thejdizzler
23hr ago
Is it just me or has this latest wave of communications technology really homogenized the youth? Both German and Italian and Spanish (from my course in Bath) preteens seem to be dressing like American tik-tok sluts and acting like phone zombies?
thejdizzler
3d ago
Immigration isn't going to be a viable solution for much longer. Every country outside of Africa pretty much has a below 2.0 fertility rate. Even if it does work out it's just can kicking.
If we do somehow figure out how to raise fertility rates (unlikely) the generation that manages to do so is going to have a very rough time because of sky high dependency ratios (both more kids and more elderly people).
thejdizzler
4d ago
Traveling in Germany this week, no progress on any goals. Check back with me next week.
thejdizzler
7d ago
I was hoping for the Mamdani sighting, but alas this was all completely off.
thejdizzler
7d ago
Argentina’s tactics are extremely sketchy and dark arts which is the main reason I’m rooting against them. Also the spain team is quite white…
thejdizzler
7d ago
Can anyone steel-man the Argentinian position re: the Falklands (Malvinas)? I got into a few heated arguments with an Argentinian women during my course about them, and the Argentinian position doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Argentine never actually had sovereignty over the islands, nor does the local population want them there.
thejdizzler
8d ago
Upvoted for a really nice McCarthy parody. Laughed a lot.
thejdizzler
11d ago
I don't believe that this is the case. The kind of violence present in Blood Meridian is very much not inherent to nature. Animals do not engage in the kind of orgy of killing that Glanton's gang gets up to.
thejdizzler
11d ago
I did not view Blood Meridian as suggesting that violence is inherent to human nature. The judge wants you to think that's the theme, but the judge is a liar. I think Blood Meridian also wants you to see how a system of social pressure allows people to commit violent acts without blinking an eye because everyone else is doing it. The judge claims that this is a property inherent to humans, but from the first moment we meet the judge he is lying to get people to do what he wants, so why would he be telling the full truth when he monologues to the reader (credit to my friend Emory for this realization).
thejdizzler
11d ago
My B, I def meant A Game of Thrones.
I’m thinking of the series before book 5 where it goes off into crazy land. I like books 5-7 but i recognize that they are objectively bad, especially book 7 with its author insert and Spiderman 3 syndrome. I did genuinely enjoy the ending and I think the message genuinely resonated with me when I read the books. In terms of the focus on violence I’m really specifically thinking about The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three, which capture the over the top violence and tarot symbolism of BM without the purple prose, and with dialogue marks and actual character development.
thejdizzler
11d ago
The two towers? Never said anything about that.
With the gunslinger in particular, i see a lot of parallels between the judge and the man in black. The man in black through the whole first book is forcing roland to commit terrible acts of violence: murdering a whole town of people, pushing jake into the abyss, etc
With Game of Thrones I think the parallel is even more clear. There are specific characters who basically come straight out of BM (Gregor Clegane) and even characters who have some more moral complexity don’t hesitate to brutalize the peasantry in a way that Glanton’s gang would find very familiar.
thejdizzler
12d ago
- Work. Still in this UK class, having a great time. Becoming Europilled.
- Fitness: Mileage suffered a little with travel last week but still did 40 miles and 1x tempo session! Back to normal this week I think. Saw the lowest heart rate I've ever record this week (39).
- Intellectual stuff: finished Blood Meridian finally. Terrible book, I think both Game of Thrones and The Dark Tower books do the theme much better. Learning loads of language/other stuff from my European colleagues.
- Finances: Not even thinking about this until the end of the month.
- Dating. I've very quickly redeleted my dating apps again. Not helpful
- Tarot. No session.
- Socializing: Been very social in bath
- Screen time: 2.5 hours, but makes sense given travel!
- Mental health: Pretty good, although lots of anxiety on this travel trip
I do not fantasize about castrating chad anymore. I was shown the errors of my ways.
thejdizzler
12d ago
The idea that we need to regulate the sexual marketplace via tradition is definitely a conservative view. Not a libertarian view mind you, but libertarians arent really rightists.
thejdizzler
12d ago
Resident leftist here (at least on some topics: degrowth, veganism, openness to at least reading about things like Marxism). I don't feel like I fit in either of your categories (freshly educated zoomer, troll). I sometimes get dogpiled here, but my most severe dogpile came from a rather rightest view (castrate all chads), and I think that I have both learned quite a bit from this forum, and hopefully also done some enlightening myself.
thejdizzler
17d ago
On the contrary, I think they're directly in conflict. Each rocket launch represents thousands of tons of carbon released into the atmosphere. I know climate change isn't a popular hobby horse on this forum (which I think is silly), but I believe it is one of the largest crises of our time, especially given the recent heat waves in Europe. Why risk even further climate destabilization just to push forward colonization a few thousand years when we're talking about billion year time scales.
In a similar vein, every engineer at SpaceX probably could have another kid or two if they weren't working so hard, which would be good for the gene people. And they could be working on more socially useful technologies. Although if I'm being honest, SpaceX isn't really the main problem in the sucking up talent space: it's finance.
thejdizzler
18d ago
You're talking about timescales many thousands of times longer than the existence of human civilization or indeed of any human institution. How about we work on making those things actually sustainable over the long term before we worry about interplanetary colonization.
You might hand-wave this point, but it's not clear to me that we are doing this at all. In fact, there are many indications that we are outrunning our own carrying capacity here, or at leas our own ability to keep a complex society going (see climate change, 6th mass extinction, birth rate collapse). It seems delusional to focus on something so so long term when we can't even keep our population stable or stop fouling our own garden.
thejdizzler
18d ago
The thing is I believe there is no accurate comparison to space colonization because it basically completely detethers us from our own ecology and biology in a way that transatlantic voyages did not. The kind of person that thinks that they want to colonize Mars (the cowboy/Lone Ranger archetype) is incredibly ill-suited to such a venture because of the extremely tight constraints that will inevitably exist in terms of resource usage and time allocation in the first mars colonies. The first mars colonists will basically be living under martial law in caves where they rarely if ever see the sun. This sounds much better suited to the corporate drones who already do very well in existing hierarchies here on earth.
thejdizzler
18d ago
True, but Musk is responsible to his shareholders now (or at least partially). He chose to make spaceX a publicly traded company, which comes with expectations of profitability, at least eventually.
thejdizzler
19d ago
This post gets to the heart of what my problem with the space colonization hype train that seems to be popular on this site. What exactly is the profit motive? Starlink seems very useful and profitable. Colonizing Mars? Not so much, unless investors are willing to eat losses for many decades.
thejdizzler
19d ago
- Work. At a class in the UK for the next two weeks, then vacation in Germany. Travel to the UK was a bit of a shit show (cancelation, missed connection, and finally a lost bag). Research environment in Europe is much more chill, but also very inferior to the US.
- Fitness: Did 2x tempo sessions again last week and 60 miles. Weight is continuing to drop as I have kind of lost my appetite with the heat.
- Intellectual stuff: finished a blog post for this month, and working on my Spanish/Italian as usual. Almost done with Blood Meridian, but it's like pulling teeth.
- Finances: Not even thinking about this until the end of the month.
- Dating. My roommate convinced me to redownload dating apps, which I think was a mistake.
- Tarot. No session.
- Socializing: nice change of environment has got to me excited to socialized and meet people!
- Screen time: 1 hour!
- Mental health: Pretty good, although lots of anxiety on this travel trip
thejdizzler
24d ago
I need to read Huysmans before I read this novel again, because I'm almost entirely convinced that François' piece that he writes about Huysmans during the book (as an introduction to a new edition of the collected works) is cynical and wrong. From my understanding of the second to last chapter, François basically labels Huysmans as a hedonist whose real interests lie in just submitting to his passions, exactly what François plans to do when he converts to Islam. Right before he decides to probably convert, François also takes a trip to the monastery where Huysmans had his revelation/began his conversion. He lives within about 12 hours because he can't handle the austere environment and also I think because he feels guilty about what he's about to do when he gets back.
I think the conversion has to be completely cynical, and Huysmans serves as a foil rather than an emulation. But again, I'd have to read Huysmans to be more sure.
thejdizzler
24d ago
Yea, I mainly did that (see the markdown elsewhere), but missed this one. Thanks!
thejdizzler
24d ago
No I don't, clarified!
Are you a Baltimorean? Didn't know we had more than one on theMotte
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