I'd like to give a defense of my comment here, since I [obviously] disagree with the idea that mine was a low effort/drive by comment.
The story and the thing that is here to be discussed is the story about Trump being indicted. This is a uniquely big story, and my "take" on this is going to serve (in my opinion) as a distraction from the main story. From my perspective, posting "Trump Indicted" and a clean link to the story (I intentionally chose CNBC as the most 'neutral' source I could find) is me being courteous to fellow forum users by not distracting from the topic of discussion.
I think that this sits in contrast to things like constant stories about trans people misbehaving, conservatives saying stupid things, etc. There is a functionally infinite number of those stories happening every single day, and so for those the requirement/expectation is that a user should add additional thoughts/context to raise the story above the noise floor.
However, "Trump Indicted" itself rises above that floor, and in fact posting a "lukewarm take" as one user called it will do nothing but bring the story closer to the background noise.
Another user implied that posting a simple story like this is a way of getting a dopamine rush, but again I think the opposite is true. I'm not posting this so that people can talk about me, or what I said, or my take, or even engage with me at all. I'm posting a huge story, then standing aside from it to allow the story to stand on its own, and due to the nature of the story, I think that it is able to do so. Me adding a take turns the post towards my take and not the story itself which, again, is large enough to rise above the noise floor in a way that something like trans people shut down a street doesn't.
If I wanted to post something like activist stands on car during Trans Day of Vengeance, then yes I absolutely need to write a post about why this matters, why we should talk about it, etc, since there are dozens of identical stories being posted on this topic ever day.
"Former president and presumptive presidential candidate criminally prosecuted by his political rivals ahead of election" is, at least for now, a unique story that is not happening constantly and a post about this is only made worse by an inclusion of my "take" on this.
In fact, just talking about forum etiquette, the best/most polite thing to do if I wanted people to talk about my take (instead of the story itself), and get the dopamine hits that somebody was talking about, would be to post a clean link "Trump Indicted" as an anchor/catchall/megathread type post, and then reply to myself with whatever take I had.
To summarize: I think this story is unique, I think it is courteous to stand aside from it, and I think that posting a place for discussion about this topic in a different way would have been rude and narcissistic. Posting the way I did was good forum behaviour and is the type of thing that should be encouraged, not threatened with banning.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Rachel Vindman: https://twitter.com/natsechobbyist/status/1641585602146496518
I was wondering if you’re still an antisemite. Thanks for letting us know you are and have no intention to back down.
Seriously what the fuck is it with this stuff? In what conceivable way is him saying he won't extradite Trump "anti semitic"?
firmamenti
2yr ago
Oh my god you're right. That is absolutely r-slurred beyond belief.
A New York grand jury indicted Donald Trump in connection with a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
It's a campaign finance violation. The suggestion is that Trump used campaign funds to pay the hush money. AFAIK, this is a civil thing, it happens not-infrequently in small local elections, and the punishment is usually that you pay some multiple of the amount of the violation.
So like, if it's a 5x multiple, Trump will owe $500k or so.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Trump Indicted: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/donald-trump-indicted-in-hush-money-payment-case.html
This is a major enough story that I think it goes beyond needing more than just a link.
If we found out that high school chemistry teachers were frequently enlisting their students to cook meth in the school labs, it might be a good idea for the ones not doing that to that stop making the joke.
The reality is that some teachers are bad actors. So when a kid comes home and says “mommy today teacher has having us look at photos of naked men. He told us not to tell you, but you always taught me not to keep secrets from you” it has kind of a different timbre than it might have 20 years ago.
I expressed a similar sentiment elsewhere ITT, but the good actors here need to be calling out the bad ones the loudest, not making cheeky jokes. “Your teacher might be sexually abusing your child” is not a joke most parents are going to like.
firmamenti
2yr ago
If I'm the person in the shoes you are describing, I'm going to do everything in my power to demonstrate the following:
-
I am not coming for your children
-
I do not want to give experimental sex drugs to your children
-
I vehemently oppose illegal "bathtub HRT" like the following: https://diyhrt.wiki/
You believe yourself to have a certain woman-essence - a sexed soul of some kind - and you are trying to bring your outward presentation in line with it.
If I'm the person you are describing, I'm going to be the loudest person opposing trans-ideology in schools, DQSH, etc because I just want to live my life and I can see there are people who want to be sexually inappropriate with children.
And yet: we see the opposite. Perhaps the people you are describing just want to live their lives and this isn't just a fetish, but it seems like the trans-activists act in the exact opposite way to that.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Which one is the one cross dressing for sexual gratification?
firmamenti
2yr ago
If this was true, then you’d have legions of trans people aligning themselves with everybody else who is pointing out that drag shows for children is completely inappropriate.
But of course you don’t see that. Again with the revealed preference (I hate that I use this term twice, but IIWII). Trans people see drag performers and see themselves, which is why they can’t oppose them.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Fuck man this stuff really gets me :( - like there's a switch that flips in some peoples' minds when there's somebody that needs help, and they just focus in and do the work.
These guys aren't being slow about it, they're methodically moving towards somebody trying to kill them, because there are some kids that need them.
I don't have much to add here I guess. This video made me tear up. Most human beings have an incredibly powerful instinctual caring for one another, and will absolutely march themselves directly into a meat grinder, without even thinking about it, when it's necessary to help vulnerable people, especially children. If you've ever seen people in this situation you know what I'm talking about.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Wow I had almost the exact same experience with him. I saw him first interviewing Brianna Wu, and appreciated his willingness to be intellectually honest towards her.
But this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg. Where he suggests that Trump might be illiterate, and not as a statement about his intelligence, but the claim was that Trump is actually incapable of reading simple statements, made me scratch my head.
The revealed preference here is glaring.
People aren’t using the preferred pronouns if a child killer, because they don’t care about the preferences of a child killer.
But what that reveals as that even among the most woke, there are no true gender ideology believers. They still know that what they’re doing is a courtesy, not a reflection of reality.
And when they don’t like the person, the courtesy is dropped and the reality is revealed.
Speaking of woke people and their revealed preferences, perhaps the worst take came from David Pakman, who took the opportunity to make fun of the dead children being dead, suggesting it was because they didn’t pray hard enough:
https://twitter.com/dpakman/status/1640666981593382913
He deleted the tweet, but it is archived: https://archive.ph/6Tp4c
When people had the nerve to respond negatively to this, he of course pointed out to them that requesting he not dance on the graves of dead children is anti semitic.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Just wanted to let you know that I ordered "The Last Superstition" off of this recommendation and it just got here today. Thank you!
firmamenti
2yr ago
how can you claim to be a Catholic while simultaneously appreciating the Dao?
Have you considered that your model of religious people is simply wrong?
firmamenti
2yr ago
No you do not undertake my point, or are willfully misinterpreting it.
he has no appreciation for the ways that the eternal Dao reveals and unfolds itself in the construction of the Basilica, no understanding of how it serves as an expression of Krishna's glory, nor does he understand how it is a reflection of the sublime beauty of Melek Taûs.
Yes he does. Yes I do, and that is my point.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Maybe the Buddhist seems more (although I don’t think so), but the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Jew, and the Catholic certainly see more than the atheist.
I recently spent some time in Abu Dhabi, and visited The White Mosque there. Because of my willingness to explore or accept the validity of the divine, I see more there than an Atheist would.
I am Catholic, and won’t lie about my biases. To the general point about the necessary ignorance of Atheists, however, the specific religion is irrelevant. Somebody elsewhere made a comparison to a nationalist visiting a national monument and feeling differently than a globalist. I think that approaches the same point I’m making
firmamenti
2yr ago
You seem to
entirelydiscount the existence of many older atheists who used to be religious.
I'm sorry but this "entirely discount" irritated me more than it probably should have. No I am not "entirely" anything. I'm pointing out a perceived inverse correlation between age and adherence to atheism, oh and wouldn't you know, since we all love polls here so much, that is reflected in polling: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/age-distribution/
Obviously these people exist. I still have all of their books, and used fawn over their youtube videos and post their takes on my various social media accounts. I still celebrate Christopher Hitchens birthday and mourn him on his death day, and still consider him one of the most influential people in my life outside of my own family.
It's kind of amusing seeing this kind of argument dunking on atheists as just angry teenagers who never grew up.
Especially given the types of responses I've gotten, I agree.
firmamenti
2yr ago
Yeah I definitely believe I could be wrong. It seems like an extreme level of cognitive dissonance to me to constantly be posting about HBD and asking tough questions and wanting to kill sacred cows and all of that, but then just be absolutely unwilling to explore religion.
No this is definitely not a troll. I actually sortof hate the (blatantly inverted) myth that religious people can't be scientists, but I think it illustrates my point really well, so here goes:
You can have a devout Catholic particle physicist, astronomer, biologist, etc. These things are completely compatible with each other. Consider the breadth of experience that a devout Catholic astronomer has. They are able to tap into both the beauty of the universe, as well as integrate this into a broader (in my opinion richer) understanding about how humans and our morality fit into that universe. They get the "stars are cool" side of things, but they also get the divine "this is bigger than me" philosophical side of things.
To a devout Atheist, only part of this is available. You certainly get the "stars are cool" part, but you have to remain intentionally ignorant of the rest of the human experience.
Another example could be: I am a musician, and because of my understanding of music, I hear a drastically different thing when listening to it than somebody who isn't. Things which are "clever" in music just aren't apparent to a person who doesn't understand what is happening. Because I am willing to explore the idea that music is more than just patterned noise, my experience is richer. It's why the listening experience is richer for a musician than it is for a non-musician.
The same is true for cooking, painting, sculpting, etc. If you're a chef, you get to tap into a better understanding of what another chef is making for you and why it is interesting.
An atheist sees thousands of years of human history, art, and philosophy and (to stay in my metaphor) they just see the patterned noise that a non-musician hears when listening to music. It's pretty colors on a canvas, but that's kindof it.
A Catholic visiting Saint Peters Basilica sees something more than an atheist.
But the Catholic misses out on nothing.
The Atheist retort to this is, of course: but what if its all fake? Okay that's a fine question, but that starts driving into a question that I think causes the snake to sort of eat its own tail: what's real? Is the love I feel for my wife and children "real"? etc. etc. (this is a well trodden discussion that I don't think I need to remap)
I think it's just an age thing. Atheism forces you to remain ignorant of substantial parts of human experience. It would be difficult to hold that level of ignorance for a very long time, especially with the internet. I think it's just hard to enforce that level of blindness in the age of the internet.
There do seem to be a few people in my life that never grew out of their atheism phase, but they seem generally uncurious.
Maybe I'm just way off? My suspicion is that there are very, very few atheist rationalists. I don't think that the curiosity involved in rationalism would be able to also support being an atheist. The cognitive dissonance would be too strong.
To expand on this: a religious person asks the question "what if there is no god" and spends a life exploring it. An atheist asks that question when they're a teenager (usually), figures that they know the answer, and then refuses to explore further.
firmamenti
2yr ago
The poll is biased. It is biased due to the profession and stated motivations of the person who conducted the poll, and her audience.
How on EARTH is this not relevant to the discussion?
Discussion about the use of the word “whore” wasnt started by me. The crux of my post was talking about bias and selection. You and the person my deleted post replied to wanted to get into some semantics argument about words.
Maybe start throwing vague threats about what is “allowed” (or perhaps who is allowed criticism) at “goodguy”, or tell him to break his desire to discuss semantics into another thread. I’m trying to talk about polling bias here.
firmamenti
2yr ago
I know this things are often useless, but Balaji is very wealthy
Well, hold on a second: I obviously disagree with this person, their methodology, and even the conclusion from what are in my opinion poorly constructed polling.
But: is it in an insult to call her a whore? Isn't that...her job?
Instead, try just not reading threads that are of no interest to you.
This thread, as well as the phenomenon of people it rat-spaces developing this much of a blindspot is incredibly interesting to me, whic is probably why I've responded to both things with similar criticism.
Ymeshukeut or however you spell his username is obviously very critical of any criticism of the 2020 election and has been since when we were still on /r/ssc. Do you make mod posts telling him to just avoid the topic? If not why not?
I was previously "dinged" for being overly concise, so I expanded my point substantially. I understand that you disagree with the conclusion, but I don't think it's fair to imply that it is unacceptable to be critical of this person and her polls.
Aging whore asks her simps if they are happily married, finds out that they would rather pay her for secks than pursue meaningful relationships with their wives.
This is what you appear to object to. I can restate it as: "a person who sells a product is losing access to the product and has switched to writing about why fans of her product are anti-fans of other products", but that seems...unnecessarily vague.
Aging whore asks her simps if they are happily married, finds out that they would rather pay her for secks than pursue meaningful relationships with their wives.
This is extremely fascinating.
If a “fat acceptance” movement, morbidly obese female tik toker were to ask her audience “to those of you who are living unhealthy skinny lifestyles deprived of food and joy, do you enjoy your joyless horrible boring life?”, and then if the overweight audience responded with “no we hate being skinny being fat is much better!” Would this be a topic of discussion here? I mean other than yo ridicule it?
How many happily married men with consistently growing families down at my local SSPX parish do you think have ever heard of Aella? Do you think my wife’s parents, very clearly happily married for 50 years and still constantly getting annoyingly drunk and cringing us out by acting like horny teenagers have ever heard of Aella?
The fact that anybody pays any mind to these absolutely ridiculous “polls” is embarrassing. It is absolutely no surprise to me, and I don’t think should be a surprise to anyone, that unhappy men are the ones following this person around online and parroting her nonsense.
Lets take it a step further: the poll describes her customers. Perhaps the conclusion is that obsessively following around a prostitute, reading the things she writes, and integrating her understanding of the world into your own, is bad for building healthy relationships. So maybe a recommendation could be: stop reading this e-girls marketing materials, its ruining your marriage in service of her.
Can I take this opportunity to try and convince some mottizens to learn to play golf?
It is a game that you can play until the day that you die.
The benefits to being good at this game are immense. If you are good at golf, other golfers will seek you out as a golf partner.
#1 is especially true for charity tournaments and scrambles, where your ability to produce a winning score gives the person inviting you to play on their team prestige, and the person inviting you is almost certainly wealthy.
The game is an easy route into the rich/upper class parts of society. You can play for very cheap (there are plenty of courses you can play for less $20 or so for 9 holes), but the price goes up from there to infinity.
Even though the price does go to infinity, a $200/round game gets you to top tier courses to play on.
Courtesy is considered a part of the structure of the game. Things like walking in others' "lay" (the path of travel for their ball on a putting green) are things you have to pay attention to.
It's an extremely mental game, you have to slow your thinking down while hitting to be effective. You cannot "force" your way through a game with aggression. The game is more about learning to be graceful than something like basketball, soccer, etc.
I love golf. I was introduced to it at a very young age, luckily. I wish more people played it because I see the benefits large and also accessible.
unrelated: the markdown engine being used on the motte ignores the numbers at the beginning of numbered lists. Interesting.
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