rudig
10mo ago
No one seems to have mentioned sperm quality and physical fitness. While I cant guarantee how much it will raise the birth rate, its very obvious that much fewer children are born by chance today than in the past. I think this is likely due to lower sperm quality and lack of physical fitness in both genders. In addition many people go through costly infertility treatment, again often due to environmental factors that lower fertility.
So my suggestion are:
-
Make childhood obesity a borderline crime, meaning if a child is overweight, the CPS/medical support systems gets involved. These children get sent to specific schools with focus on healthy food and exercise. The family gets support and educational help, but if nothing helps, the get fines and eventually the child can be taken from them.
-
Make computer games illegal, or heavily regulated. Control the internet so its boring and people cant spend hours entertaining themselves on youtube.
-
Take a serious look at chemical factors that can be causing the fall in sperm count/testosterone, and outlaw them.
-
Children are tested for physical fitness, and if they are too unfit, they are sent to digital detox camps with focus on physical fitness.
-
Make housing developments in the most attractive areas only available for families with children
-
Give plenty of support to students who become pregnant, also the single ones.
-
Affirmative actions for both parents AND grandparents. If a grandparent wants to move jobs/houses to be closer to their kids to help with childrearing they get preferential treatment. Many of the most high status jobs are only available to people with children (the medically infertile can adopt).
-
Make being young and/or a single parents less stigmatizing. Students who have children get their student loans forgiven.
-
UBI for children, maybe something like 500 USD for the first 2, and then gradually lower it.
-
Some sort of matchmaking for gays and lesbian couples so they can have children together. Similar types of matchmaking for singles over 30 who want children but dont want to be in a relationship.
This seems like an isolated demand of rigor. Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?
rudig
10mo ago
Sorry, didnt specify, but immigrant in Norwegian statistic is someone who immigrated themselves or have 2 parents who have immigrated. Norway does not really have a big non-white population outside of this group
rudig
1yr ago
"At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!�? and throw lumps of excrement at her.!
I sincerely cannot understand what can make a grown person have such an intensity of emotion for someone who isnt a murderer or rapist og war criminal or the like. Meghan Markle is very annoying, sure, but this is beyond unhinged. I realize brits love their royal family, but surely after all the Diana/Charles escapades and then recently with prince Andrew, they learned to temper their emotions just a bit?
I used this as a specific example because it happened to me when I took one of these guys to meet my friends. He was livid about George Floyds criminal background not getting enough attention, he kept repeating statistic about black/immigrant criminality and also said something about Obamas dad being a mass-murderer (and how this was somehow suppressed by the internet, but he had seen proof before it was scrubbed).
Imo this is not a good way of making a first impression, and he absolutely refused to accept it. He was adamant that he was the only man I had ever met who had a spine, and was quite proud of himself for saying controversial things that upset people.
In my friend group we keep things easy and light when we first meet someone. We dont even make edgy jokes really, so this kind of demeanor was seriously off-putting (as was his refusal to tone it down). Even my parents who are somewhat conservative never talk like this, and IMO this is the crutch of the problem. Regular conservative people dont base their whole identities around being provocative, they just try to live their lives according to their values.
I am not American, so cant comment on the exact tone of US media. But perhaps they bought in to the whole "only democracy in the Middle-East" and "most moral army in the would" slogans. After all, Hamas is roundly condemned as a terrorist organization by both sides of the political establishment in the US (and nearly the whole of Europe), so perhaps it doesnt really make sense to make moral appeals to them?
I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender. While I agree that Israel is likely to win a decisive military victory, I think Hamas so far is winning a slight PR victory and a perhaps even bigger political victory. I dont have any illusions about how Hamas value the sanctity of life, either Palestinian or Israeli, so I think the chance of a political victory is much more important for them in the long term.
It would be an understatement to say that the pre October 7th status quo was dire for the Palestinians. With between 700 000 - 800 000 settlers on the West Bank gradually encroaching on more and more Palestinian land, and talk of annexation of the West Bank becoming mainstream in Israel (Netanyahu had this a campaign promise in 2019 and won the subsequent election). This was all happening with the tacit approval of the US (and probably also most Arab countries), the dream of a two state solution was more or less dead. With this as a back drop Palestinians were witnessing Arab countries pursuing a politic of normalization with Israel, while giving lip service to the Palestinian cause. From the ground in Palestine the status quo probably looked a lot like a slow moving ethnic cleansing. Palestinians gradually getting more sympathy in the US and Europe did not seem to help their case at all, and as we saw earlier this year, having the sympathy of western populations did nothing to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh against being ethnically cleansed by a western ally.
Now fast forward a couple of months to today, the plight of Gaza is front and centre again. The US is finding itself increasingly isolated on the global stage as Israels guardian angel. Arab countries had to distance themselves at least optically from anything Israel does. Behind closed doors many of them are probably wondering if a normalization will be possible at all with the current Israeli political scene. We are also in a situation where there is a real chance that Bidens reelection might be in jeopardy due to his support of Israel. Just the perception that this is a possibility is an unprecedented win for the Palestinian cause, and we now have Blinked take some symbolic steps to be seen addressing Palestinian concerns, such as sanctioning violent settlers.
If we assume that there are countries pulling the strings of Hamas, perhaps Qatar, Iran and even Russia, the case for a political win becomes even stronger. Did anyone even notice or care that a female Iranian dissident won the nobel price just now? Does the liberation of Iranian women even register to people when 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza are being bombed daily? However no country has had a bigger PR win over the war in Gaza than Russia. Not only is the attention towards Ukraine diminished, the passion in the "slava Ukraini" camp has been decimated. Many people who thought they where "on the right side of history" and supporting the little guy Ukraine against the bigger aggressor, are having second thoughts about the morals of their side, which is cheering on the Israeli offensive in Gaza. I clearly see this among my normie friends in Norway. People are seeing the Ukraine conflict more in term of realist politics and not absolute morality, and if you are being a realist, perhaps it makes sense to let Russia keep the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine for a ceasefire.
In this scenario the death of many thousands more Palestinian children seems like a small price to pay for what Hamas has achieved.
rudig
6mo ago
Israel has repeatedly bombed the Rafah border crossing (the only border crossing to Egypt) in the last few days. There is plenty of international citizens in Gaza who can't get out either because apparently the crossing is not functioning from the Palestinian side.
rudig
1yr ago
On the internet there are a lot of men who are conservative in a way that is informed by their resentments. They feel that the leftist world order hasn’t taken care of them and so they reject it. Fair enough. Obviously women don’t like these men because they aren’t successful or confident or handsome. If they had attractive traits they wouldn’t be resentful in the first place.
This is very true in my experience. Another thing ive noticed is that men like this often have a big part of their social circle online, so they dont realize how off putting their behaviour is to "normies". They actually think everyone agrees with them but is afraid to say it out loud due to political correctness. They dont understand that discussing race and crime with someone you just met signals low social skills for example, so when they inevitably get rejected they think its "wokism" and doubles down on it.
A similar thing can be seen in first generation immigrants who dont understand the social cues of their new society. They act in a way that signals low status, with the corresponding lack of dating success. If they dont have the ability to introspect and work on themselves the easiest solution is to decide that its all due to racism, and become resentful.
Christians in Lebanon are mostly anti-Israel, and a majority of them supported the October 7th attacks. I'm not sure they blame Muslims for their diminishing numbers in Lebanon.
Israel is a strong ally and the main weapon exporter to Azerbaijan.
So the big question is, why are christians in the west so eager to support the country responsible for bombing christian churches in Gaza and help a muslim country ethnically cleanse one of the oldest christian communities in the world? The whole thing has a "chickens for KFC" feeling about it.
The LGBT-thing doesnt make the least bit of sense to me. I am probably to the left of the majority of the people here on gay and trans right, but I never use that as a measuring stick for who is morally in the right in a given geopolitical situation. Nor have I ever met another person IRL who does the same. For example, I have no idea who is more socially liberal of Armenia or Azerbaijan, but I dont need to know that to decide that the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh was wrong.
I feel like this is the right-wing version of tankies who cant understand why anyone who is liberal would support Ukraine when they obviously have a massive problem with far-right elements in their country. Ukraine can love and revere Stephen Bandera and the Azov Batallion, while still being in the right in resisting the Russian invasion, and this is no different.
rudig
6mo ago
The picture that have been shared on reddit as "israeli with a blood stain after being raped is this https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1821309/israel-teenager-hamas-attacks-kidnap
But to me it looks more like a stain of feces on her backside, not blood. Loosing control of your bowels would be a very common reaction to extreme stress.
More crime in the UK: The case against nurse Lucy Letby, charged with 8 murders and another 10 attempts of murder is nearing the end. Lucy Letby was a NICU nurse in Countess of Chester hospital at a time where there was a dramatic increase in mortality of new born infants. She was first arrested i 2018 after 1 year of investigations, and then again in 2019 and 2020 when she was was finally charged.
I have followed the court case which has lasted for 8 months somewhat sporadically, and I think the prosecution has made a strong case. The motive seems to be the thrill and excitement of being in the middle of life and death situations, and even to get the attention of a married doctor she fancied (and might have slept with!) Interestingly, the defense had no expert testimony. Their only witness, except Letby, was a plumper who testified that the ward had a sewage leak coinciding with some of the incidents. What has kept me coming back to this case, is how incredibly plain and even boring, Letby appears outside of these charges. No history of violence or aggression, no weird sexual fetishes, no drug use. They have gone through every last text message and email and not found anything offensive, bar discussing her job and the doctor. She had a normal upringing and good relations with her family. I think its very likely she would never have been a murderer if she didnt have access to vulnerable babies as a nurse, which makes it even more of a headf**k, because the crimes she is charged with are against babies! Its absolutely heinous, and my heart breaks for the helpless parents who had no choice but to trust her with the lives of their newborns. She targeted twins and triplets, and one set of parents lost 2 boys.
So where is the culture war angle? I guess the lack of attention and interest that this case has got is baffling to me. Neither BBC nor The Guardian nor Sky news have had it on their frontpage as far as ive seen this week. BBC has confined the whole story to a regional site for Merseyside: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-65920366
Apparently a nurse potentially being one of the most prolific female serial killers in history, is not all that exciting in todays newsworld. I guess everyone can have their own biases for why this is happening. Is it the "women are wonderful effect", where a female killer is just so bizarre that it does not warrant any closer scrutiny? Would there be some articles about toxic masculinity if it was a male nurse who killed babies to impress a female doctor? Are people just less upset because she is a conventionally beautiful young woman with blond hair and blue eyes? Some redditors seem to think so, as the first doctor to suspect her was Ravi Jayaram, an Indian male. But I dont buy this either. If her looks where protecting her people would be rallying to her defense, which does not seem to be happening either. The case is mostly ignored.
Is the case just too boring?
"So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.
I dont see how potential future terrorist attacks are worse than the carnage we are seeing in Gaza today, unless you value Israeli lives much higher than Palestinians. Which I totally can understand that Israel does, but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We are after all talking about the safety of a nuclear armed country with the near unconditional backing of the worlds most powerful state, against a terrorist group that according to Israelis themselves consists of 40 000 men controlling a piece of land under naval blockade and without an airport.
I was somewhat aware of this position of Singer, but still horrified when reading this position out loud.
rudig
2mo ago
I always suspected she covers her hair mostly out if vanity (she suffers some form of alopecia based on old photos).
rudig
6mo ago
The total amount of displaced Syrians was much higher though. Over 5 million are still refugees abroad.
rudig
1yr ago
Mt Gox and the Dao hack were bad, but there where so few people involved compared to now, and those that got burned where more ideologically committed. Now with the implosion of Celsius, Luna and FTX a huge number of normies are getting burnt, and they (and their families, friends etc) will never look at crypto again and always think of it as a scam.
it seems to me that the acquittal was the correct decision; armed or not, if the person who was killed was running after the killer with clear intent to harm him, then the killer had every right to defend himself with deadly force.
Even when the shooter was armed (+ with a friend) and the victim was unarmed and alone?
When I was growing up there were some teenage boy in my school who used to blow up the postbox of a grumpy old neighbourhood man (I have no idea if he wad grumpy before or after they started doing this). And everytime he used to come running after them and they would run away as fast as they could. I guess by this line of thinking, if one of them had a gun, they could get away with shooting him because he had "clear intent to harm".
rudig
8mo ago
Point taken, and I think you are right about the average women. But again, these are not average women, but women who are still single at 35. In my experience they come in 3 groups:
- Hideously ugly/morbidly obese
- OK looking, but go for men who are out of their league.
- Dont mind being lonely, and are therefore not willing to lower their standards to match with a man who will have them.
My friends are a mix of 2. and 3. I think for nr 2 there is a psychological mechanism that keeps people from seing their own shortcomings. For what its worth, I think men who are single at 35-40 also fit into these categories, but with slightly different cutoffs. The typical example would perhaps a short immigrant male with an advanced STEM degree who cant understand why white girls are not attracted to him, because in his mind having a good degree and a well paying job is the pinnacle of male achievement. In the same vein, my friend is an avid runner, but objectively she lacks raw femininity and with skin that has aged quite poorly due to sun damage. She cant see this, because in her mind being a skinny female runner makes a woman very attractive.
rudig
1yr ago
7% of the population being south Asian but only 800 000 hindus is a bit strange. The number of Sikhs would suggest the south-Asian immigration to Canada has been disproportionally non-hindu. Is this likely to change or will Hindus become bigger and bigger share of the population?
rudig
1yr ago
I think you´re wildly exagerating how often people die from falls. Im a medical doctor and have worked many yours in emergency rooms where people came in after all kinds of falls. Very rarely did someone actually die from a fall. The only ones I remember where people who fell from the top of staircases. Freak accidents obviously happen, but would be a bit strange to use to make legal precedent.
By the same logic you could say that the old man that the two young men where harassing could have died from a heart attach in trying to get away from them (the were high on methampethamine and armed).
rudig
8mo ago
One of my friends has decided to have children with the help of a sperm donor and I have taken more than a passing interest in her search. This is actually the 2nd woman in my broader group of acquaintances who have have decided to go it alone. They are both highly educated, but lack the physical attractiveness that would make it possible to lock down the type of man they have been interested in. But while commitment from the right man can be hard to come by, sperm is incredibly cheap. We are taking elite sperm here, like entirely clean bill of health for 2 generations back, model good looks, tall, athletic, pursuing an MD or PHD in STEM, comes from a family of inventors, grandparents who lived to the age of 100 etc. Imagine someone like the Swede in Philip Roths American Pastoral. You can get a vial of this sperm for 1000 USD, and why wouldnt you as a single woman?
Im not entirely convinced that the draw backs of being a single mother in this situation cannot be off-set by the benefits of having this superior genetic material. I have sometimes during this time felt a tad bit guilty for procreating with my partner with our comparatively average genes. Yes, we will probably pass on good intelligence, but what about physical traits and health? Is there anything parental love can provide that can compare to the confidence that comes with being a 190cm athletic, but yet very intelligent young man?
All this has made me wonder if "leftover" educated women will produce the new elite of tomorrow. Surely this is a more efficient way of making superior babies than the pre-implantation embryo testing of the Collinses? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/pronatalists-save-mankind-by-having-babies-silicon-valley/?
Insemination with sperm does not typically require IVF, but a intrauterin insemination which is much cheaper.
I agree with your assessment of plastic surgery, and it can be very beneficial to many women. A typical nose job can do wonders on some ethnicities. Weight loss, even with the new wonder drugs takes time, and then you have to find and keep a man while approaching your late thirties.
But you have to remember that many women have unrealistic ideas about their own attractiveness. They can attract men, but not keep them. Their friends and family will tell them, they are "cute". Guys who dump them will tell them they were not ready for a relationship. No one IRL is going to sit down and say: "you would be such a catch with some fillers and a nosejob". Instead all they will hear is: " You are a catch, the right guy will turn up one day". I think by the time these women realize they can not compete for the men they want, they are quickly approaching a fertility cliff.
The risks from being raised by a single mother clearly cut through social class and education, and I agree that all else being equal it would be a poor decision. But all else is not equal here. You get to have a child that is likely more attractive and possibly more intelligent than if you have settled for a man that will have you. Surely the risk of criminality is lower in people who are both attractive and smart? If you believe personality traits like conscientiousness are heritable too, the tradeoff looks even better.
And while I agree with your last point, I think these women are at a stage in their lives where they have given up on finding a man. Female sexual drive also falls off a cliff around this age, so the thought of living the rest of their life without a man might not be so daunting any more.
This narrative is awfully convenient from a pro-Israeli perspective, but if this was all motivated with holy war and religious bigotry, how come the Palestinian liberation movement was broadly secular before the 1980s? The leader of PFLP was after all a christian born Palestinian communist. And how come Israel had to help Hamas along in its infancy, to counter PLO? If this was all motivated by religious hatred, surely the islamist organizations would be at the forefront since the very beginning?
http://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html
More options
Context Copy link