theCircusWeakman
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User ID: 2239
theCircusWeakman
6d ago
Is Foursquare worth the hype? I've never been much of a rum drinker, although I know plenty of whisky enthusiasts who love it.
theCircusWeakman
6d ago
I kind of agree, actually. My favorite spirits are those where the smell reminds me of a specific memory or a place from my childhood. That subjective quality is going to be unique to each drinker, and it's far more interesting to me than the proof, or age, or region that the drink is from.
Jameson, on the rocks, is what I always order the first time I try out a new bar. They always have it in stock, it's always smooth and pleasant. It's great when I'm just hanging out and don't want to have to concentrate on what I'm drinking.
theCircusWeakman
6d ago
I enjoy Lagavulin a lot, although the 16 is absurdly overpriced in my neck of the woods; I don't think I've ever seen it priced below $100. For a similar investment you could get some top shelf Islays like Laphraoig Lore, Ardbeg Uigeadail, or Kilchoman Loch Gorm, all of which I think are better than the Lag 16. Then again, I tend to gravitate towards higher-proof, bolder whiskies generally, while I think Lagavulin is aiming for a smoother, more subdued whisky that's still complex and interesting.
theCircusWeakman
7d ago
How about another "what are you drinking" thread?
I picked up a bottle of Noah's Mill bourbon based on the recommendation of @yofuckreddit a few months back, and I really enjoy it so far. I usually find the "bourbon" category pretty homogeneous in terms of smell and taste, so I tend to seek out whiskeys with more varied flavors like rye and scotch. But this bottle has some wonderful nutty vanilla notes on the nose with a lingering woody, waxy flavor that helps set it apart from a typical bourbon.
At a friend's place I finally got to try Octomore for the first time. Peated scotch is probably my favorite kind of spirit, and Octomore's claim to fame is having the highest concentration of peat smoke--something like 2-5 times as much as other heavily-peated whiskeys like Laphroaig. The difference is impressive on paper, but on the palate it doesn't really taste much smokier than a Laphroaig or a Port Charlotte; maybe 5-10% smokier. Still an excellent whiskey, and I'm glad I got to try it to satisfy my curiosity, but I don't feel any desire to pay $300 for a bottle of my own.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
I picked up an excellent bottle of Knob Creek Rye, a single barrel pick from a local liquor store. It's high proof, has a wonderful waxy cedar flavor, with a background savory note that reminds me of olives. In the past I've mostly focused on Scotch, but I'm eager to find some more exciting American whiskies like this. I got to try some George T. Stagg at a whiskey tasting recently, unfortunately it was like the 7th thing we had and my palate was pretty much fried, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate it.
I tried my first Indian whisky recently, the Indri Three-wood single malt. For about $55, I'm very happy with it; it has a lot of notes I don't usually find in whisky, like mango and lemon peel. I need to give Amrut and Paul John a try; I've heard good things about them. I also enjoyed the Cotswolds English single malt, which is similar but has more of a peaches-and-pears fruity flavor.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
Thanks for creating this topic. I've been mulling these things over since the earlier thread, in which I promised to explain my views in more detail. (For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming that Christianity is neither conclusively proved nor disproved by logic or science; the question is, in the absence of convincing proof, why be a Christian?). For what it's worth, here are my scattered thoughts on the matter:
You mentioned Chesterton's "truth-telling thing"; but another theme running through Chesterton's apologetics is that "rationalism" ultimately undermines its own foundations. A person becomes a Rationalist (TM) because he thinks truth is objectively valuable, but if he follows the tenets of rationalism to their logical conclusion he discovers that nothing is objectively valuable. A skeptic who begins by doubting everything that can't be confirmed by his own senses must (if he's consistent) end up doubting his senses themselves. Rationality, empiricism, skepticism, etc. are worthwhile tools, but they must yield at some point to pragmatism. We follow them as far as they are useful, but when they stop being useful and start being counter-productive, we have to reach outside of them for some common-sense axioms or external value judgments in order for them to keep working. The question is, working towards what? A saw may be the best tool for cutting a plank, but you don't cut a plank because the saw told you to. You have to have some ultimate project in mind--some terminal goal, independent of the saw, and for which the saw is merely instrumental.
I guess I'm saying my reasons for being religious might be better described as "meta-rational" than "rational." In the earlier thread, multiple people equated rationalism to "epistemic hygiene," and I think that's a good description. Just as physical hygiene prevents us from polluting our bodies with harmful organisms and filth, rationalism prevents us from polluting our epistemology with delusions and superstitions. But hygiene is only a means to an end; nobody treats "be hygienic" as a life goal. Or if they do, we recognize that that person's priorities are messed up. For example, a germophobe obsessed with cleanliness may practice impeccable physical hygiene, but in the process, he sacrifices his overall physical health. He may scrub his hands until his skin is raw; he may throw out all the food in his kitchen if he discovers a single spot of mold on a slice of bread, he may poison himself with the fumes of the industrial-strength cleaning products he applies to every inch of his home. He can't sleep for fear of unconsciously breathing in germs, and his heart is about to give out from the stress of his constant germ-related anxiety. Obviously, this person's obsession with hygiene is detrimental not only to his health, but to almost every other facet of his overall well-being. He needs to scale back his uncompromising commitment to hygiene until it stops jeopardizing his mental and physical health. He needs to apply "meta-hygiene": i.e., to evaluate whether his approach to hygiene has overstepped its usefulness.
Similarly, I think a commitment to epistemic hygiene can be taken too far, when it ceases to promote a person's overall well-being. Again, rationality is generally healthy and useful, and insofar as rationalism makes you better off, you should keep following it. And religion is by no means necessarily a good thing. Suppose you belong to a weird, fundamentalist religion that rejects modern scientific medicine as "witchcraft" and insists that all diseases can be cured with "faith healing" rituals. You suffer from some disease, and despite attending plenty of faith healing rituals you never seem to be improving. Eventually, you discover rationalism, and you determine that these tenets of your religion are false: modern medicine doesn't rely on witchcraft but on well-attested biology, whereas faith healing doesn't work any better than placebo. You leave your old fundamentalist beliefs behind, start going to a real doctor, and your health and overall well-being improves. This kind of outcome is celebrated both by militant atheists and by huge swathes of ordinary Christians, most of whom (in my experience) are happy to apply reason and empiricism to mundane-but-important issues like medicine.
I'm one of those ordinary Christians. I don't think my religion is comparable to the faith-healing cult described above; on the contrary, I think its effects on my life are extremely salutary. My belief that God created the universe as part of his benevolent plan gives me a reason to endure hardship with patience and hope. My belief in God's goodness provides an objective basis for morality that guides my actions and encourages me to follow my conscience. My church community has helped me make plenty of friends whom I trust to share my values. But ultimately, the primary reason I have no interest in abandoning my religion is that my faith provides a foundation of meaning for my whole life. It's only because I believe in Christ that I care about belief at all.
If my life wasn't given to me for a reason, then why should I care if I'm living my life for the wrong reasons? If there is no such thing as "good" and "bad," then how could it be bad for me to wrongly believe in good and bad? If there's no free will, who can judge me for going on believing in free will? If we're all dead in the long run, who cares whether I wrongly believed in life after death? When I say rationalism can't justify itself, I don't just mean in the sense that e.g. mathematics can't prove its own axioms. I mean that the acid of skepticism ultimately dissolves any reason for being a skeptic. Belief is different; as soon as you start to believe, you suddenly have a reason to care whether your beliefs are true.
My views might be different if the Rationalists (TM) I knew were noticeably better off than the Christians I know. But this doesn't seem to be true. The Christians I know tend to be sane, sensible, happy, friendly, calm--more or less in proportion to their devoutness. The Rationalists I know, on the other hand, don't seem to be any happier than the general population; if anything, they seem to be more anxious, aimless, and neurotic than average. In fact, I'd say the most unhappy people I know of--the most miserable nihilists, the doomsayers and blackpillers, the suicide and human extinction advocates--are pretty much all atheists and agnostics. This calls for epistemic meta-hygiene: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
To be clear, I'm just trying to explain why I have no interest in abandoning my religion for the sake of rationalism. I'm not trying to convince rationalists to join my religion. If they're happy where they are, why should they want to change? But at the same time, since I'm happy with my beliefs (rational or not), why should I want to change--especially when, for the reasons given above, I strongly suspect I wouldn't be happy or fulfilled outside a religious worldview? And if, from time to time, some rationalist should decide that he'd be happier in the Church, and if he finds the faith within himself to believe it, why shouldn't he take the plunge? What does he have to lose?
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
Sorry for the late reply; I've had a busy couple days. Thanks for the through response!
Consider the religious approach to morality: that God tells us right from wrong. I think the best rebuttal to that has remained unchanged for a couple thousand years when it was introduced by Plato, if I'm not mistaken. It runs as follows. Suppose God says killing is wrong. Did he have some reason to say that it's wrong? Or could he have just as easily said that it's always right to kill anybody else (in which case it would be right because he said it's right)? If you say either that it would still be wrong to kill even if God said it was right, or that God wouldn't/couldn't say killing is right because he had a reason for saying killing is wrong, well then we can appeal directly to the reason and skip the middle man.You're right, of course, that if morality had some basis more authoritative than God, then God would be a mere "middle man" and would not be necessary to the determination of moral truths. But I don't agree that "it would still be wrong to kill even if God said it was right, or that God wouldn't/couldn't say killing is right because he had a reason for saying killing is wrong." I believe God's nature is the source of goodness; you can't appeal to some standard of goodness higher than God. But it also isn't true to say that God could arbitrarily change good to evil or vice versa; God--being perfect--has no reason to change his nature, and--being omnipotent--his nature can't be changed by anything else. An actions is "good" insofar as it conforms to the immutable will of God.
Your "witchcraft" example conflates a factual dispute for a moral dispute: science can tell us whether or not the village witch is guilty of destroying the crops (a factual question), but it can't tell us whether or not people who destroy crops deserve to be punished (a moral question). I think you acknowledge this, since you agree that science can't derive an "ought" from an "is."
Reason can justify an "ought" statement, but only by presupposing a condition: "you ought to exercise if you want to be healthy; you ought to punish criminals if you want to deter crime" etc. So I don't think your examples work:
Suppose someone were to say, "Why should I care if I cause you pain or kill you? Your pain isn't my pain, and besides, I'd like to take your possessions after I kill you." Well, he won't convince anyone else that only his suffering matters and no one else's, so he is in no position to object if others were to treat him that way. Since no one wants to be treated that way, and since one's power over others is uncertain (tomorrow you might be in a position to be killed by a bigger man or a larger mob), it's in everyone's interest to collectively agree that randomly killing and pillaging is wrong.Plenty of powerful people can say, with a high degree of confidence, that they will*not* be killed tomorrow by a bigger man or a larger mob. Genghis Khan killed and pillaged to his heart's content, and he lived well into his sixties and, by most accounts, died by falling off his horse and/or contracting an illness. Meanwhile, plenty of moral people end up getting killed or pillaged *in spite of* always behaving as if killing and pillaging are wrong. If morality has no better basis than this sort of social-contract-theory, then the Genghis Khans of the world have no use for it.
Earlier, you (correctly) pointed out that, if God is a middle man between humans and morality, we can just skip God and go straight to morality. But your own view of morality seems to treat it as a "middle man" for rational self-interest. If Genghis Khan says, "Why don't I skip the morality, and go straight for my own rational self-interest (i.e. killing and pillaging with impunity, because I enjoy it and I'm powerful enough to get away with it)?", how could you dissuade him?
Similarly, while I agree humans generally have evolved a "moral intuition," I don't agree with you that it's "universal." Psychopaths seem to be lacking the moral compunctions that are innate in ordinary humans. And while plenty of psychopaths end up dead or in prison, intelligent and capable psychopaths often become wildly successful. It seems like, above a certain level of intelligence, psychopathy is a very useful trait (which might explain why it hasn't been selected out of existence). So, if you can't appeal to Genghis Khan's moral intuitions, because he wasn't born with them--and if you can't appeal to his rational or game-theoretic self-interest--how do you convince him not to kill and pillage?
The only way I can think of is to convince him that killing and pillaging are not desirable because they are not good. And we know they are not good, because God is good and God is opposed to killing and pillaging. If Genghis Khan continues to kill and pillage, his life will be unfulfilling because he has not followed what is good, and after his death he will be punished by God for disobeying his will.
Now, you may not believe these things, and Genghis Khan may not believe them either. In that case, we're no better off than we would be under your system. But we're no worse off, either. And, at the margins, there are some rare instances where religious appeals appear to have moved otherwise implacable pillagers and conquerors; we'll never know what Pope Leo said during his meeting with Attila the Hun, but we do know the latter subsequently called off the invasion of Rome.
But my arguments about the religious basis of moral truths are, obviously, less relevant to moral non-realists like you than to, say, atheists who still believe in objective morality, like a lot of utilitarians (Scott Alexander's Utilitarian FAQ, for example, never actually explains why anyone should assign value to other people; this seems like it's kind of the entire crux of utilitarianism, but Scott brushes it off as a "basic moral intuition" (section 3.1)). If you're willing to bite the bullet that morality is just a spook, then you have no reason to be troubled by materialism's failure to establish an objective basis for morality. But you also don't have much room to criticize people who are convinced of objective morality, if their convictions turn them away from a materialism that's inadequate to justify moral truths.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
(This is tangential to my main point, but just for fun: Is there a probability where it becomes justified to believe something? 2% is too low, but 100% is too high--that would "commit you to a useless stance of Cartesian doubt." Is there a cutoff? If so, where is it and why? Even if you only believe ideas at 99% probability or above, you're still accepting up to a 1% chance that your belief is false. Wouldn't it be safer to say that you simply "don't have a belief on the matter?" On the other hand, if you can believe something at 99%, why not at 80%, or 51%? Why not at, say, 30%, if all the alternatives are even less likely?)
You say "Why is it a problem to simply state that you don't know why there is something rather than nothing or what consciousness is, and thus don't have a belief on the matter?" Good question, and I can't think of a good answer except that it seems painfully unsatisfactory to me, like asking someone starving in the desert "why can't you simply enjoy being hungry?" But I can't help but notice you didn't apply that reasoning to the next big question I mentioned: "how ought we to act?" The is/ought gap can't be bridged empirically. But it has to be bridged somehow--before you can act, you need to know how you ought to act. You can't just throw up your hands and say, "I don't know"; every deliberate action implies a value judgment.
If science is silent on the "ought," then we either need to look outside of science for our values or else give up on objective values altogether. If, as you argue, all beliefs should be scientifically justifiable, then we can't look outside science for our values; therefore, we have no alternative but to abandon the idea of objective values, and with it any ideas about how we "ought" to act.
If this premise: "All beliefs ought to be based on empirical discoveries about the universe"
leads to this conclusion: "Beliefs about what 'ought' to be are baseless and unjustifiable"
then the premise seems to refute itself.
I'm interested to know if you consider yourself a moral realist or not; if you do, how do you respond to this? Apologies if I've grossly misunderstood your position.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
Thanks for this thorough response. Just to clarify, I don't think "people should believe falsehoods because they're beneficial"--people should aspire to have correct beliefs, even if they get warm, fuzzy feelings from having incorrect beliefs. I think arguments about ideas should be focused on whether the ideas or true, without worrying about the collateral concern of whether they are "beneficial" in some other way. What I do think is that, in areas where "such-and-such remains unclear, more research is needed" (which covers an enormous amount of the space of possible truth), it's not an irrational heuristic to select among available truth claims the one that adds the most meaning to your life.
I apologize for my flippant "oxygen" example--it was the best I could think of at the time--since I am absolutely happy to defer to scientific consensus (in proportion to the reliability of the subfield) in all matters. I don't believe in young-earth creationism, for instance, even though a lot of Christians do believe in it and have advanced some conveniently non-falsifiable theories explaining away the physical evidence of fossils, radiocarbon dating, etc. The consensus of lots of reliable subfields--geology, biology, astrophysics, etc.--would need to be wrong in order for young-earth creationism to be right. So--like most Christians who aren't fundamentalist Protestants--I'm happy to accept the mainstream scientific view on that question.
But there are some very important questions where there is no scientific consensus: why is there something instead of nothing? What is consciousness? (Incidentally, I'm often confused by the confidence with which atheists reject the possibility of any sort of "afterlife"--they may not know what consciousness is or how it works, but they're positive it disappears when you die! But that's another discussion.) Is morality even real, and if so, how ought we to act? In my view (you may disagree) these questions have resisted scientific explanation since the dawn of time, and they don't seem likely to be scientifically settled anytime soon. I don't want to get too into the weeds of these particular questions, unless you want me to. Suffice it to say that, if we have to wait for "better science" to explain these things, we may be waiting a long time. What should we believe in the meantime? It's not like we can just brush these questions off; they seem super important to any kind of complete worldview! I can't wait for science to catch up; I need to live now!
Finally, I don't know that "being convinced of the truth value" of something is necessary to belief. Being convinced of the falsity of an idea is, of course, fatal to belief--but as long as something could be true, and isn't patently less probable than other competing ideas, I don't see why one couldn't believe it. I think everyone relies on heuristics like "meaning" to select their most important beliefs from among several more-or-less-as-likely ideas.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
For my part, I'm not sure I experience the "paradox of belief." I've never understood why some rationalists act like "faith" is irrational, as if you're only permitted to believe in things that are epistemically certain. Beyond "cogito ergo sum," there's not much knowledge available to us that's not ultimately based on pragmatic leaps of logic. I can't prove that the world outside my head really exists, or that the past and future really exist, or that causation is real. I don't pretend to understand Godel's incompleteness theorem, but my layman's understanding of it is that even math relies on unprovable assumptions to work. And most of what we call "scientific knowledge" is far more tenuous than these propositions: we say that we know, for example, that an oxygen atom has eight protons, but I've never actually checked. I just assume the scientists who say that know what they're talking about and have no reason to lie. (These are not always safe assumptions to make about scientists.) I'm told that a lot of chemical reactions would not work if oxygen had more or less than 8 protons per atom, but again, I have no personal way of knowing whether that's true, beyond my mostly-uncritical acceptance of scientific consensus. In the face of pure, uncompromising skepticism, scientific "knowledge" is just as untenable as religious belief.
We ultimately rely on faith for almost all the knowledge we use--because otherwise we couldn't use any knowledge. Epistemic certainty has to yield to pragmatic utility. Therefore, as long as my religious beliefs aren't provably false (which would be utility-decreasing, because it would cause me to make predictions that turn out to be incorrect, to my detriment), and if those beliefs make me better off (consensus seems to be that religious people tend to be happier and more mentally healthy than nonbelievers), I don't see why it's "irrational" to continue being religious.
Finally, plenty of prominent rationalists have beliefs that seem just as strange and unfalsifiable as my own religious beliefs; some believe that we're living in a simulation, some believe in panpsychism, some believe we inhabit a multiverse where every possible reality exists at once, etc. I don't see why Christianity is any less compatible with rationalism than these other weird ideas.
Like you, I find Christianity imparts meaning to my life in a way no other worldview can. It has unequivocally improved the quality of my life. The smart thing to do--the rational thing--would be to go on believing it and acting accordingly. I have further thoughts, but I've got to go now.
theCircusWeakman
5mo ago
Culture war stories involving the legacy of the Confederacy--and Confederate heroes like Lee in particular--are always troubling to me, in part perhaps because, as a Southerner, I don't know myself what to make of that legacy. The existence of the whole Confederate movement is so inextricably bound up with the crime of slavery that celebrating the heroes of the movement seems, on its face, indefensible. I am probably more "woke" than the average Mottizen when it comes to American race issues; I believe HBD is a worse explanation for persistent black underachievement than the lingering effect of centuries of cultural disruption under slavery combined with decades of further disruption under racist post-Civil-War legislation (although neither explanation is fully satisfactory). I would find it shocking if the current problems with American black culture weren't primarily due to the uniquely extreme oppression blacks faced for so many generations. We can debate whether or not the South would have abandoned slavery on its own initiative without it being forced to do so by the Union's victory in the Civil War, but I don't see how one could deny that the intent of the founders of the Confederacy was to preserve slavery in perpetuity (mostly for the benefit of wealthy plantation owners, rather than working white Southerners). When people, on the Motte or elsewhere, castigate the Confederates as racist losers who picked a stupid fight in furtherance of an execrable cause, I can't find a good reason for disagreeing with them.
And yet I do disagree with them--I do admire Lee, and for some reason I'm proud of the South and of the Confederacy. I can't explain it rationally. I like that, despite being ill-equipped and outnumbered 2-1, the South held out for over four years in a hot war with a technologically superior foe. I'm glad we didn't just roll over to the North's demands, but made the Yankees fight for it. I even take a perverse and morbid pride in the fact we killed more of them than they killed of us.
What's even more confusing is that, for most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, it seemed like it was fine to like the Confederacy. Pop-culture protagonists in books, movies, TV shows, comic strips, etc., could be Confederate soldiers or open Confederate sympathizers and still be beloved by post-war Americans, North and South. American society didn't seem interested in condemning pro-Confederate Southerners as "traitors" or excoriating them as "racists"--even though the charges were as just then as they are now. I feel like the attitude of Americans, a few decades after the Civil War, might be summed up in this picture. At best, people on both sides seemed willing to put the dark past behind them and settle into a mutual civility. At worst, it seemed like non-Southerners viewed Southern pride and loyalty to the rebel cause as a sort of quaint, harmless expression of regional patriotism.
The vitriol towards Confederates I see in stories like this and in some of the comments here seems new. I can't say that those commenters are wrong--I share their reasons for disliking the Confederacy, although something (maybe just the loyalty of my Southern blood) prevents me from reacting with the same level of antipathy. I just wonder what happened to the truce that seemed to have once reigned in this particular culture war.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
theCircusWeakman
9mo ago
I looked at the complaint, which you can read for yourself here. It is 120 pages long, with 505 paragraphs. The Unz article is discussed in only four of those paragraphs, and is only mentioned on three pages. The Petitioner's actual briefs at the Supreme Court level don't appear to cite the article at all.
The guardian article also lists four Amicus briefs as containing references to the Unz article. My impression was always that amicus briefs can be submitted by any random group that claims an interest in the outcome of the litigation. Scotusblog lists a huge number of amicus briefs in this case.
Clearly, the plaintiffs did not "rely on this single article." This looks like an attempt by the Guardian to tar the plaintiffs by association based on an extremely tenuous connection to a controversial figure.
theCircusWeakman
10mo ago
You may be thinking of this SSC article. This was an entry in the "Adversarial Collaboration Contest" Scott hosted a few years ago.
Sensitivity and Sexual satisfaction
There is a highly plausible mechanism by which circumcision could reduce sexual sensitivity: the foreskin is highly innervated (20,000 nerve endings is often repeated, but this appears to be a case of citogenesis and is likely far too high), produces lubrication for the penis, and is sensitive to light touch. Several studies demonstrate that the foreskin is more sensitive to certain forms of nonsexual stimulation than other parts of the penis. The glans itself does not change in sensitivity from circumcision.
Sexual satisfaction, particularly in sexually active heterosexual men, seems to be unchanged with adult circumcision. During studies of adult circumcision for HIV prevention, in which large numbers of men were randomized to receive circumcision at the time of the study or after, sexual satisfaction of did not significantly differ between the two groups. On the other hand, a South Korean study of men circumcised as adults (as has become traditional there) found decreased pleasure from masturbation after circumcision. It is certainly possible that both these things are true – that masturbation is impaired by adult circumcision while intercourse is not. It is also possible that the Korean study (retrospective, smaller than the African studies, and with much higher rates of scarring than are observed in the US) was unrepresentative. There are two European studies which are frequently cited: cohort studies look at circumcised and uncircumcised men in Denmark and Belgium. However, circumcision is quite rare in these countries, and the majority of the circumcisions in the study groups were performed to correct problems such as phimosis. They are thus comparing men who had penile problems requiring surgical correction to men who did not; it is therefore unclear why they are frequently cited in discussions of elective circumcision.
No available studies actually measure sensitivity to sexual stimulation, which is of course an important topic – but one requiring consummate professionalism on the part of the researcher. We are left waiting for such a study, but in the meantime may reasonably fear that there is some decrease in at least masturbatory pleasure due to circumcision even though the evidence for this is weak. The evidence does not support any change in sexual pleasure otherwise.
Infant circumcision may be different than adult circumcision, in addition. If circumcision eliminates important nerves, due to brain plasticity infants are likely better able than adults to reassign the portions of the brain processing the foreskin to other areas of the penis. A large survey of circumcised and uncircumcised men in the US (where infant circumcision is the most common) found similar sensation in circumcised and uncircumcised men. The uncircumcised men appear to have had slightly higher incidences of sexual dysfunction. Also of interest, circumcised men appear to have an easier time obtaining oral sex, which may relate to subtle aspects of class or may have to do with the perceived cleanliness of circumcised penis.
theCircusWeakman
11mo ago
There's some clever ones this year. I like "Uncle Xom's Tabbin" and "Why did it have to be Snake."
theCircusWeakman
11mo ago
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup - 0.30 Tournament: The Motte Clan
I know there are some fans of classic roguelikes in this community; I've seen references to Cataclysm DDA and Dwarf Fortress both here and as a lurker during the reddit years. In my opinion, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is one of the most enjoyable, user-friendly and well-polished examples of the genre, with enough depth and difficulty to challenge roguelike veterans but enough quality-of-life features to make it fun and rewarding for beginners. But one of the best and most unique features is the possibility of online play in your web browser through official servers, with semi-annual tournaments marking the release of new updates! You can spectate and chat in other players' games, fight "ghosts" of other players' slain characters, and--most importantly--compete for high scores or for a number of "challenge banners." I've played in tournaments in the past, and I strongly recommend it for anyone who likes this type of game. Instructions for how to play online
So I thought I would gauge the interest in forming a clan to compete in the upcoming tournament, which runs from 20:00 UTC today, May 5, through May 21. (But if you're interested, you can join a clan anytime between now and next Friday, May 12). Joining a clan is simple and fairly informal: instructions.
You don't have to be an advanced player, or even to have played at all; it's fun just to help each other learn the game, discuss strategy and tactics, etc. I also don't expect any particular time commitment (the great thing about roguelikes is you can play for a few minutes at a time, quit whenever you like, and when you come back the game will put you right back where you left off). If you're interested in playing and think you can manage a couple hours or more over the next two weeks, you're welcome to join. Even two or three players would make a viable clan, but more is merrier!
The tradition is to give the team a name with a terrible pun. Because quokkas are a type of enemy in this game (for some reason), and in honor of our mascot, I have chosen "QuokkaRoundTheClock" as the tentative clan name. (I realize it's awful, and I'm open to better suggestions!) You can join by adding "# TEAMCAPTAIN theCircusWeakman" to the top of your RC file. Let me know below (or in a DM) if you want to join and what your player name is, so I can add you as a team member!
I'll be checking this thread every few hours, in case anyone wants to join or has any questions!
theCircusWeakman
1yr ago
I second the recommendation for Aberlour "A'bunadh," with the caveat that it's bottled at cask strength (over 60% ABV iirc) and can be pretty harsh without water or ice. Here are a few other whiskies I've enjoyed over the past year or so:
Port Charlotte "Heavily Peated" 10 - This Islay is probably my current favorite whisky, and it's comparable in price to the 10-year offerings from Ardbeg and Laphraoig. The smoke is assertive, but not overpowering; as you gradually acclimate to it, the underlying sweetness and complexity becomes more accessible. I've found notes of marzipan, cookie dough, and citrus alongside funkier flavors like seaweed and clay.
Bunnahabhain 12 - An unpeated Islay whisky. One of the most unique whiskies I've tasted, with notes of red apples, tobacco, leather, milk chocolate and musty old books. Another, very different, unpeated Islay worth trying is Bruichladdich's "The Classic Laddie," a salty, cereal, honeyed dram with "bass notes" of raisin and tennis ball rubber.
Kilchoman "Sanaig" - I remember being struck by how rich and intense the smell of this whisky was the moment I opened the bottle. A thick layer of nutty smoke over sweet cut grass notes--it makes me think of a big barn full of hay.
Arran 10 - Hits the palate with a simple, classic butterscotch flavor, but soon develops into bold fruit notes, mainly peaches and tropical fruits, before finishing dry and woody. Very impressive and complex for a 10-year-old unpeated whisky.
Highland Park Cask Strength - Like the A'bunadh, this is over 60% and is not at all "smooth." But underneath the ethanol burn there are intense and interesting floral and mineral notes with a background of tangy, fusile smokiness like a freshly-burnt-out match. The ornate bottle design may or may not appeal to you--I think it's well-executed, even though Highland Park's "Viking" branding generally makes me roll my eyes.
Other good choices include Ardbeg "Uigeadail," Ledaig 10, Laphraoig Cask Strength, Benriach "The Smoky Twelve," and blended malts like Johnny Walker Green Label and anything by Compass Box.
Also, before you spend big bucks on scotch (or any spirit), it pays to invest in appropriate glassware. Tumblers are fine if you only drink with ice, but most single malts are made to be drunk near room temperature. A tulip-shaped glass like a glencairn or snifter is ideal; fill the glass up to its widest point, to expose the highest possible surface area of the spirit to the air inside the glass. This intensifies the aroma, which is just as important as the taste for appreciating whisky. Roll the liquor around the glass before nosing so the "legs" stick to the sides of the glass, further increasing the exposed surface area. With the right glass you can savor a whisky for ten or fifteen minutes before you've even tasted it.
I attribute a lot of the homogeneity of modern American whiskey to suppliers like MGP. It's not bad, but it's ubiquitous, and I worry that a lot of potential variety and novelty of flavor is missing because so many brands are just bottling one mega-producer's spirits. If it's not MGP, it's often some other supplier of "sourced" whiskey. I've started following this rule-of-thumb: only buy bourbon or rye that says on the label "Distilled AND bottled by..." instead of just "bottled by..." Whiskey needs to come pretty highly-recommended for me to break this rule nowadays.
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