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sarker

hantavirus landfill tour guide

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joined 2022 September 05 16:50:08 UTC

Suddenly I cannot remember the color of your eyes

Or the things we said as we stood together for the last time


				
User ID: 636


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
sarker


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
hantavirus landfill tour guide

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 16:50:08 UTC
				


				
					

					
Suddenly I cannot remember the color of your eyes


Or the things we said as we stood together for the last time



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 636


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, but once you try it on you can make the decision to not buy/return it. The question is how do you try something on, like it, then start disliking it.


    

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I see you use "pozzed" in a post on page 2 of your profile. I consider unironic use to be an unambiguous right-wing cultural marker.




If you consider this an "unironic usage", I'm gonna take your media literacy license away.




I have not actually read her CV or anything, but since people referred to her as an escort I thought she primarily sold companionship/romance (not a sex act).




This is a bizarre debate. Aella (and her ex boyfriend) refers to herself as a "whore," which is a synonym of, and a significantly coarser word for, "prostitute". Perhaps you are under the impression that performing sex acts in exchange for currency is not the salient part of escorting, and that men would pay almost as much if there were no sex acts involved. I have my doubts but I admit I haven't studied the market for johns too closely. In any case - please take up the validity of "prostitute" as a label for her profession with her first. I will take her word for it.




I may also have worked as a camgirl (since I remember seeing posts about camgirling), which I would also not group with prostitutes (as long as you can't lose your virginity over a video feed, nothing you can do over one counts as sex, as far as I'm concerned; therefore camgirling is not a sex act).




It's pretty obvious that not every sex act results in loss of virginity, and that's exactly why M-W, in its infinite wisdom, draws a distinction between sex acts and intercourse. Unless, of course, you believe that handjobs involve loss of virginity or are not a sex act.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The data analysis and visualisation, ideas for things to ask, and thoroughness in constructing the questions. I have not seen things like that fetish tabooness/preference by gender/popularity chart anywhere else outside of 4chan, and 4chan is many orders of magnitude more sloppy about it.




I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point, since I don't think I can convince you that the fetishes of Aella followers graphed  isn't in fact interesting or quality. De gustibus non dispuntandum est.




Fair point on the latter, but I thought it was fair to put you in the "assorted trad" box given your general right-wing alignment (you get that stamp based on memory, but it's not hard to find posts that give it away in your history)




I probably pass for "right aligned" in, like, San Francisco, but I'm a little baffled to get that label on this forum.




and the somewhat gratuitous use of "prostitute" (Escorts are between not covered by the definition and non-central examples in modern usage, so insisting on the world seems to be meant to convey condemnation).




Sorry, but the definition of a prostitute is:




a person who engages in sex acts and especially sexual intercourse in exchange for pay




Which certainly covers Aella. The goal was not to convey condemnation, it was to describe how she made her money.


I was under the impression that it's a clinical and neutral label for the world's oldest profession, but M-W helpfully points out that I haven't gotten the latest firmware update:




The terms sex worker and sex work are now preferred to prostitute and prostitution, which are increasingly rejected as offensive.




I'll continue to resist this hyperstitous slur cascade a while longer though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Basically 100%. I wear everything I keep, though I usually order a variety of sizes and colors and return half or more of my order right away.


How do you end up disliking half of what you buy?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sure, but he was... top 0.1%? Top 0.01%? Certainly somewhere pretty high up, in terms of wit, even if we assume that most of the witty people never make their wits available to the public.




Yeah, but what do you want from me? You asked for topwits and got a topwit.




A fair point, but one hand we have plenty of very active posters and on the other hand all the escorting and socialising and what-not surely must take up some of her time as well. Besides, being able to actually translate more time investment into better output is a skill in itself.




I'm not sure that she still does escorting? In any case, socializing is basically your job as a public figure and helps feed the fame flywheel.




Because most posters here produce significantly less interesting, more brainrotten and worse-researched takes? And even then, I'd be comfortable with assuming that all Mottizens are top 10% for some reasonable measure of "wits" and most are at least top 5%. I just suspect that most of us are so bubbled up that we vastly overestimate the median person.




What is so well researched or interesting about her takes? Asking her Twitter followers about something is, I suppose, research, but I don't know it's particularly good. The usual deflection she offers when someone points this out is "social science is even worse" which, even if true, says more about the quality of social science research than about Aella's twitter poll to Claude code pipeline.




I don't know, it seems that enough people here drop hints at their occupation that it's likely enough most are in considerably lower-agency life tracks where they essentially operate as employees in standard-ish careers, and the path to get there and advance further forward looks like "get better standardised credentials and perform better on the next performance review".




I think this is certainly true. I am not sure that conflating "agency" with intelligence is correct.




every time some topic adjacent to her is discussed a cavalcade of card-carrying MRAs and postrationalist born-again Christians and other assorted trads comes out of the woodwork to assert that she is stupid and boring (and also very unattractive to them)




Ironically it seems to me that you are the one posting a weak knee jerk criticism here since I'm none of those things and didn't say anything about whether I find her attractive or not.




falling prey to a variant of the just-world fallacy (believing that the world can't be so unfair that the immoral and distasteful would also be competent and talented).




I think the real just world fantasy is to believe that nobody who is a midwit can attain fame and success.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Who do you consider examples of non-midwits (topwits?)?




I mean, there's a lot of smart people out there. I don't pretend to have the final say on who is smart and who isn't, but I'd say, for example, Scott Alexander in his prime was a topwit.




It seems to me that unless the standard you are applying is more correlated with your aesthetic/moral approval of the person than their wits as usually defined, you should then be writing off most of this forum as midwits as well.




Aella is sculpting a public persona as her full time occupation. Her output is basically the best that she can do given full effort and attention. I like this forum a lot, but how many people here treat poasting as their full time job? I'd say zero. So I don't think that you can do a naive comparison given the discrepancy in effort involved.




My impression is that she should be a little bit above the median of the Motte in terms of smarts and verbal skills,




Why?




way above in terms of agency (mostly evidenced by the successful ascent to and maintenance of local e-celeb status).




Debatable, since on a pseudonymous forum you can't actually tell who is successful and who is full of shit. Being a publicly successful figure with a face and a name is part of the game she's playing. Nobody here is posting face reveals and most people here would rather, I suspect, that few people they know IRL knew they posted here.


I do concede she successfully attained celebrity status. Does that mean she's not a midwit? It's 2026, we've had tards as vice presidents.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't know that it would make much of a difference given her requirements.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very true. A few related thoughts:


    

  1. 

    Even if you are an outright former prostitute, this does not necessarily preclude you from status if you just choose the right social group (i.e. move to Berkeley). For example, Aella, despite being, as far as I can tell, a midwit, seems to have parlayed her former profession into over 140,000 substack subscribers and about twice as many Twitter followers. This seems to have happened on the back of lurid prose and lurid twitter polls masquerading as "research". Having been Nate Soares' side piece, she has secured funding from MIRI for an AI safety project with other e-girls signing up as mentors. She's also been interviewed on Dwarkesh's podcast - unfortunately the video has been taken down, perhaps because the guy looked like he's nursing a hardon the whole time.
    

    Of course, Aella is something of an interesting counterexample to your specific argument because she is unable to find a husband despite offering a bounty of 100k for an introduction. However, her standards leave very few men in the pool and there may be only a handful of men on the planet who meet them.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Some of these women literally marry and have kids with men they meet at gangbangs. An indicator of the state of socializing in America?
    

    3. 



I solemnly swear I only know about this stuff due to my wife's morbid interest in it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah, but I consumed the cabinet the moment I bought it. It's actually sledgehammers that exist to increase the consumption of goods. I could consume a set of cabinets every week with one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But there is a separation between the telos and the day-to-day work




Sorry about all that, but I'd still rather see this buried. Maybe we can bring back shop class, or just return a few hours a week to the kids that they can use to go to a maker space rather than grinding legible college app activities.




But it's noteworthy that Lego seems to be pulling toward the UMC strivers, that FIRST decided to nope out.




I don't quite understand. Who is even doing this besides the strivers?




It's even more noteworthy that result seems destructive toward FIRST




Is FIRST not basically the only game in town?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have to say something because @orthoxerox made the same mistake but with the excuse of being a native speaker of a language without articles. The movie is called Snatch.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Was The Snatch not a big hit in the US? It was extremely popular in Russia.




I'd assume that most people don't look up what a "poikey" is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't pretend to know all the intricacies here, but IME school robotics competitions are mostly used by UMC strivers to pad their kids' college resumes (the earlier they get funnelled into this  the better), complete with parents "helping out" in the class to get their kids favors from the teacher.


Inshallah this whole edifice will be plowed under and the earth salted.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well just the other day I used a screwdriver to tighten a loose cabinet door. That didn't increase production of anything, in fact, it decreased the demand for new cabinetry.


Am I misusing my screwdriver?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Still on The Glass Bead Game. Haven't formed a firm opinion just yet despite being nearly 60% done, but intrigued enough to continue. I get that it's a kind of hagiography of Knecht that's not supposed to be taken at face value but I'm hoping there's more to it still.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Screwdrivers exist to screw screws for a purpose.




Is there anything that exists to do X for no purpose?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wow. You're telling me for the first time.


What are screwdrivers for?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do screwdrivers exist to drive screws? Then why are there undriven screws still? Are screwdrivers so bad at their job?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Detroit, China: A personal account of a small slice of urban decay in China
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for this. A few scattered thoughts.


    

  1. 

    It's fascinating to see the fun house mirror reflection of western classical architecture in that development your grandparents used to live in.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    The drug problem is much improved in SF under the new mayor - most of the large encampments (e.g. 24th Street Bart, un plaza) have been broken up, though I admit you can still see small groups of fent enjoyers here and there.
    

    3. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Tech companies can't seem to admit that demand for their products may be declining. Or that advertising and data harvesting for free products aren't as valuable as they thought.




Well. We don't have to speculate, these are mostly public companies. Meta's Q1 profit (not revenue) is up 30% YoY. Doesn't sound like demand is declining to me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do concede they are better than asphalt or corrugated metal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Searching "black guy who drove a car into a parade" returns the wiki article on the attack as the first result and has the same info in the AI box.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What does it mean to be compatible with IKEA furniture? Standing seam roofs are truly a Faustian bargain of giving up aesthetics in return for durability.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Who's saying anything about the greater economy?  CS new grad underemployment is low compared to other majors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's an interesting fact, but I don't see why it wouldn't show up in unemployment/underemployment figures. If fewer people are going into CS when there's a glut of workers and unemployment is stable... Seems everything is working as intended?