But it's not weird. Men treating women as having less agency, and also women claiming less responsibility, has been normal throughout human history. Women have more agency and responsibility than children, but less than men. At the same time, exceptions have always been recognized (some women, and even some children, have more agency and responsibility than some men). However, not until the last few decades has anyone tried to reorganize society and culture around the exceptions rather than the norm. This is natural human social behavior. Fundamentally, a woman crying is psychologically (and even physiologically) more like a child crying than a man crying, and that matters more than any ideological principles or even the letter of the law.
My personal preference is for the classical liberal ideal of legal equality but cultural inequality. However, that does not seem to have been a very stable equilibrium. It seems humans as constituted are unable to cope in that kind of world. There is no returning to the past, but the future will not look like the present (if only because birthrates among these cultural groups are unsustainable).
nomenym
4mo ago
I am in the business of starting forest fires so this is of some interest to me.
nomenym
5mo ago
Ideologically, I think he's more like Musk shooting for Mars, but Zuck's goal is something more like automated super AI VR future tech. Previously, he thought that allying with Democrats was most conducive to that goal, but that relationship started to sour. His loyalty is with neither side.
Putin cannot be trusted without security guarantees, but I fear Zelensky cannot be trusted with them. Fundamentally, neither side trusts each other or wants to stop fighting, and I completely understand why. Unfortunately for Ukraine, US support is not unconditional or unlimited, and at some point it's just throwing good money after bad. Ukraine gave Russia a bloody nose, and they've made Russia pay dearly for little gain. Russia was expecting a cake walk, and it has been anything but. They will think twice before repeating any such adventurism. For this, Ukraine should certainly be celebrated, but they are outmatched even with material support. They have no path to victory. If anything less than complete withdrawal of Russian forces is unacceptable, then I think Ukraine will lose everything rather than something. Western elites who continue to talk in those terms are fundamentally unserious, incapable, and unwilling to commit the forces necessary to make that happen. These are people who had nothing good to say about Ukraine until Putin invaded, and their stance today is motivated far more from fear and hate of Putin than love of Ukraine. For them, Ukraine is worth sacrificing to preserve their sense of international order. Ironically, Ukraine underestimates their peril, because they're surrounded by enemies on both sides.
nomenym
8mo ago
I think the money-men are basically being held hostage at this point. There are too many damning and obvious failures that can only be interpreted as striving to alienate the core audience (but marketed as attempts to expand the audience). It's just all too much at this point. They doubledown every time. There are people behind the scenes decrying this, but they don't feel as though they can say anything publicly.
Capitalism creates its own complex ecosystem. Perhaps we should not be suprised that pathogens have evolved to exploit this niche. These entertainment companies have contracted a disease, and it is repurporsing its host's resources to support and spread the pathogen. The host may survive, but its immune system has never encountered this pathogen before.
I presume drivers license numbers must be flagged in searches to show if the holder is not a citizen, because green card holders can't just renew their drivers license at a local courthouse. If they try, their number doesn't come up in the search. They have to go to a DMV building. The database knows they're not citizens (or at least it knows they have this special condition on renewing their license), so it's definitely possible to infer citizenship from a drivers license number search. I don't know if ICE officers are capable of conducting this type of search.
It's hard for me to express my true feelings about this subject in words. Suffice to say, I'd very much like to see many people hang for this, and not just the rapists. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way back for the UK at this point. I just hope some of the people responsible get their commuppence as the whole things comes crashing down.
The way they often jump to "eradicating my existence" always makes me feel like "woke mind virus" is more than just a metaphor. I always want to say "but I don't want to kill anyone", and then I realize that it's not the host speaking but the virus. Of course the virus is scared of herd immunity.
Culture becomes parasitic when its fate is no longer aligned with of its host body. Old successful cultures were symbionts, because, like mitochondria, their ability to reproduce and spread was mostly or entirely tied to the body's ability to reproduce and spread. The culture had to make sure its hosts completed their biological lifecycle, because cultures that didn't tended to be selected against.
Modern information technology, with relative peace and prosperity, has allowed culture to become more parasitic. The culture that spreads most successfully today has started interrupting or stalling the lifecycles of its host bodies, because that is time and energy being wasted from the culture's perspective. The culture is able to jump from host to host very rapidly. It has infected the nodes cultural transmission like media and academia and no longer needs old slow biological reproduction.
Intelligent people are the most malleable, the least biologically instinctive. They have the most modifiable behavior and in some respects are the most susceptible to these cultural pathogens, or at least become the most useful hosts. The selection pressure for immunity is no doubt intense, but it moves at the speed of biological reproduction so will take a while. I think something like this cycle has played out several times in history, but never before has it been so rapid and intense because of more limited technology.
nomenym
3mo ago
I would not consider the EU a reliable ally in the first place. I actually expect them to be a future enemy regardless of the US's current actions.
You can't really win. Once your side starts winning, the people interested in only power and status switch sides. They then morph and corrupt your "principles" into excuses to pursue their power and status. They may fly the same flag and use the same phrases and words to justify their actions, but none of the symbols or words mean the same thing for them. But this process of curruption takes time, and for a while it can seem like your winning. Eventually, you're going to have to switch to another team and begin the whole thing over again, but once your new side starts winning, well ...
An all white cast. You really don't see that often these days.
I'd love ot be a fly on the wall to hear that casting discussion, or did everyone involve just know already not to bring it up? Did they audition for these parts? Did any black men show up? The hivemind is pretty strong on these things, so perhaps the coordination was all implicit.
nomenym
3mo ago
I think some kind of deal for illegals who turn themselves in might work. No guarantees, but perhaps waiving certain restrictions on them applying for legal entry. It could reduce the workload while getting some of the more sympathetic cases into the legitimate system.
nomenym
2mo ago
I do not think it wise to empower the state to torture people, but that's not because nobody deserves to be tortured.
nomenym
2mo ago
Most of the people in that prison deserve a worse fate if half the accusations against them are true.
nomenym
1yr ago
This seems connected to the more recent idea that competency isn't real, and that all jobs are rewards/punishments that grant privilege/status and nothing more. The idea is that we can just redistribute status by just giving members of oppressed groups prestigious jobs to do, and that will work out fine because nobody is more competent than anyone else at anything. It's not even believing that people might have equal capacity for competence when brought up with equal privilege, but that they actually do have equal competence regardless of their life history. There is no need to improve or work hard to earn something; we just need privileged people to get out of the way.
So the Motte struggles to productively engage with ideas that are usually held and advocated by the types of people who are a poor fit for the culture here, is that right? Sure, I can believe that.
In general, the Motte is a very male social group that is structured around creating conditions for a masculine "fair fight". The rules are all about structuring an environment where people openly challenge each other, state their position and opposition plainly, and have a battle of wits, skill, and knowledge. The roles of popularity, status, and broader coalitional politics of the people involved are supposed to be temporarily suspended. Some kind of analogous form of this kind of competition occurs throughout the animal kingdom, but almost entirely between competing males, and it's more common as intra-group competition. The outgroup may be regarded more like dangerous animals that need to be eliminated by any means necessary.
Feminized social spaces don't tend to have much time even for the concept of a "fair fight". In fact, for women (or feminine males), the very notion of a fair fight is foolishness. Female social competition is much more about misdirection, subtefuge, and ambush. You should never challenge an enemy openly and square off against them; there should be no declaring a time and place or choosing your weapons. The goal is to wait until your opponents' back is turned and strike, or even better get someone else to strike for you. The roles of popularity, status, and coalitional politics are front and center, and even the very means by which the battle is waged.
This is essentially why too many women in academia is ruining science and related fields. Once there are enough relatively ordinary women, they shift the culture away from the "fair fight" model of science, and so science is now more about popularity, status, and coalitional politics and the battle of ideas is engaged by way of back channels. I recall recently listening to an interview with a philosopher lamenting the terrible influence that critical theory has had on the philosophy profession, and how it has all but taken over without seeming to have won any arguments. Infamously, such people do not engage in debates, i.e. "fair fights", but rather they use indirect, institutional, and social power to defeat their enemies often without even giving them a chance to defend themselves.
In my experience, advocates of veganism (as opposed to all vegans) tend to disproportionately belong to the latter group, and so they aren't going to feel comfortable and competent at interacting with the Motte. Sometimes people like these will actually stumble upon good ideas, and those ideas will perhaps not get a fair hearing on a forum like The Motte because their advocates usually don't fight fair. This could undoubtedly cause a blind spot. There is no solution. White nationalist types tend to be rather masculine in their disposition, and so they usually intuitively and more comfortably engage with the fair-fight culture.
nomenym
3mo ago
Fundamentally, neither side should trust the other because neither side is actually trustworthy. Stalemates, ceasefires, and uneasy peaces backed up by threats of force is all that is on offer until one or both sides collapse internally.
nomenym
10mo ago
Unfortunately, these "important conversations" in practice just mean kicking the can down the road while things get worse. Feels like a stalling action. It's like having "important conversations" about immigration while holding the door open. Just keep the "important conversations" going until the thing being discussed has already happened.
nomenym
11mo ago
Oh thank goodness! I thought the shooter was aiming for Trump. Turns out the real target was the dead spectator and Trump's teleprompter just happened to be in the way. What a coincidence!
Frankly, that's how that article comes across to me. I know they're not saying that, but it kind of reads that way.
For a non-citizen, if you have only 6 months left on your visa and you have to get your drivers license renewed, then then that license will only be valid for 6 months. Moreover, if you go to a local courthouse to renew it, your number won't come up on a regular search. It is necessary to go to a DMV building to get a license renewed. The drivers license number database apparently flags when a license belongs to a non-citizen, or at least flags it when additional steps for renewal are necessary. I don't know if this flag is visible to law enforcement when they search a license number, but there's a good chance it is. I suppose if you violated the conditions of your visa, then you could be residing illegally while still appearing to have a valid license. However, I suspect since they can't issue a license that is valid beyond the expiration date of a visa, that violating the visa would then automatically void the drivers license
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