jeroboam
5d ago
Despite making up 13% of the population, 15% of NFL players are black
Typo. 53% are black.
jeroboam
3d ago
I'm not blaming you for needing to lose weight. I probably need to lose more weight than you do. But no diet is a silver bullet, especially if you don't intend to follow it forever.
For the record, I don't expect the Shangri-La diet to work. I just hope it does. If it does, I probably will follow it forever.
Exercise is also much less important; you can get anywhere by car, and most modern entertainment is available right from the comfort of your home.
This is a red herring, IMO. Activity is not the problem. In fact, it has been reported that Americans are MORE active than they were in the 1970s when things like yoga and jogging were virtually unheard of.
It's common knowledge that you get fit in the gym but you lose weight in the kitchen. I am above the 90th percentile for activity. I can run circles around most people my age. My resting heart rate is in the 40s. And I lift. But I am still over 20% body fat according to scans. If you're focused on activity, you're barking up the wrong tree.
jeroboam
24d ago
There is something hellishly dystopian about fleeing to another country, possibly even across the ocean, and your country of birth is still trying to pull you back. Particularly because women are given a free pass. It's natural to feel like there should be some cost associated with the privilege of not having to be forcibly conscripted to fight against an invading army.
Very strange how blank-slatist ideas just sort of vanish when any sacrifice from women is involved.
For the record, I am not a blank-slatist, think women should not serve in combat, and think they would make terrible soldiers for the most part. But if we are going to live by the rules of the blank slatist, those rules should at least be applied fairly.
jeroboam
17d ago
"Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a black bear or a black man"?
I bet this would invert the response percentages.
jeroboam
18d ago
because manipulation implies an outcome the target isn't desiring to happen.
This is a good point. In the past, both left-wing groups and right-wing groups sought to manipulate Reddit. Both were successful. Back in 2016, many posts from /r/thedonald reached the front page. Then their subreddit was banned.
Now only left wing groups are allowed to manipulate Reddit. It's anarchotyranny.
jeroboam
3d ago
Anyone ever try the Shangri-La diet? It didn't work for Yud but apparently nothing works for him, even Ozempic. Other people report near-miraculous results.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BD4oExxQguTgpESdm/the-unfinished-mystery-of-the-shangri-la-diet
The concept is that your body's "set point" is controlled by access to familiar, flavorful food that your body associates with caloric intake. Your set point goes higher when you consume familiar high flavor/high calorie food. In the ancestral environment it made sense to take on extra fat when berries and nuts were plentiful.
On the other hand, the set point can go down when these familiar foods aren't available. Many people experience weight loss when traveling to an unfamiliar country and eating unfamiliar food. Seth Roberts, inventor of the diet, experienced this weight loss when traveling and drinking unfamiliar sugary beverages, not exactly a health food.
So here's the Shangri-La diet. Every day, drink one tablespoon of extra light olive oil (extra light flavor) mixed with water. Plug your nose so you don't taste it at all. This should happen during a window where you don't consume any flavors for one hour before or after.
Having calories but no flavor breaks the association between flavorful foods and caloric availability and lowers your set point. Or something.
I'm skeptical but I'm willing to give it a try.
Keto worked great for me but unfortunately I'm a cholesterol hyper responder and my levels shot up to over 400. That's probably fine, but I'm conservative so I gave up. Unfortunately, the weight all came back over the next 6 months. So now I'm trying this. Hope it works!
The open internet is clearly dying. Most discussion now happens now on walled gardens such as Discord and Facebook.
LLMs will make this much worse. For example, ChatGPT-5 has been presumably been trained on internet data such as as StackOverflow. But no one will post any more questions to StackOverflow since GPT-5 will just give them the answer directly. StackOverflow will die. Rinse and repeat for any site where people once posted questions.
Wow, those avatars are ugly.
Have you tried bird watching? It's like Pokemon Go in real life. It's a great excuse to go for walks and explore new areas. Want to scratch that collector itch? Everytime you see a new bird, add it to your life list. See how many you can collect. Also, birds are just amazing and beautiful unlike those fucking avatars.
If you want there's a free app called Merlin that will help identify birds and keep track of your list. It's totally free with no ads. I'd also recommend a pair of binoculars.
In some ways, the tweet is not wrong. Protesters at elite universities will be tomorrow's leaders. They will be on the "right" side of the history not because they are morally right, but because they will be able to shape history to their whims.
The Ivy League protests are not a street movement, they are an elite rebellion.
And in that way, it's really no different than the Vietnam protesters who shared the same elite characteristics. As early as 1966 Normal Mailer noted how the protestors were upper class while the policemen they fought were working class.
Sadly, these benighted and often mentally ill children are our future leaders. They will no doubt treasure the memories of their "rebellion" in 30 years as they sit comfortably inside the halls of power.
jeroboam
24d ago
This is nothing new. The pro-war case has long rested on cognitive dissonance, holding these two mutual incompatible views at the same time:
-
Russia is so weak that one more round of $X billion will win the war for Ukraine.
-
Russia is so strong that if we don't stop them here, they'll take Estonia, Poland, Germany!
jeroboam
13d ago
Tweet likes are probably a bad metric. Twitter doesn't have a downvote button. Outrageous posts that are net unfavorable can get massive amounts of likes.
But agree that support for ADL among non-Jews, non donor class rounds to zero.
jeroboam
18d ago
I just bought an account with 1 million karma. Now I want to reach all the people who like me so I can spam my product.
Oh wait... I can't.
Karma is absolutely useless beyond a minimal amount needed to get around spam filters on some subs.
Ukrainian women are... people? They are not the property of Ukrainian men. They are not obliged to restrain from forming relationships or otherwise trying to live their lives because they happen to be refugees.
Ukraine is already taking away its male citizens right to life. Taking away its female citizens right to date German men is a small step in comparison.
If the government is going to conscript men and send them to the front to die, then all citizens should chip in and help. Women should be working in arms plants, farms, and in support roles in the military. And, yes, they should be there to form families with the returning soldiers when the war is over.
And if these women would prefer not to, shouldn't Ukrainian men get to opt out as well?
What's bizarre is the Western world asking Ukrainian men to bear nearly the entire brunt of this conflict as if their lives have no value.
jeroboam
30d ago
Biden: Don't invade Rafah
Israel: Bombs Iranian embassy
Biden: Okay you can invade Rafah but don't bomb Iran
Israel: Bombs Iran.
Biden: (next week, probably) Here's $10 billion to help you bomb Iran
I'm starting to think the anti-Israel protestors have a point.
jeroboam
16d ago
It's all so depressing.
We're banning a future of delicious and nutritious food with zero animal cruelty.
We'll probably end up at a future where we're forced to eat seed oils and government workers are paid to torture animals as a jobs program.
jeroboam
3d ago
What do you think causes people on the Shangri-La diet to lose weight? I'll present a few possibilities.
- The mechanism explained in the Less Wrong article is correct
- Something else we don't understand
- No one actually loses weight, they are lying
- Simply watching one's weight is sufficient to lose weight
- Survivorship bias: only the people who lost weight report it
In any case, there don't seem to be any downsides and the anecdotal evidence is strong. I don't need a causal mechanism as long as it's safe which this diet obviously is.
I think this captures the tenor of many protests. It's about power and intimidation. We can burn your buildings, tear down your monuments, loot your stores, and YOU are powerless to stop us.
Demonstrations have worked this way forever, going all the way back to ancient Rome, but perhaps most saliently in the street battles between fascists and communists in Weimar Germany.
Winning hearts and mind is one way to gain power. But any good communist knows that silencing and intimidating your enemies works much better. Here in America, we're so used to the MLK/Gandhi model which is designed to appeal to the hearts of a kind and powerful master. But demonstrations which carry the threat of violence are far more typical. I mean, would you dare to carry a drawing of Muhammad around Columbia's campus right now?
That said, I don't think these protests will go very far. The establishment is NOT on the side of protestors as they were during BLM. Even in San Francisco and Seattle, protestors are being charged for blocking traffic. If any protestors attempt real violence, they will be prosecuted.
Jews are still sacred in America.
BLM is just a three word slogan. To the extent that it became a real-world organization it was largely a grift.
People then, as now, were attracted to the movement for all sorts of reasons. Some people made reasonable demands. Most did not.
As usual, the communists showed up as they do whenever people are angry about something.
There was no "good BLM" that got corrupted. It was always just an organic blob that was fanned by street anger, irresponsible news media, and Marxist organizations. The white people who were at those protests in 2014 are the same as the white people at the anti-Jewish protests today. Eventually they'll get bored and move on to the next thing, looking for self-actualization that will never arrive.
jeroboam
1mo ago
A Tone-Shift in the Ukraine War
Lately, I've noticed that the tone of the discussion regarding Ukraine both on the Motte and on X has changed considerably. Notably, it seems that people are taking a much more pessimistic view of Ukraine's chances. The default assumption now is that Ukraine will lose the war.
I think a stalemate is still quite possible, but the more optimistic assumptions that Ukraine would regain lost territory (or comically, Crimea) are now a dead letter. So what, exactly, are our leaders thinking? Recently, Macron went off-narrative a bit, suggesting that France could send troops into Ukraine. More ominously, Secretary of State Blinken said that Ukraine will join NATO.
Perhaps Western leaders view this sabre-rattling as good for their electoral chances. And, until recently, the war was seen as a relatively cost-effective way to weaken Russia. (Sadly, this seems to have failed as Russia has freely exported oil to India and China and is making armaments in great numbers).
But what of Ukrainians themselves? Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? It's impossible to find good numbers on how many Ukrainian men have been killed so far in this war. It's likely in the hundreds of thousands. Towns and villages throughout the country are devoid of men, as the men (hunted by conscription) either flee, hide, or are sent to the fronts.
User @Sloot shared this nuclear-grade propoganda. While Ukrainian men fight and die in some trench, an increasing number of Ukrainian women are finding new homes (and Tinder dates) in Germany. Concern about female fidelity has always been a prominent feature of wartime propaganda. But, this takes it to a new level, since the women are in a different country, making new, better lives for themselves. How many will ever even return to Ukraine?
Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?
jeroboam
13d ago
The British Jews have been solidly conservative since like, forever. Continental European Jews also tend to be right wing.
Is that correct? If so, it would be pretty remarkable. As much as I hate it, the educated class tends to be left wing pretty much everywhere, and Jews are highly educated.
Would be interested in a source.
I'm pretty sure American Jews vote left wing because the American right has a history of racial discrimination, which Jews pattern match to Nazism.
This doesn't seem to parse. Surely the German right wing has a much stronger history of racial discrimination?
American Jews vote the way they do because it matches their identity and status signalling, just like everyone else.
jeroboam
1mo ago
One of the reasons I tend conservative is the different views towards exit rights.
For most conservatives, the reaction to liberals who want to go start a communist paradise elsewhere is "Good. Go do it!". This is a sincere wish. The presence of communism elsewhere is the surest bulwark against it happening here. The idea of communism so alluring that we need constant reminders about its failures, which are guaranteed.
But liberals have more of a "yous can't leave" attitude. The grand experiment can only work if everyone is forced to join. If the ants go somewhere else, the grasshoppers won't have any food to eat. Thus, states like California are considering exit taxes to trap the high-performing people in the state. And obviously the Soviets had to keep people inside with barbed wire and guns.
jeroboam
18d ago
What I saw was that a lot of them get banned pretty quickly, but some of them turned around and sold their account to a third party.
But... why? Reddit users don't have followers like Instagram or Tiktok.
There's almost no value to a Reddit account, even if they have 1 million karma.
Forgot to add that one! Rules make it harder to consume calories. But... I don't think that explains it. Even intermittent fasting is not a particularly effective strategy. The problem is that fasting now just makes you hungry later.
Funny how modern humans need "fundamental skills" but people 50 years ago just lived their normal lives and stayed skinny. This strikes me as Usain Bolt saying "you need to develop the skills to run fast" as if 99% of it wasn't God-given.
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