urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
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User ID: 226
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
2mo ago
This is too bad, but I understand the decision.
I do wish we had more representation for the sort of old-school Reagan/Bush conservatism he embodied. In his advocacy for colorblindness and a sort of common-sense anti-wokeness (rather than a more complex philosophical anti-wokeness) he represented the mainstream strain of conservatism that retains a great deal of power within the West and especially in the US. Of all the posters here, he's the one whose words sounded the most like the conservatives I know in person. In an (admittedly distant) second place is hydroacetylene. Probably FarNearEverywhere is in there somewhere, despite not even being from the same country as me. On the other side of the aisle is resident liberal netstack.
Heck, even his bugbears about all his enemies being the same people sounds a lot like the conservatives I know in person, who would probably be keen to make claims about Democrats being secret HBD-pushing racists. So there's a weird way that, even in his failures, he represented a constituency in our political sphere.
I'll miss his crotchety conservatism. I think the elder realism of posters like him is necessary at times to counteract the philosophical idealism and youthful exuberance that permeate this space. We need more dad energy. And Hlynka had it in spades.
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
27d ago
Trump can't win in 2028, he can only serve two terms. I also have doubts he could successfully appoint a successor, his political success is too married to him personally.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
2mo ago
My girlfriend sent me a link to this Facebook short.
Isn’t it funny that the more affection people have for a person or animal the more silly nicknames they give them? My partner and I call each other all sorts of incredibly silly names. It’s an interesting quirk of our psychology. Why do you think we do this?
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
3mo ago
Biden winning in 2024 and dying in office, leaving the incumbent Harris to run in 2028 actually sounds like a disaster for Democrats. Possibly the easiest election route for DeSantis.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
3mo ago
I’m rather surprised, if this was him trying to find an insult rather than him just screwing up her name, that he didn’t just go for the obvious “Nimrod Nikki Haley” which sounds very Trumpy.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
As it turns out, even the power of capitalism and hot business opportunities kowtows before the power of social opprobrium and hot women's opinions.
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US conservatism is more tightly connected to religiosity than the hard-right parties popular with young people in Europe. I know several young people who are critical of migration, concerned about crime, skeptical of the transgender movement, and opposed to critical race theory, who nonetheless dislike and distrust Republicans because of their strong assocation with evangelicalism. I personally hate to say it, but abortion access is popular among young people and our Lord and Savior isn't.
Bizarrely, I also know young Southern Baptists who went woke, and are moderately hip on gender identity and sexuality issues. I actually have a strong suspicion that within 80 years, respectability politics and the evangelical drive to 'meet people where they are' will result in most big evangelical churches going the way of the mainlines. Traditional Christian morals will probably be the purview of a small minority in insular communities. "I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Ba'al..."
By contrast, among European conservatives, Christianity isn't very popular. In fact, my general understanding is that European conservative parties are typically less religious than the center, where Christian Democratic parties are very strong -- essentially being the mainliners of Europe. European conservatism is typically blood-and-soil, not God-and-guns or even throne-and-altar. They're nationalist with ethnic undertones (except in France), and combine that with a commitment to social welfare. They believe in using the government to provide services to citizens, and hold that the best way to afford this is to limit citizenship to natives and a small group of deserving immigrants. They're nationalist, but also kind of socialist. Hm.
I think opponents of this worldview are kind of right that there are similarities between it and the National-Socialism of Nazi Germany, which was also skeptical of religion and committed to both ethnonationalism and social welfare for the ethnos. It at least lies in the quadrant of skulls and crossbones which has been poisoned by memories of mustache man. But I don't see the irredentism, the genocidal hatred, or the fanaticism of fascism in them. I think there are occasional glimmers of such things -- I recall a discussion on here a while ago about Finnish? politicians saying the n-word in texts and joking about racial superiority. But the situation in Finland re: black people is lightyears away from the situation in pre-war central Europe re: Jewry, and I don't see these as driving motivations for continental European right-wing parties the way they were last century. I see more opposition to recent immigrants causing real, observable problems in society, where the solution doesn't have to do with loading people in camps but in deporting people committing crimes and not taking in new ones.
Even in Anglosphere Europe, the appeal in recent times has sometimes been "let's stop participating in these globalist enterprises/admitting culturally-incompatible migrants so we can fund our social welfare." Such a message was famously emblazoned on a bus. This combination is clearly appealing to many voters, and the unique thing with the Anglosphere is it isn't very appealing to young voters. For the UK, I would pin blame on austerity (however needed) for young voters' skepticism of the Tories, though I think that goes hand-in-hand with a feeling that the Tories represent upper-class Etonian elitists, not the needs of average people.
And across the pond, there are many bread-and-butter issues where the Republicans' traditional fiscal conservatism alienates young voters. Health care reform and workers' protections are the big ones; there are a lot of young people who feel like their lives are controlled by large corporate employers who don't do right by their employees. There are also many who, because of policies of said large corporate employers, struggle to maintain health insurance; they are angered by Republican opposition to even incredibly moderate reforms like Obamacare (even if the most popular component, the parental-health-insurance-under-26 rule, was supported by Trump), and many believe in a single-payer system.
My views on these issues form the biggest divergence between myself and the Republican party. I even support a lot of fiscally-conservative things you might not expect -- I think supply-side economics is a great idea, I oppose wealth taxes, and I think 'pricing gouging' during emergencies provides an economic incentive for people to supply needed goods to a disaster area! But I think there are areas where more needs to be done to make sure Americans have a good quality of life, and aren't exploited by unscrupulous megacorporations or buried under mountains of medical debt.
Of course, it's also possible that I'm full of shit, and talking about a continent I know nothing about based on little more than internet vibes. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
This is an interesting analysis of the dissident right, but keep in mind that this poll wasn't created by or for the dissident right -- the authors of it have never heard of them and would hate them if they had.
There's the mainstream right, that wants low taxes, libertarian policy, and military might. That's the "GOP Establishment," or as their enemies call them, "RINOs." There's the nationalist right, that wants more manufacturing and less foreign wars. That's the "Trumpist" right, or as their enemies call them, "MAGA Republicans." Then, and only then, there's the dissident right, that wants actual racism. That's the extremely-online version that doesn't exist among conservatives in person. Maybe at those weird right-wing parties in New York, but if you think "people at New York parties" are representative of the right, I'm prepared to offer you a sweetheart deal for the Brooklyn Bridge. I disagree with him on how far he takes it, but I agree with @HlynkaCG totally that the identitarian right in this sense is more of a sect of dissident blue tribers than anything truly red tribe. And I say this as a born and raised red triber from Jesusland (and, if I'm being honest, a pretty hardcore nationalist rightist despite my misgivings about Trump personally).
This poll was created by the mainstream right, with occasional nods to concerns of the nationalist right. The dissident right isn't even on their radar.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
2mo ago
Ordinarily I'd post this in Wellness Wednesday, but it's Sunday, so...
Does anyone have any idea when someone should walk away from CBT therapy if they're not seeing any improvement?
I've been in therapy for 12 weeks now, and we're getting close the point where CBT normally ends. I like my therapist a lot and I think she's a good practitioner of the school of therapy, but my progress tracker looks like a straight, if squiggly, line -- I've seen no improvement. I'm doing the homework every week and trying to integrate the reality checking and cognitive flexibility portions of CBT into my life, while facing my fears and being more flexible.
The CBT skills have probably taken a little sliver off the top of my negative experiences. They don't control me quite as much. But they still control me a lot -- I feel like I'm staring down an angry bull every day. This much hasn't changed since starting therapy. I don't catastrophize as much, but I definitely shake, and struggle to sleep, and feel like my chest is going to explode. And, predictably, this has a real impact on my quality of life.
I feel like the approach I've been given for dealing with physical sensations has failed. That unit was just "let's try to simulate the negative physical sensations you struggle with so you can see them subside." We were unable to replicate the physical sensations of anxiety I struggle with the most, and essentially just moved on without it doing anything for me. I guess the point of that segment of therapy was "you must have cognitive distortions about the severity of your physical sensations, so let's confront that." But, um, I don't think my appraisal of my sensations is distorted -- I struggle with them every day. I know they subside, I've seen it happen. But that doesn't mean they don't affect my quality of life severely and recur. They are powerful until they subside -- and then, like clockwork, they seem to come back. I probably spend 80% of my life in some state of moderate anxiety, with occasional bouts of more severe distress.
I determined not to go through insurance so I could choose my own therapist, so these sessions are very expensive. And I feel like I'm getting little value out of them.
My medical doctor has also run out of things to do to help -- we've tried the various SSRIs and SNRIs, as well as buproprion, with little success, and he's unwilling to go any farther. He seems to be under the misapprehension that I need to make lifestyle changes (okay, doc, what ones?) and believes that "medication is not my problem." He also seems to believe most psychotherapeutic interventions take years, not months (try telling that to evidence-based psych researchers, they'll laugh at you). I don't like this doctor, and I think he's judgmental and ignorant while thinking himself helpful. And I don't know how to find a doctor who will be more understanding.
I feel, in some sense, like all the professionals in my life who are supposed to help me deal with this serious problem I struggle with, and that makes a major dent in my quality of life, have given up on me. Or, at the very least, that the tools they're trying to offer me to help with them aren't the right fit. I feel talked down to and misunderstood by a medical doctor who refuses to refer me to a psychiatrist, and I feel like the well-intentioned interventions of my therapist are failing. I believe the medical system has failed me.
And the worst part is, I'm going to have to enter a period of no insurance soon -- so even if I did find some medical intervention that worked, I'd have to quit it.
I just don't know what to do now. I worry that, in some sense, I'm a living demonstration of "HBD for mental illness" -- nothing helps because nothing can help. I felt very optimistic about the ability of the CBT intervention to help, but it hasn't.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
3mo ago
Hungarian religious history is definitely something I know much less about than what happened further west, so I appreciate the outline. What familiarity I have with Hungarian religious history is really... messy. I do recall being very confused when I learned about the Hungarian Crown being a gift from the Byzantines to a monarch who remained in communion with the Pope and on good terms with Constantinople well after the communication between the two fell apart. It sounds from your description like that complex situation has continued into the present where Latin Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants are all significant in their own ways, which is rather a fascinating religious landscape reflecting the ethnic diversity of the country.
Most lay people have no idea about the denominational details, they just get born into whichever church their ethnic community belongs to
That's definitely everybody everywhere, people who study these things and seek something out are absolutely the minority. It's significant that the outcome of the Peace of Westphalia wasn't exactly "everyone gets to decide their own religion" but "every prince gets to decide the religion of his kingdom," though with toleration for dissenting subjects. And as kingdoms evolved into nation-states, this does seem to have developed into closely-knit national churches.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
5mo ago
the emergence of tumblr, which saw ideas that had largely been confined to the philosophy departments of European universities reach a mainstream audience of young women
The thing that made me a conservative as a young man wasn’t gamergate, it was this. I distinctly remember the day a friend said, “hey come look at this,” and he was showing me tumblrinaction. The intense “KILL ALL MEN ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS EVERY ADVANCEMENT TOWARDS ARTIFICIAL CONCEPTION GETS US CLOSER TO ELIMINATING MEN” stuff that was du jour on tumblr back during this time shocked the shit out of me. And the racial and trans (and it’s almost forgotten now, but otherkin) stuff too.
Then I started to see women I knew in real life saying those things explicitly. And then I saw people in institutions saying it. And then it seemed to take over. At each stage, of course, the rough edges were sanded off. The radfems who truly hated men were very quickly marginalized. But the animating spirit remained the same.
So I remember when it wasn’t “crazy kids on college campuses.” I remember when it was crazy girls on tumblr. And I saw the crazy tumblr girls’ ideas take over the world.
That certainly does for making one a conservative.
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Yeah, I think a huge part is insufficient pair bonding. I wonder if perhaps the problem is social media and porn -- unrealistic expectations abound there.
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