functor
8mo ago
Suburbia is souless and atomizing conpared to traditional towns and cities. There aren't people on the streets, there are cars. There are no natural places to meet people, distances are vast and people are isolated in their fenced in homes. suburbia encourages loneliness. It is quite absurd that people are so isolated that they prefer being in a cubical just to have people around them.
functor
9mo ago
At the same time non religious women's fertility is falling while religious women are still reproducing.
Religiousness is hard in a world when it isn't the norm. It is hard to be a genuine believer in a nihilistic society. Religiously inclined people who are pushed in a more liberal direction by the zeitgeist of society are becoming the dominant group along with the welfare class who fail at using contraceptives. Once religiously inclined people gain a significant portion of the population, they will move the norms in their direction, thus creating a religious revival.
Our society is heavily selecting for two groups: the religious with conservative values and welfare class people. The liberal left are not reproducing.
functor
1yr ago
Should we really punish people for everything that goes wrong? Can we make a movie if the producer is charged with murder if someone dies? If the principal of a school is responsible for all injuries on the playground, the result is going to be obese kids who aren't allowed to play fun games. Developing new a new medication costs well over a billion, and much of this cost is due to an extreme fear of someone having an adverse side effect. Meanwhile, lots of good ideas for medications get scrapped due to the cost of developing them into products. Humanity has invested far more in coal power than nuclear power in the past 30 years because of the extreme fear of another Chernobyl and the impossibility of insuring nuclear power. Because of that, thousands of people die every day due to coal pollution, which is causing far worse damage than Chernobyl ever did. If anything we are being too cautious and not accepting enough of risk.
functor
30d ago
It is a win in a multitude of ways:
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Israel spent far more on this attack than Iran.
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It caused widespread disruption in Israel. Few people slept well last night, flights were cancelled, large numbers of people hid in bunkers and thousands of soldiers participated in the air defence operation.
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Air defence is limited by industrial capacity, not money. The interceptors are complex machines and production is limited. SAM were low priority during the 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan so few SAMs were bought and production capacity was reduced. Now Ukraine is consuming SAMs at a rate several times higher than production and their interception rate is dropping due to shortages of SAMs. Ukraine will also need thousands of SAMs after the war ends to rebuild. Israel is firing SAMs wildly as they are exceptionally casualty averse. Meanwhile China builds missiles are drones at a higher rate than any other country and they are stockpiling their weapons. Depleting SAM inventories is a success in itself.
functor
6mo ago
If they didn't fight back they would have been pushed out of Palestine a long time ago. There are still millions of Palestinians in Palestine because they fight back and defend themselves.
functor
8mo ago
It is instictive. Women naturally fear men who have low quality genes. Rapists are often portrayed in media as rich men but in reality rape is a measure of last resort. Rape is the worst tactic for reproduction if a man has a choice. Women don't just find unappealing men not interesting, they find them revolting. Most guys don't really feel anything towards an unfortunate looking women. Life isn't meant to be fair, logically consistent or objective. We don't have a supremely rational and detached mind. We often rely on gut reactions based on what is evolutionarily advantageous. Throughout history women who avoided bottom tier men did better than those who befriended them.
I fundamentally don't understand the right in latin America. Why does it like the US? Latin Americans aren't exactly leading in the field of woke-ideology. More woke ideology has been produced on single American college campuses than much of the rest of the world. Do they think they are getting their based right wing state together with Victoria Nuland and Kamala Harris? Pro dollarization means pro wall street. How right wing will they be selling out their country to foreign financial interests that want everything ESG-rated?
I am all the way to the right. However, in Latin America6o I consistently find myself supporting leftist parties. They don't want their natural resources sold off to foreigners or their country turned into a banana republic, and in general they seem far less interested in hanging out with the elites in the wokest country on the planet.
The right in Argentina has elected a world economic forum banker. While he might anger some feminists on twitter it is clear where Argentina is heading.
functor
1yr ago
functor
6mo ago
Wages aren't enough to get people to do working class jobs. People will rather make less working as a journalist than work as a plumber. Being a social media strategist or HR will be more attractive than changing diapers and driving trucks. Unless they want to pay wages that are well out of the realm of possibility for content writers it isn't going to work.
The most effective method to get more nurses would be to fire communications majors from government jobs. A sizeable portion of the upper working class and the fallouts of the actual middle class no longer do working class jobs. Instead they get degrees in less demanding subjects from lower tier colleges. The meme of them becoming baristas isn't accurate. Most of them do get office work. However, they would be far more productive welding, building and caring.
functor
2mo ago
Navlny never seemed to have any ideology and seemed like a perfect example of a CIA stooge. Usually when there is an opposition, there is a much clearer agenda. The actual opposition groups have more policy that they want to implement. Navalny had no real ideology, he was just generally anti regime while being the darling of the western media. Color revolution leaders seldom seem to have an actual agenda before they take power. They will at best be "pro freedom" or some other empty epithet in order to get broad support.
functor
7mo ago
Pacifying Chechnya was difficult and extremely costly. There are twice as many Palestinians as Chechnyas and they have phones. Russians at least weren't continuously filmed during their operation. Israel has falling support in the polls and going full Chechnya won't improve that.
functor
7mo ago
Israel is running into the problem France had in Algeria and the whites had in South Africa. Once the minority becomes too numerous they can't be controlled. Had there been a million Iraqis the US would have won. With a booming population they simply couldn't. France controlled Algeria relatively well when their population was small. With the economic benefits of being a part of France their population boomed and it just became impossible for France to police that many Algerians. Apartheid South Africa would have been hard to maintain with a 4% white population. The Palestinian population is increasing rapidly and is getting to the size where counter insurgency is hard.
functor
7mo ago
Is learning new languages actually worth it for adults?
I have met people who have lived in a country for years, are intelligent and have studied hard. Yet they are far from a native speaker. Those who haven't spoken their new language for years seem to lose it. Is picking up French/German/Spanish worth it? It seems like an enormous investment to develop worse language skills than the average native 12-year-old. Even when it comes to enjoying the culture in the native language, I am not even sure it would be the case. A person who learned latin and read Caesar's memoirs in the original latin would probably get less out of it due to their lacking latin than reading a translated copy.
I studied a language for 6 years in school. Along with everyone I know who hasn't studied their extra language extensively post school I can barely write a paragraph in it. Was it a giant waste of time to have Spanish or French an hour a week for 6 years when the results are lacking?
If learning a language meant learning it to the point of fluency or near native ability, I could see the point. However, most learners seem to spend countless hours learning without being able to have a conversation that doesn't require effort from both parties.
Keith woods says it better than me
Conservatism as Anti-Ideology
There was much debate online recently over the political beliefs of country music singer Oliver Anthony. Anthony captured the hearts of conservatives with his “Rich Men North of Richmond”, which took aim at out of touch fatcat Yankees who have abandoned people like him. At first there was no question to conservatives, Anthony was definitely one of them. After all, he railed against welfare queens, taxes, and complained about elites not relating to regular folk. Anthony did alienate some of his newfound following when an interview of him appeared where he affirmed the “diversity is our strength” mantra. Then the first question at the first of this years Republican Party primary debates was the hosts asking the field for their interpretation of Athony’s masterpiece, to which an indignant Mr. Anthony then responded with derision for the entire field, reminding Republican partisans that these politicians were actually part of the elite he was singing about.
Still, most conservatives are not in any doubt that Oliver Anthony is one of them, and I think they’re correct. The fact that he is almost indistinguishable in his rhetoric from a Berniebro Democrat is a feature, not a bug. Neither is it a problem that the message in his song seemed inconsistent - targeting rich capitalists as the source of his problems in the same song that he complained about taxation and welfare spending. Conservatism in recent years has lost any positive content, it is now best understood as an anti-ideology, a vague, paranoid and inconsistent critique of a nebulous “elite”, the only point of which is to spread a general mistrust in whoever happens to be in power. ... Modern conservatism in the English speaking world developed out of the cadre of conservatives who formed the National Review in 1955, led by William F. Buckley. Buckley believed he had found a program to unite the two camps who dominated the right, but had been up to that point adversarial: the Burkean conservatives, led by figureheads like Russell Kirk, and the increasingly expanding camp of libertarians, who had been influenced by works like Friedrich Hayeks The Road to Serfdom. The program that would unite them was the “fusionism” of Frank Meyer, a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States who himself abandoned communism after reading Hayek’s work while serving in the US Army. Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian | Mises Institute .... Since at least the 2000s, the conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher has been in retreat, while it found a resurgence with the Tea Party program during the Obama administration, this trend was swept aside by the muscular populism of Donald Trump. Since then, conservatism has lost any vestiges of whatever positive content it had remaining. Free market economics are still central to the establishment GOP politicians, but many conservatives now sound like economic populists, seeing rich capitalists as part of the same elite class as liberal politicians. While many conservatives still stand firm on abortion, there is little else in the way of the social conservatism that used to define the right: Trump was the most pro-gay US President in history, and modern conservatives are all too happy to embrace their own, based versions of “trans women” like Blair White if they affirm them back. Alex Jones asks Blaire White if "the chemicals" made her trans | Media Matters for America -... So what’s left? Well, there’s definitely a strong belief that the elites are evil - ridiculously, cartoonishly evil, to the point that they poison the water and the skies, intentionally derail trains, and start wars just to make common people suffer. There is also a strong cynicism about politics and idealism generally, not only is the conservative anti-ideological, but they are convinced everyone else is too, and that people that profess to believe in leftist ideals like egalitarianism are just cynics who don’t really believe it. As saimleuch, conservatives will often critique leftists for being inconsistent anti-racists or say things like their affirmation of trans rights is rooted in a hatred of women. Oliver Anthony engaged in some of this on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. Rogan pointed out that Democrats in the early 90s “sounded like Nazis”, Oliver Anthony recognised the argument and immediately pointed out that Democrats like Hillary and Obama didn’t even support gay marriage in the 2000s! .. It is of course an eternal source of frustration to people on the radical right that conservatives attack the left by holding them to the moral standard the left itself has established, thus enforcing the leftist moral framework on the whole political spectrum. This seems obviously counter-productive, until you realise there is no alternative program the conservatives are advancing anyway - all that matters is getting people to share the same sense of cynicism and mistrust of power, so an accusation of racism or homophobia works as well as anything else.
https://keithwoodspub.substack.com/p/conservatism-as-anti-ideology
Conservatism lacks ideology, vision and a moral compass. At this point it is just angry ranting against cartoon vilians who are satanically evil. There is little systemic analysis instead there is an over emphasis of conspiracies. If the populist conservatives took power, they would be incapable of wielding it since their policies lack depth beyond SJWs bad but trans people with MAGA hats good. Conservatives are too negative, their entire focus is on what they dislike. Rich people bad, welfare queens bad, Klaus Schwab bad but what is good?
My life sucks, boo out group isn't really lyrics that inspire or offer novel insights. It isn't surprising that the anglosphere right has greater problems attracting young people than the right in the rest of the west. AfD, Sweden democrats and national rally do fairly well among young voters. The rather aimless right in the anglosphere fails at attracting young people and successful people. A young highly educated person is simply going to find the aesthetics and the values of mainstream conservatism boring and unappealing. It isn't a uniting message, it is a message with no vision that is anti PMC. I simply struggle to see a well travelled, highly educated person fitting in to the conservative movement at all. The right is making itself culturally toxic defenders of boomer rights.
Again and again, why do people keep on jumping to race as the most accurate way to filter for being able to integrate?
If two groups are separated for so long that there are clear genetic differences they aren't going to be easy to integrate. First off there are differences between groups and they are to some extent biologically different. If they have been separated for that long their cultures will have almost no common points.
functor
11mo ago
How is this extremism? His politics essentially are that he wants to avoid massive demographic change that will not only greatly replace his own ethnic group but also causes a low trust and dysfunctional society. Not wanting wage dumping by cheap illegal migrants isn't extremism.
Wanting to fire 750 000 rounds containing depleted uranium over Iraq causing thousands of children to get birth defects is more extreme than not wanting mass migration. Wanting to burn thousands of Libyans alive in firestorms in order to turn Africa's most developed country into a mess run by jihadist groups is extremism. Killing a thousand people without trial by targeted drone strikes is extremism. Labelling every 16+ year old man in Afghanistan a legitimate military target while backing drug cartel government is extremism. Bailing out the banks while people foreclose on their homes is extremism. Going 30 000 000 000 000 dollars in debt largely due to spending more on the military than the next 9 biggest militaries combined when your neighbors are Canada and Mexico is extremism. The patriot act and the incredible power of the NSA is extreme. Pretty much the entirety of mainstream Republican Party positions are extremist positions that ordinary people would have a difficult time supporting if it was explained to them.
Wanting the politics that Republicans would call far left anti Israel politics if it was applied to Israel isn't right wing extremism just because it is in the US. Why is a wall In Israel not an extremist policy, but a wall separating the Mexican drug war from the US is when tens of thousands of Americans die of fentanyl overdoses every year?
I think it points to a fundamental difference in how I see social issues and how people on the left see them. When discussing moral issues with left leaning people, they often focus on the individual and the utilitarian perspective of the individual in the situation. For example, a horny person meets someone at a bar and can choose between sex or sexual frustration. Forcing people to choose monogamy is therefore evil since it is the less beneficial outcome.
I don't really care too much about the individual enjoyment of the night, but look at the effects of family structure in society. Getting a well functioning family structure is an incomprehensibly complex problem and a balancing act which goes beyond human comprehension. Going from one man, one women to casual sex is fun can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences. People today have less sex than ever, fewer children than they desire, and we have incels and feminists who both have legitimate grievances in a dysfunctional dating market. Tampering with an entire ecosystem can have disastrous effects. If there is something we should have learned in the past centuries it is that experts who want to redesign a city, reorganize agriculture, introduce a new species that eats pests etc is that these projects tend to end in catastrophes. Disrupting a delicate balance is dangerous, and science doesn't really provide answers for it. Science experiments run for short period of time with a limited sample size and measure few variables. Traditions last millennia and have sample sizes in the billion. Following tradition is less likely to end up in a situation in which a brilliant scientist concludes DDT is safe, or in which an urban planner wrecks a city because the best science in traffic planning said urban freeways are beneficial.
Chesterton was correct in realizing that traditions were solutions to problems solved for so long that people have forgotten what the problem was.
When trying to stop people who want to engage in a behaviour that creates a small but immediate utility, it is hard to use arguments based on unintended long term societal consequences. It was easy to look like a clown when claiming that giving antibiotics to farm animals is dangerous when it clearly reduces sickness and increases yields, now we have an antibiotic resistance crisis.
Traditional religion are methods of handling large complex systems condensed in mythological format. Historically, this format has worked well. Today appealing to bible texts or the man in the sky doesn't work, yet the evidence for the unintended consequences of short term utilitarianism often appears long after the debate has ended.
functor
17d ago
England has an awful housing situation and has expensive real estate yet has the opposite political divide.
functor
28d ago
I don't think this is surprising. A lot of Ukraine's ability to resist was predicated on US assistance, which has become increasingly rare due to resistance from House Republican leadership.
It was never realistic to support Ukraine.
The defence industrial base has been slaughtered for 33 years. Most of the industrial base isn't doing magic military stuff but is tied into the overall industrial base which was shipped to China. There aren't that many welders, factory workers and machinists left. The idea that we have an advantage because our GDP is so high since we have socialmedia companies worth a fortune ignores that technically minded people in the west are working at a fin tech startup instead of a factory. When it comes to mass manufacturing pieces of steel financial hubs won't do well. The US sees itself as economically superior because smart americans work with insurance, investment banking and Netflix while Russians work in a tractor factory. The tractor factory will produce far more mortars than Netflix.
The US military isn't very army heavy. The US military is to a large extent a medical and pension scheme with military appended to it. Most of that military is navy and airforce with the army only being a minor part. The army is geared toward low intensity policing missions in the middle east, not fighting on the eastern front. NATO wasted trillions on fighting in the Middle East. That money had to come from somewhere and the industrial base took a big hit. The industrial base turned into manufacturing prototypes and small series of extremely expensive gear for special forces.
NATO equipment is maintenance heavy, expensive, incredibly hard to use and not designed for the mission at hand.
Just fixing the sorry state of NATO militaries would be a Herculean effort. The industrial base is barely able to replace the equipment from the cold war that needs to be retired. Now it is tasked with the additional tasks of feeding Israel and Ukraine fighting wars in a scale much larger than any European military was scoped for. Meanwhile China can pump out artillery shells, SAMs, ships and hand grenades at a rate that we simply can't.
functor
5mo ago
Would a native American who said "from the pacific to the Atlantic the Native will be free", be kicked off campus? Would "From Zimbabwe to the sea, South Africa will be free", make them kick you off campus? Funny how these big jewish sponsors were fiercely opposed to any for of white nationalism yet see any opposition to their ethnostate as genocide. Funny how white identities can be completely deconstructed and how thought crimes against diversity get people unpersoned yet the same logic doesn't apply in the other way.
I really see no reason for us goyim to support them at all. For the left, Israel is everything they claim white nationalists to be except worse. You don't see many on the alt right proposing massive airstrikes on the suburbs of Paris. For the right the Zionists is the ADL pushing woke agenda, mass migration into western countries and banning thought crime on twitter. The zionists have managed to alienate almost everyone except themselves and a dying number of evangelicals.
functor
6mo ago
Gaza is under a blockade which is an act of war. If Israel is blockading Gaza than the people of Gaza have every right to use military force against Israel.
functor
6mo ago
The right-wing extremists
Not wanting a 9% of GDP deficit isn't extremism. Pretty much anywhere else in the world including the US up until a few years ago the current US fiscal policy would be called extremism. Not wanting 2 million illegal immigrants flowing into the country a year is apparently extremism.
The GOP promises its voters fiscal responsibility and reduced immigration. The voters get open borders, bailouts for wall street and billions for defence contractors and foreign wars. At some point the base has to demand that the GOP delivers on something for the non oligarchy. Continuing to vote for the GOP because the other side is scary and at some point they may throw you a bone goes against the experience of the last five decades. The GOP base needs to walk out until the GOP starts delivering.
The problem is that Israel is a major source of migrants. The Israeli state has expanded forcing millions of Arabs out of their homes. When they bombed Lebanon in 2006 I got some new classmates in Sweden. Israel has been a major force acting to destabilize the middle east and create chaos. This means migrants to Europe. Meanwhile Israel has been busy promoting multiculturalism in Europe. Israel has been fighting Syria for decades and there are now vast numbers of Syrian refugees in the world.
The best option for Europe is stable secure arab states. Israel wants to expand and wants dysfunctional failed arab states. The blowback from that means Europe gets another wave of migrants that Israaid can help bring into Europe through their activities on Greece's beaches.
The last thing I want to see is the world get more destroyed and more migrants flood into Europe because of zionists. If there is a step one to saving Europe, it is ending the pro Israel neocon agenda that has been a root cause of migrants. I don't want to meet more people with heroin addictions and missing family members after neocon Americans decided that they wanted to go on another mass murder spree in the middle east.
What we need now is to speak the language they understand- pushback. Palestinians have shown great courage and resolve today when they fought back. The same neocons who made billions bombing Afghanistan while working class whites died of heroin lost dozens of vehicles. The same neocon/zionist establishment who flooded Syria with weapons and my neighbourhood with people who fled from them got humiliated today. Aggression is in their nature, they will only stop once they get properly bitten back.
functor
9mo ago
This is a strategy has been standard playbook by the police in Europe. The police let antifa attack right wing protests and harass them. There is no reasonable expectation for a nationalist group to expect the police to effectively defend them. If the nationalists take measures to defend themselves, then they are arrested for rioting, conspiracy and similar crimes.
Why would it be practical to genocide millions of people and piss off the entire middle east? Israel provides little benefit at an enormous cost. The sensible solution is to dump Israel and befriend the arab states.
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