Bingbong
1d ago
Exactly. I'm sure that making such a large change probably technically killed >0 people, but I also feel that massive amounts of USAID funding had been commandeered over the years on absolutely massively exaggerated claims of efficacy and 'We cut programs that claimed to keep millions of people alive' =/= 'They were keeping millions of people alive and they instantaneously died'. An organism of that size is going to have a large amount of ineffective altruism (even if it's actually attempting to be Altruistic as opposed to a political slushfund) and the galaxy brain takes that every single dollar that USAID spend was equally effective in saving lives and there was no marginal benefit fall off is inherently silly.
Bingbong
2d ago
AI + death of Western manufacturing means that mass bodies are less important to running a productive economy. Social spending/gibs are large and getting larger each year as a result of a large population of those who can't easily be employed productively. Moving to a developed nation is now maximally a 36 hour experience of plane transfers and you retain complete communication with everybody from your homeland.
It doesn't require a gigantic genius to see how this confluence of factors might make it a bit different than when Destiny was being Manifested. Your absolute best case scenario is that the genius quotient of the newcomers is high enough to somehow produce sufficient outliers to cover the rest, but as increasingly lower layers of the barrel are able to emigrate that seems unlikely.
Bingbong
2d ago
Yeah I live in a country with very high multilingualism rates and there are plenty of people I know who speak 3 or 4 languages that I wouldn't exactly call Intellectual Titans otherwise. IMO it's really down to neuroplasticity when the languages get picked up, and I'm also probably overestimating how good they are at their non-primary languages since I don't think they'd be capable of writing a dissertation in them even if they can get by colloquially.
Bingbong
2d ago
Yeah. I'm in Malaysia where my wife's family speaks a mix of Mandarin and Hokkien. They did Mandarin schooling and consume enough mainlander media that they're comfortable talking with Mainlanders, but a lot of Malaysian Mandarin speakers I know feel quite uncomfortable speaking with mainlanders due to the accent and word choices being different.
Likewise my 2 year old speaks a pidgin of Malay, Mandarin and English presently. I've got a bit more than her in both non-English languages, and it's fairly normal for Malaysians to learn this way as it's one of the most multi-lingual countries in the world and it seems to work for them. In an affluent Chinese household typically it's sort of an OPOL setup, albeit with the maid/nanny speaking Malay or Indonesian to the child, family speaking Mandarin and school/online sources trending more English.
Bingbong
4d ago
If I got an early bloomer 12 year old girl, dressed her up and made some mild surgical enhancements then went 'gotcha you're a pedophile' it's the same thing, though.
Bingbong
4d ago
One intuition pump for you is (assuming you are a normal straight guy): imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people.
? This seems very dumb. Imagine I surgically modified a great ape to look like a very attractive young woman from a distance, and you had any flicker of sexual interest upon seeing the ape from a distance. You are therefore an enthusiast in Apes. Elsewise, imagine I put a hologram of an attractive woman nearby and you had a flicker of sexual interest. This proves you are robosexual.
Also clear AI response.
Bingbong
6d ago
Yeah can't think of a Soulslike barring Sekiro (and even then you can cheese a lot of stuff) that doesn't have the difficulty fall off a ton once you get more options.
Bingbong
6d ago
- Alabama might beat Jacksonville if Alabama was in mid season form versus Jacksonville playing essentially their first preseason game (a month of training camp).
Even absolutely legendary CFB teams will be lucky to have half their roster have meaningful NFL careers. Like I'm sure there's been times in the history of both sports where the absolutely hottest, best CFB roster might have been competitive with a particularly injury-depleted demoralized single game roster running out the QB5 and the backupbackupbackup OL but the gap between the worst healthy NFL team and the best healthy CFB team is still pretty gigantic.
Bingbong
6d ago
If all you saw was photos of the most passionate Browns and Jets supporters and you didn't live in the same country you'd probably have a skewed view of how much their ultras liked the team, though.
Bingbong
8d ago
I think the first face reveal bit she looks underaged, the third-person model looks generic young-but-legal anime and the other cinematics look a tad young but nothing crazy.
Bingbong
8d ago
I think you can argue all day about where the line should be, but in the established metagame that is 2026 Western society there are better uses of your time and generally if you're arguing passionately about this it's not really for productive reasons.
If I moved into another neighboring society and the line was anywhere between like 16 and 20 I can't imagine it having too big an impact on my day-to-day life or being something I consider a grave injustice eitherway.
Bingbong
9d ago
Whilst I'd agree with the sentiment that Charlie Kirk's anti-trans stuff was most likely the thing that motivated his assassination, the polarization around him and him being treated like the antichrist by people on the left side of the Aisle was more a gestalt of his entire collection of opinions IMO
Bingbong
9d ago
Yeah I mean I know enough relatives who grew up in effectively these conditions (My dad's in his 80s now, has a large number of female siblings most of whom married before 20 to get out of the house/after getting pregnant) and I don't think the average quality of match is some massive departure from what the same women would be doing circa 2025. It's all pulling from the same fundamental social networks for the most part, and 'I'm going to select for somebody who is a somewhat stable wage-earner' as a motivation produces different results to 'I'm going to select for whoever gives me the strongest emotional pull'.
I also feel similar about arranged marriage as a whole. I'm not supporting knifepoint 12 year olds marrying 80 year olds, but I've got Indian friends and that 'strong introduction to somebody of about the same SES as you' pathway seems to work pretty fine on the aggregate? Maybe I have insufficient faith in the ability of people trying to self-source 'love matches'
Bingbong
10d ago
Yeah but the same person who is 'we need him for the football team' with Mtumbo Mtumbo likely doesn't have the same sentiment for Dale Daleson III who used a no-no word once and wore a red hat. I'm big into the MMA fandom and it's kinda hysterical how often fanbases take issues with 'US citizen fighter is a Republican' whilst getting behind overseas fighters who realistically have social views far to the right of Republicans. I get on fine with Dagestanis I've met and trained with, but like the social views of a Khabib Nurmagomedov are likely going to be miles outside of the current overton window of Western discourse. They're generally polite and good guys in a training room, but I've had conversations with some where they've prettymuch said, without qualms, that homosexuals should be killed and I think very few MAGAs are at that point on the continuum,
Bingbong
10d ago
Exactly. Debooonkers of this number are also likely ones who didn't have any issue with the '1/3 males in college will rape somebody' study that has been cited for a decade+ now or other insane flourishes of the #metoo era.
Bingbong
10d ago
The number is probably overblown but the thing that annoys me is that people trying to erode the number are being enthusiastically platformed whilst completely absurdities like Ro Khanna claiming that DOGE has killed 4.5 million children (up from 500k a few months ago) get essentially no critical pushback despite being even more insane and frivolous. I've had enough random stuff that could be debunked (or atleast determined to be hugely exaggerated) with about 30 seconds of thinking shoved down my throat in recent years that it's kinda funny to see all these people suddenly own calculators and rational thinking hats.
Bingbong
10d ago
I feel like Mottizens are probably more likely than most to have run into MtFs in their day-to-day life as a result of affluence, education, industries of choice etcetera. Admittedly mostly the 'Speedrunning-American' class of such.
Bingbong
14d ago
Yeah but Finance is largely allocating to SAAS bullshit due to margins at this point. There's benefits of liquidity, but most of the truly transformational stuff we've seen in recent years (Like SpaceX) has had a lot more to do with Elon Musk's personal ballast and raising money for a space project now would generally be incredibly difficult since Finance beancounters say no.
Bingbong
14d ago
I think there's a bit of a self-perpetuating loop where the outside world making such a deal of it means that there's more desire to quash it, plus having violent crackdown happening in the absolute center of the country in a way that the powers that be almost instantaneously regretted means less willingness to go over it. China also seems quite happy to crack down on navel-gazing/revisionist history stuff to stop it gaining steam, and better to absolutely prohibit topics. A lot of Chinese senior leadership is very scarred by the Cultural Revolution (since they were the 20-30 year old children of higher-ups who got sent to the countryside) and thus try their utmost to stop popular movements gaining steam.
Bingbong
14d ago
I agree that Beijing food is a bit nonspicy/plain compared to other Chinese varietals but I wouldn't call it bad perse. There are countries where the baseline is a lot worse.
Also I'd agree on the cultural stuff as a white person living in a Malaysian Chinese family in Malaysia. I do feel that the average Malaysian Chinese adherence to cultural stuff is higher than the average Mainlanders, but also the sheer scope, regional focuses and population of China means that if you travel you'll see a lot more random showings of cultural practices that you wouldn't otherwise expect. A lot of the old temples have been overrun by XHS photo-takers, but sometimes you'll see people doing things the old ways. I accidentally walked into a closed temple (Somebody left a door open and I think the person watching it wasn't confident enough in their English to warn me from going through) on top of Taishan last time I was there and there was a lot more monks and elaborate offerings than I expected.
Bingbong
15d ago
'DOGE instantly killed 30 Million people via cutting funding' and whatnot
Bingbong
15d ago
Yeah. China's fine these days, maybe a bit of issues with sameyness in their urban renewal but it's also absurdly cheap and comfortable in the vast majority of places I've been in the country. Most of the places in the world I've been to and felt like I'm unsafe/witnessing urban decay have been in the West such as New Orleans and Belfast (Yes, I'm sure I could go find worse places in Asia but like no real desire to do that).
What's wrong with Beijing food? It's not my favorite regional cuisine but I've had some great meals there.
Bingbong
15d ago
Tbh Americans probably have the lowest incentive to do it of most countries since the IRS is gonna come for your ass regardless and the basic passport is sufficiently strong.
My point is more as somebody living in Malaysia it's fairly common to meet people who are verbally proficient in 4+ languages. My wife considers herself conversational in Malay, English, Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin for instance but she'd also only consider herself capable of formal conversation in English and Mandarin. There's plenty of people I'd meet day-to-day with 4+ languages, even excluding Chinese/dialects, who would only really be able to write an essay in one. One of my friends is Indian background and speaks Hindi, Malay, English, Mandarin, Bengali and Kadazan for instance and it's not seen as being a particularly huge deal just normal for somebody with their particular ethnic state.
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