none of it is illegal or nasty to the degree that, say Weinstein's was. Its enough of a pattern that I can't help but update priors.
My favorite recent example being Dan Price who gained accolades as that guy who was a 'conscientious' CEO who tried to prove that paying employees more and executives less was a viable business practice and thus most corporations were exploiting their employees.
I do question how much of this is 'intentional' predatory behavior where they disguise their intent in order to lure young women in by appearing 'safe' to be around and able to offer sexual mentorship, vs. just an incidental outcome of modern social mores contradicting more basic instinctual drives.
I don't think most of them wear the feminism as camouflage strictly speaking.
I would guess its mostly because any male that genuinely followed certain feminist tenets such as "enthusiastic consent," letting the woman dictate all the terms, taking 'no' for an answer and refusing to engage with women who appear 'vulnerable' makes you repellent to women's sexual desires. So those few famous men who actually keep those tenets are probably having fewer encounters with women in general which just means they're less likely to catch an accusation.
And these guys are getting access to women by the truckload due to their status, and if they want to get laid they have to act like a masculine 'alphas' in these interactions, which means pushing boundaries and treating women's stated desires as suggestions rather than ironclad edicts so as to actually arouse her interest. The contrast between their publicly stated values and persona and their private conduct is less hypocrisy and more switching 'roles' to what the women are actually looking for once mutual interest is established.
So famous feminist males are getting access to females in either case, but those who seriously adhere to those rules are less likely to get laid (and less likely to get Me-tooed) than those who know (or figure out) they can discard those rules when a woman finds him attractive.
Great point there.
People who have recently come to support Chevron deference should be happy with a precedent that holds that Executive Branch actors are generally safe from prosecution for actions they take in their official capacity, even if found to be illegal/unconstitutional later.
If the Court had done the 'opposite,' that is, left Chevron in place but decided that immunity just wasn't a thing for the President and his appointees, then the new front that would potentially open up would be states seeking to sue and arrest, personally, the heads of various agencies for actions taken against their citizens. Okay, that could run afoul of the Supremacy Clause in most cases, but once those people leave office then they would have to be consistently concerned that they'd be brought in to answer for some order they gave during their tenure.
faceh
11mo ago
faceh
11mo ago
And striking down rules against pistol braces.
And bans on under-21's owning guns.
and at the county level, striking down magazine capacity bans.
This is what I mean by 'ripple effects.' There is actual traction for going after restrictions on firearms use and ownership, with a new standard applied which is more favorable towards challenges, although it all needs to shake out over time.
I guess we'll see how the 'Spirit of Aloha' holds up in court, too.
If you don't see this as an 'expansion' of gun rights okay, but I'm not sure how you characterize it as making it more likely that people will catch a felony for owning or carrying a gun.
faceh
11mo ago
Bruen was only 2 years ago and is already having initial ripple effects at the state level.
faceh
11mo ago
This is the same Court that has been consistently expanding protections for firearm ownership pursuant to the Second Amendment so I expect liberals will, any day now, start finding a strange new appreciation for civilian ownership of 'weapons of war' if the President is free to kill U.S. citizens at will.
More seriously the consequences of not having immunity for 'official acts' would be arguably worse, with any given law enforcement agency that can claim proper jurisdiction able to show up to the White House with a warrant and seek to put the President in custody and/or search for evidence of criminal activity. Obvious failure mode there if we want him to be effective at his job (I, myself, wouldn't mind it! But as a practical matter who would agree to be President under these conditions?).
The line "When the President Does it, that means that it is not illegal" really does mean just that. If the laws carve out an exception for this particular person, then we can say in complete isolation from how immoral, illogical, and ill-advised an action may be, it is not illegal and thus remedies generally lie outside the legal process.
faceh
11mo ago
The Constitution very much grants Congress the power to establish lower courts with special functions, and define the rules those courts operate under.
I suspect that even Thomas might accept an unambiguous law which clearly delineates that the review of Administrative Judge rulings should be based on assuming the are valid on their face, unless contradicted by superior law.
But under the very strictest separation of powers examination, perhaps Congress isn't allowed to give up that much control over the creation of law, without an Amendment?
Chevron conflicts with the APA's command that the court "decide all relevant questions of law" and "interpret statutory provisions," in commanding that courts are bound to give deference to agencies.
To me, this was always the only issue. I mean yes, separation of powers, but also just plain reading of statutes.
Courts can't abdicate responsibility to interpret law unless Congress has set up some alternate arrangement, and in many cases the Constitution itself defines what cases the Courts MUST hear, which cases they MAY hear, and to what extent Congress can create alternative setups (such as immigration courts) that pull the duty of statutory interpretation away from the Article III Courts.
I wonder how SCOTUS would handle it if Congress explicitly went in and changed the APA to more-or-less codify the Chevron Deference standard?
faceh
11mo ago
I still stand by the the comments of mine I managed to track down:
Yeah.
The real concern for me is less that Biden performed badly, but all the prep that must have gone into this, knowing full well that they had to put in a semi-decent 90 minute performance and the maneuvering to give him the best possible timing and environment. And how it flubbed badly out the gate.
And what this implies about how bad Biden must be normally, when he's not in public and surrounded only by staffers who know better than to comment on his mental state.
I was willing to entertain the idea that Biden was not so far gone that he couldn't fulfill the basic duties of office, even if he occasionally (regularly?) got caught on camera having senior moments. I can no longer believe that in any way.
Suspect that debate 2 (if he makes it) they'll just juice him to the gills on stimulants because what do they have to lose?
faceh
11mo ago
You can just about tell that his handlers spent the last week drilling him on short, efficient answers to questions. Probably made him cue cards and all.
And maybe they even had him getting through full sentences that made grammatical sense.
And it all jumbled together when he was put in the spotlight so he could only half-remember what he was drilled on.
I 'beat the market' but I didn't leverage up or otherwise really demonstrate the courage of my convictions. So my returns were modest in the grand scheme. I was a HODLer more than anything. I was overly sensitive to getting wiped out. That said, I've seen so many people get wiped out I suspect I would have come out behind had I been willing to take bigger risks in crypto.
That is, if you're the type of person who will leverage their bets and accept more extreme risk/reward ratios, you're probably not the type to have sensible exit strategies. Or, you're the type to abandon those sensible exit strategies when you smell more profits, until you eventually overextend.
So I'd guess I'm just not 'built for' that type of behavior, although I think I'm better for it.
Aren't they strictly better forms of digital cosmetic items? Why are CS:GO knives worth more than jpegs on the internet?
Because they're attached to a popular game, and the items can be used to show off status in the popular game. Not vice-versa, where people think that the item itself, rather than the social status, is the point. NFTs never quite got popular enough to confer actual social status outside the NFT sphere, and trying to export status from the NFT world to the real world works about as well as trying to export status from, say, an MMORPG to the real world.
It really came down to the attempt to shove NFT items in many, many places where they didn't really add much, and to 'force' people to get familiar with blockchain tech, which already had a shoddy reputation elsewhere.
I think the one cool use case for NFTs might have been to allow you, the player, to carry NFT cosmetics between games, which is to say you could have a unique outfit, or item, or vehicle, or whatever, and it is tied to your identity in an 'immutable' way, so you can import it to a new game and immediately have access to it, which is to say, add some 'permanence' to your digital property.
For example, I play racing games of various types, and I have a couple cars that I favor and I have some livery designs that I like to recreate in each new game. If I could get an NFT for the cars and liveries that allow me to import those cars from Forza Horizon to Need for Speed to Gran Turismo, and be assured that I would immediately have access to them in future games, I would be enticed to do so.
That would have required significant coordination between different game devs, which seems improbable.
faceh
11mo ago
Seems like a solid point. If the CCP/Xi feels that they can wait out the situation and eventually take Taiwan with lower casualties (and higher chance of taking the chip fabs intact) then they assuredly will.
So eyes should be out for factors, in addition to those you mention, that might push them to take action sooner rather than later.
It's maddening how taking a pure 'value driven' approach to buying stocks does in fact lead you to ignore hype cycles and their somewhat predictable impact on particular stocks or classes of stocks, such that you feel like you genuinely left wads of cash lying on the pavement because you didn't believe your eyes when you saw them.
ON THE OTHER HAND, the markets also briefly went crazy for NFTs, and "The Metaverse" (actually amazed how little came of that), and of course you could have bought into Gamestop during that crazy era, and ended up with almost nothing to show for it. It was as obvious to me that NFTs were going to eventually implode as it was to me that NVIDIA would take off. Hence why I avoided NFTs and bought NVIDIA and told friends to buy NVIDIA, but didn't go in nearly as aggressively as I could have. Because I severely underestimated the effect of the crowd of people who'd rush in about three steps behind me.
Having operated in the cryptospace through the first decade of its existence (2017 was a CRAZY time) I've learned that its almost always the stuff you DON'T see that will get you. Maybe you make a fortune on altcoins but... your holdings were in FTX (or one of the other failed/fraudulent/hacked exchanges), or you fell for a phishing scam. So I learned that A) trying to time market swings is a fools errand, and B) focusing too much on making good trades and NOT thinking about and protecting against ways you can lose your bags due to factors beyond your control has a small but real chance of wiping you out without warning.
I will never, at this stage in my life, feel regret about not yoloing into Bitcoin in 2013. I bought modest amounts back then (and have the Blockchain transactions to prove it) and sold almost all of them over the years, particularly in order to put a down payment on a house. The stress reduction alone was worth the price. I'd have had to bought a ton of them and held through insane market swings to get truly life-changing wealth out of it.
But there doesn't seem to be anything comparable today.
Hmm. The longevity/anti-aging space is making some rumblings. There's a possibility AI will fuel rapid advancement there, and with the boomers retiring there's obvious demand. No obvious plays that I can see, though.
"Legitimate" and regulated prediction markets are VERY early on the scene but seem to be gaining traction. In a sense they're just another form of gambling, but if they gain real attention they could explode overnight. They could disrupt the insurance industry in a good way
And the one that I think COULD turn into something huge are industries enabled by Starship. Yes, many people (I won't say MOST!) are aware that SpaceX is testing a FUCKHUGE rocket. I doubt any are thinking one or two steps ahead as to what having cheap and plentiful launch capacity will mean. Spot any players that might be onto the killer use for copious amounts of low-earth-orbit capacity.
faceh
11mo ago
Trump has been a double-edged sword in terms of being a symbol of resistance to the blue tribe's dominance.
I guess if you want to break it down some, Trump is the totem around which Red tribe can coordinate, Musk is a similar totem for the Grey tribe that lean red or are just anti-blue.
faceh
11mo ago
I mean, it was about both.
I don't think anyone believes that they got booted for plagiarism, but it certainly gave sufficient cover for the action. And it explains why some Presidents got booted and some survived. And Rufo leveraged twitter as the platform to get eyeballs on the allegations and increase pressure on the organizations.
faceh
11mo ago
Scott Alexander had a number of posts examining how dissent is 'quashed' and then sublimates out into other behaviors that are 'safe' yet still demonstrate one's resistance to the overculture's norms... although usually in ways that do not threaten the overculture's dominance.
I guess that is the question. Even if Twitter is the venue through which the right is able to score wins, are they actually damaging the overculture in doing so, or is the overculture hurting itself via inter-factional squabbles over control of the reins of power? Reins that the right is nowhere near reaching but can pretend to make a play for as the left's grip loosens?
Hence why I think it makes more sense that the series of events (for convenience, limiting it to Post-Covid) that has shown cracks in the Cathedral's otherwise uniform facade has both made it harder for the left to quash dissent (since so much 'dissent' is now coming from their side!) and emboldened their opponents on the right and the populace at large.
You can given an honorable mention to "Lets Go Brandon" as a watershed moment of realization 'you can mock the king and get away with it.'
Finally, Travis Corcoran's Iron Catastrophe theory makes some sense of it too. They're running out of rhetorical 'fuel' and are increasingly reverting to raw power as a means of suppression, but that fuel burns hot and doesn't last so long.
Well now I'm genuinely curious, have you reassessed this at all?
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