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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3618 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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How’s Christmas for all Motteizens? Get any good presents? Give any good presents? Anybody want a present, like a game on Steam or something?

Mostly got small or useful stuff, some art prints, some handheld tool batteries, a few gift cards. All appreciated, but not really interesting. The real toy one was Project Silverfish, kinda a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-like with graphics by the way of The Witness (cw: furry scaly inheritors of humanity). It's astoundingly unforgiving and still in beta, but been pretty enjoyable if you don't mind the occasional getting domed by a patrol from a faction you didn't even realize was on the current map.

Gave the SO a new monitor - OLEDs really are amazing and have come down a lot in price - and seems to be serving okay, though only after purchasing it found that the 'adjustable stand' was really just five degrees and an absolutely zero vertical control.

Most of the other gifts to family or friends are pretty unexciting. I've got access to a sublimation printer and some weirder-shaped heat tools, so replacing damaged or badly-faded and no-longer-manufactured coffee mugs or other easy-to-find blanks is a fun parlor trick, especially now that post-processing tools (AI or otherwise) have gotten so good, but most of them won't have any meaning outside of the recipient.

Uh, helped a coworker get his daughter and son-in-law some desktops together, which was a lot more !!fun!! than expected given current RAM pricing. I was able to pull some tricks to get them 32 GB each without paying a kidney, but wow that entire thing was a mess.

Discovered through Project Gutenberg's RSS feed of newly uploaded books: What Is an Index? A Few Notes on Indexes and Indexers, by Henry Wheatley, Secretary of the Index Society and Treasurer of the Early English Text Society

Indexes need not necessarily be dry, and in some cases they form the most interesting portion of a book. The Index to Prynne’s Histrio-mastix (1633), unlike the text, is very readable, and from it may be obtained a sufficient idea of the author’s argument. Prynne deserves especial mention here, as he may be considered as a martyr to his conscientiousness in producing this useful key to the contents of his ponderous volume. No one could read through the book, with its notes overflowing into the margin, so the licenser got confused and passed it in despair. Carlyle refers to the Histrio-mastix as “a book still extant but never more to be read by mortal.” The vituperation however was easily understood when boiled down in an alphabetical form, and Attorney-General Noy found that the author himself had forged the weapons that the prosecutor could use in the attack. This is proved by a passage in Noy’s speech at Prynne’s trial, where he points out that the accused “says Christ was a Puritan in his Index.”

The Indexer has a considerable power in his hand if he chooses to use it, for he can state in a few words what the author may have hidden in verbiage, and he can so arrange his materials as to force the reader to draw an inference. [Whig historian Thomas] Macaulay knew how an author’s own words might be turned against himself, and therefore he wrote to his publishers, “Let no d—— Tory make the Index to my History.” In the Index to the eighth volume of the Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, 1820, is the following entry:

Watts (Mr.), illiberal remarks of, on Captain Kater’s experiments.

Mr. Watts was displeased at the use of the uncomplimentary adjective and complained to the Editor. In the Notices to Correspondents at the beginning of the tenth volume we read:

The Editor begs to apologize to Mr. Watts for the term ‘illiberal’ used in the index of vol. 8 of this Journal. It escaped his observation till Mr. Watts pointed it out.

Lord Campbell proposed that any author who published a book without an Index should be deprived of the benefits of the Copyright Act, and the Hon. Horace Binney, LL.D., a distinguished American lawyer, held the same views, and would have condemned the culprit to the same punishment. Those, however, who hold the justest theories sometimes fail in practice; thus Lord Campbell had to acknowledge that he had himself sinned before the year 1857; and the deficiencies of the forty Indexes to Allibone’s Dictionary are pointed out in a paper read before the Conference of Librarians in October, 1877. These are the words written by Lord Campbell in the preface to the first volume of his Lives of the Chief Justices (1857)—

I have only further to express my satisfaction in thinking that a heavy weight is now to be removed from my conscience. So essential did I consider an Index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a Bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an Index of the privilege of copyright; and moreover to subject him for his offence to a pecuniary penalty. Yet from difficulties started by my printers, my own books have hitherto been without an Index. But I am happy to announce that a learned friend at the bar, on whose accuracy I can place entire reliance, has kindly prepared a copious Index which will be appended to this work, and another for the new stereotyped edition of the Lives of the Chancellors.

Books of facts are much easier indexed than books of opinion; but it is most important that the contents of the latter should be properly registered. Some indexers seem to be of opinion that proper names are the most important items in an index, and while carefully including all these, they omit facts and opinions of much greater importance. As a rule it is objectionable when the consulter finds no additional information in the book to what is already given in the index; for instance, should the observation be made respecting a certain state of mind that “the Duke of Wellington probably felt the same at the Battle of Waterloo,” it will be well for the indexer to pass the remark by unnoticed, as should he make the following entries, the consulter is not likely to be in a very genial mood when he looks up the references:

Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington’s supposed feelings at the battle of.

Wellington (Duke of), his supposed feelings at Waterloo.

The Indexer needs knowledge so as to be able to correct his author when necessary, for the most careful author will make slips occasionally, and it is highly satisfactory when the Indexer can set him right. He needs to be specially upon his guard in the case of misprints. Probably the most fruitful source of blundering is the confusion of the letters u and n. These are identical in old MSS., and consequently the copyist sometimes finds it difficult to decide which he shall use. In Capgrave’s Chronicle of England is a reference to the “londe of Iude” [Judæa], but this is mis-spelt Inde in the edition published in the Master of the Rolls’ series in 1858. Here we have a simple misprint which can easily be set right, but the Indexer has enlarged it into a wonderful blunder. Under the letter I is the following curious piece of information:

“India ... conquered by Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, 56.”!!

I finally told her I love her. I probably could have said it weeks ago, but I’ve spent the last few years developing a very healthy respect for the kind of wreckage that happens when you deploy those words at the wrong time. When you’ve spent enough time losing, you start to treat your internal state like a high-stakes game where you’re terrified of overplaying your hand.

She actually beat me to the punch. We had been existing in a state of high-density clinginess for a while, just being generally ridiculous to each other, and she decided to try a stealth maneuver. She ended a conversation with "goodnight love," clearly hoping I’d just let it slide past without making a scene. But I’m tall; very little goes over my head (physical or metaphorical) without me noticing.

It feels good. It feels considerably better than I’m usually willing to admit things can feel.

I still had to give her a hard time about the timing, though. 1:30 in the morning after a grueling day is not exactly the cinematic peak I had envisioned. I had a whole plan involving chocolates and flowers and the kind of deliberate romantic effort that makes for a better story. Instead, I got a sneak attack at my most exhausted.

In the meantime, we’ve started "soft-launching" the relationship to our respective families. This feels like a significant escalation of the stakes. I’m really hoping this works out; my heart has taken enough hits lately that it probably deserves a vacation, or at least a very gentle training montage. Maybe this is just what it looks like when you finally put the muscle to work.

the sequence of two major events happening back-to-back appears like some sort of things falling into their respective places. maybe they are connected, maybe they aren't.

when you’ve spent enough time losing...

but it is really a good thing that instead of feeling completely cynical or apathy, you still are able to feel things intensely. keeps you human! with warts and all.

significant escalation of the stakes. I’m really hoping this works out...

possibly your saturnian saadhe-saati has finished. or maybe it is in middle. you can only what is in your hands, and cannot always direct the outcomes completely. and it is fun too (at least in retrospect).

girte hai shehsavaar maidan-e-jung me, wo tifl kya girega jo ghutno ke bal chale (only the great soldier on horse can fall, not the toddler who crawls on his knees). even if the soldier falls, then he can get up. again. and again. the forks in life are definitely exciting when you don't know which way you would flow into.

taken enough hits lately

those sound like more elaborate stories. with the kind of writing you do, definitely would be very very interesting. and you do have the next exam planned.

the sequence of two major events happening back-to-back appears like some sort of things falling into their respective places. maybe they are connected, maybe they aren't.

If you mean the story about the model, that was maybe a week before I reconnected with the new lady, one who can easily be described as a better model. No objectification intended, I treat my objects like women anyway.

I suppose the two are more related than I'm comfortable with. I was at maximum cynicism after encountering the former, but convinced myself that some of the women I had dated in the past weren't remotely as bad. Tentatively, some of them were good people! This turned to out to be more correct than I'd wagered for.

but it is really a good thing that instead of feeling completely cynical or apathy, you still are able to feel things intensely. keeps you human! with warts and all.

Burning out can feel pleasant, sometimes. The fire can't hurt you, if there are no pain receptors left to scream. But I'm not that far gone, it turns out my heart was only shriveled because it was waiting for rain. I hope the good times last.

those sound like more elaborate stories. with the kind of writing you do, definitely would be very very interesting. and you do have the next exam planned.

Thank you. But as I've said before, the Motte isn't treated to an indiscriminate catalog of my romantic trusts. Most of it doesn't strike me as particularly worth writing about! Guy meets girl, they think the other is nice, but can't quite make it work. You live and you learn, and look forward to something that is worth writing about, preferably the pleasant kind.

Sorry. No. The two i was referring to were

(1) Passing the Exam and,
(2) reaching the stage of saying "i love you" to a woman.

But I'm not that far gone, it turns out my heart was only shriveled because it was waiting for rain.

Change is the only constant.

Oh. I mean, passing the exam was definitely a sorely needed boost to my self-confidence. I needed that. It's always good to have objective markers of competence, so I know it's not all in my head. Perhaps it did give me the courage, to say fuck it and pursue someone a continent away, hoping I can put a ring on her.

hoping I can put a ring on her.

i feel that is a deeply tender phrase. to me, all the previous exchanges and phrases suggest to me that:

  • you have gone through some tough times (whatever be the stories).
  • many of those revolved around a less-than-fully-confident yourself (whether that was professional or emotional or i would even venture into immediate family)
  • it feels that you are still very tentative. Man, you have passed a tough exam, so give yourself a break about that part of yourself. that should be a good enough external validation about yourself, although i am not very enthusiastic about external validations but they do have a role, particularly when one is feeling down. career wise, you are on a definitely decent path from all parameters.
  • whatever you said, she did say it first to you (in a round-about manner). that should show you that she has taken an almost equal (but just that minor tiny bit more) risk as you. that should also tell you that you have a good amount of worth too.

so, look at things from a holistic point - you are on a strong footing and you should forge your path ahead as you feel right with eyes and ears and heart open.

let the shriveled heart drink rain; but never forget that your roots are green.

Thank you, again. I try my best to deserve her ❤️

I still had to give her a hard time about the timing, though. 1:30 in the morning after a grueling day is not exactly the cinematic peak I had envisioned

I have come to the conclusion that women are incapable of discussing heavy topics with a man unless he is falling asleep on his feet.

Regardless, congratulations.

Is this a thing for everyone? Because I have also observed this.

My guess is that it's the thing you do where it's late and night and your mind starts wandering about all sorts of heavy topics: plans, ideas, memeories, past arguments, regrets, etc. And women just have to say it out loud right then and there because that's when they thought about it.

The truth is that it's probably everyone who does this, and I just don't see it from men as much because I'm straight.

I don't do this. I save my nighttime thoughts for later when/if it's an appropriate time/place to say them out loud, if they're worth saying out loud at all. I guess I only have a very small number of data points to work with, but I'm also extrapolating from the general stereotype of men being more stoic.

Wait which girl is this? Not the model hopefully?

It is very much not the model! I'm in love, not concussed haha.

You might have missed this recent update:

https://www.themotte.org/post/3416/wellness-wednesday-for-december-17-2025/392615?context=8#context

All I want for Christmas is Her

Ok lovely, and congrats. Love can take you all the way my friend. God bless you both. :)

Thank you!

Hell yeah dude. I'm happy for you!

It feels good. It feels considerably better than I’m usually willing to admit things can feel.

I know exactly what you mean. The first time my wife told me she loved me, it felt so good I was certain l could fly next.

Christmas songs thread

We're quickly approaching the end of the period of the year in which Christmas songs are an omnipresent aural nuisance, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity for us to talk about our favourite and least favourite songs in that genre. I am here defining a Christmas song as an original composition in the pop genre created for commercial reasons, and hence excluding all carols and traditional tunes.

Favourite Christmas songs

  1. "The Christmas Song" — Nat King Cole: An obvious choice perhaps, but it occurred to me this year that there is literally no other Christmas song I prefer. Cole may have had the single most beautiful male singing voice in the history of pop music: I found myself tearing up in the office a little bit, not because this song is sad, but simply for how remarkably rich and sonorous the timbre of his voice is. The chord progressions and instrumental arrangement still sound fresh and unexpected eighty years later, and the production is warm and intimate. It's amazing to me that this song may well have seen more airplay than all of the other entries on both lists combined (definitely if you count all of its innumerable cover versions), and yet it still doesn't feel "overexposed" to me.
  2. "The Power of Love" — Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Widely considered a Christmas song even though the lyrics don't refer to the holiday even indirectly, its cover artwork and music video nevertheless had a strong Nativity theme. An arrangement and vocal performance so striking and forceful that it completely overpowered the act's original camp ironic intent — listening to it, it's almost impossible to believe it's from the same album as "Relax" (also a great song in its own way).
  3. "Fairytale of New York" — The Pogues: This long occupied my #1 spot, which probably had more to do with a sense of misplaced nationalism than anything else. But in spite of that, I cannot deny how stirring I find the traditional arrangement, MacGowan's limitations as a vocalist are well-compensated for by the duet format with MacColl (all the more haunting now that both singers have left us), and the nostalgic-yet-venomous lyrics make it easily the most bittersweet Christmas song ever composed.
  4. "Driving Home for Christmas" — Chris Rea: Charming and jaunty, with a wonderfully grizzled vocal from Rea.
  5. "All I Want for Christmas is You" — Mariah Carey: I don't care if it's overplayed: Carey's vocal performance is a staggering accomplishment, the composition and arrangement sound timeless (it's no accident that "who originally sang AIWFCIY" is a common Google search: it does legitimately sound like a song first composed in the 60s and given a fresh arrangement by Carey in the 90s, and I mean that as a compliment), and it's aged far better than most Christmas songs (hell, most songs) from the era of its first release. Carey's retirement plan was well-earned.

Honorable mentions: "Santa Tell Me" by Ariana Grande, "Snowman" by Sia, the only decent original Christmas songs composed in the last thirty years.

Least favourite Christmas songs

An effective punchline would just be for to me to write "1. All the other ones", but that's not in keeping with the spirit of this space, so to be more specific:

  1. "Merry Xmas Everybody" — Slade: This is what Hell sounds like to me. Tedious, monotonous arrangement; performances which are both boring and bored-sounding (as if the musicians can't believe they're debasing themselves by recording a Christmas song, and are just gritting their teeth and trying to get through it as quickly as possible); flat, muffled 70s production; a tiresome and not remotely catchy chorus which recurs a whopping six times, as if the band are hoping to beat you into submission through rote repetition alone. It's appropriate that this song is guaranteed to get played at every boring office Christmas party where no one really wants to be there and the cheap white wine isn't serving as an effective social lubricant, as it literally sounds like a boring office Christmas party. It occurred to me this year that I literally cannot think of any song where, if forced to choose between listening to this song and another song, I would pick "Merry Xmas Everybody": it is just that annoying. Any of the musical compositions released by Crazy Frog (who was literally designed to be annoying)? Yes. "Cotton Eye Joe"? by Rednex? Yes, in a heartbeat. Anything by Limp Bizkit or Nickelback? Easily. "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt? No question. "Zombie" by the Cranberries? Definitely. Anything by 100 gecs? No doubt. The only song which I might have to think about for a minute is "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes, and they'd probably still cinch it in the end. Seriously. Fuck this song.
  2. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" — Band Aid: Music criticism is a difficult discipline because it can be enormously challenging to convey in words why you find a particular melody annoying, why a synth tone gets on your nerves, what it means to say that a vocal performance sounds lifeless or that a mix sounds sterile. Faced with this obstacle, a lot of music critics retreat from music criticism and focus instead on lyrical criticism (which really has more in common with literary criticism), as it's much easier to convey in written words why you think a piece of text is badly written. It's striking how often lists of "worst pop songs ever" are really lists of perfectly adequate pop songs with bad (or "offensive") lyrics e.g. perennials like Paul Anka's "You're Having my Baby" or Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park" — I don't think anyone would argue that either song is especially obnoxious from a compositional or performance standpoint. An excessive focus among critics on lyrical quality over musical quality rather misunderstands the nature of the enjoyment the average listener gets from music: "great composition with mediocre lyrics" is probably the rule rather than the exception among beloved pop songs, and lyrics have to be really bad before they'll make me not want to listen to a well-composed, well-produced song (the only example which immediately springs to mind is "Hardly Getting Over It" by Hüsker Dü, which literally would have been better as an instrumental); conversely, I don't care how good your lyrics are if the composition sucks and the performances are annoying (i.e. Bob Dylan and 90% of post-punk music sucks). This is a very lengthy preamble to convey that, from a musical, compositional standpoint, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is actually fine: Phil Collins's drumming is solid, the synth tones haven't aged half as poorly as many from that era, the melody is legitimately catchy, and the dozen or more vocalists sound like they're giving it their all. But the lyrics are so obnoxious, smarmy and self-important that it's all for naught. There won't be snow in Ireland this Christmastime either — where's our charity single? I understand that Bob Geldof (who wrote the song alongside omnipresent 80s journeyman Midge Ure) rather regrets the song, although for my part I would still say it's one of the better-composed songs in his back catalogue, and doesn't sound half as dated or irritating as "Rat Trap" or "I Don't Like Mondays". But more than just the obnoxious lyrics, when listening to this song I can't help but think it might be indirectly responsible for the ensuing decades of pompous grandstanding from pop, rock and punk musicians. Every time a punk band has paused in between songs so the singer can deliver an impassioned but clumsy ten-minute speech about how Orang Man Bad, Save Teh Trees and Muh Free Palestine, they're channelling the holier-than-thou spirit of Band Aid, if unwittingly (even if they would profess to despise the song for its white saviour qualities).
  3. "Christmas Tree Farm" — Taylor Swift: This song was unavoidable on the radio last year, and I didn't know who it was by but found it enormously irritating. This year I Shazam'd it, discovered that it's by Swift and thought — well, that checks out. I have to admit, the Cult of Swift is one of the things I find most baffling and alienating about the modern era. I'll hear people gush about how memorable and timeless her songs are, and then I listen to them and they sound functionally indistinguishable from those of any other teenybopper (by popular consensus her artistic peak was "All Too Well", and to me that sounds like a Sixpence None the Richer cut that they left off the album for not meeting their rigorous quality control standards). I'll hear people talk about how her lyrics make her the spokesperson for an entire generation of Western women (hell, Western people) — and then I read them and they're just spiteful put-downs towards her contemporaries or an embarrassing list of groan-worthy penis puns. Far from "growing with her audience", Swift now seems even more spoiled and adolescent than she did when she actually was an adolescent. Who knew the weird horsey girl and the toothy-head giving (but I repeat myself) demographics wielded such power and influence?
  4. Anything by Michael Bublé: Mickey Bubbles: "As a self-confessed Christmas prostitute, I would like to release a Christmas song." Producer: "Okay cool, let's come up with a chord progression and a vocal melody." Bubbles: "No, I don't want to write a Christmas song — that would take too much effort. I just want to record a cover and release it." Producer: "Okay, why don't we do a straight cover of $ChristmasSong? After all, it has such a memorable melody and hook that it's been beloved by generations of Westerners. A cover version is sure to do numbers." Bubbles: "Awesome. But I want to put my own spin on it, so I'm going to alter the phrasing and introduce loads of completely unnecessary syncopation and flourishes until the original melody is barely recognisable." Producer: "... okay, I see where you're coming from. But the entire reason people liked the original is because of its memorable and instantly recognisable melody." Bubbles: "Yeah." Producer: "... and so if you release a cover that has the same lyrics as the original but the melody and phrasing are altered beyond recognition, people won't like it as much. In fact, they'll probably find it really annoying and distracting." Bubbles: "Yeah." Producer: "... and that would be bad." Bubbles: "Yeah."
  5. "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" — Bruce Springsteen: I needed something to round off the list, and it was either this or "A Spaceman Came Travelling" by Chris de Burgh: that one seems to have fallen out of favour quite a bit and I can only recall hearing it twice this Christmas, whereas I heard "The Boss"'s (ugh) rendition of this classic several times a week since mid-November. Aside from Clarence Clemons's lively saxophone break, this isn't a patch on the Jackson Five version, and Springsteen's pre-song ad-libs to the audience and his backing band are impossibly grating and forced. The Cult of Springsteen isn't as hard to understand as the Cult of Dylan (unlike Bob Dylan, Springsteen can carry a tune, and I can't argue with the sheer majesty of "Born to Run"), but the more of his music I'm exposed to the more overrated I find him*, and many of his affectations seem just as contrived as those of, say, Bono. Even seeing him perform live didn't move the needle for me much (granted that seeing him perform when he's in his seventies is going to be a very different experience to seeing him perform as a younger man). Maybe I should listen to Nebraska from start to finish and it'll click for me.

Dishonorable mentions: "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" by Patsy & Elmo, "Stay Another Day" by East 17, "Run Rudolph Run" by Chuck Berry, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey.

*I understand why he objects to "Born in the USA" being played at Republican rallies by politicians who seem to have missed the point of the song; on the other hand, perhaps he should be grateful that the song is played in public at all because it fucking sucks, and the less said about "Dancing in the Dark" the better.

In a similar spirit, I listened to three Christmas albums front to back while I was cleaning the house yesterday, and I will review them here:

Emmylou Harris—Light of the Stable (1979)

Progressive Country was the 1970s reaction to what was perceived as an increasingly homogenized and commercialized Nashville sound. The most notable expression of it was in the Outlaw Country of Waylon and Willie, but the genre was much broader, and included anyone who emphasized the folk/blues/roots music that country was based on. It was the progenitor of what we would now call Americana. Emmylou Harris was part of this movement (if you could call it a movement), and had one of the most consistent album runs of any country musician I've heard; Boulder to Birmingham may be one of the finest country songs of all time, and everything she released bewteen 1975 and 1981 is worth listening to. Except for this. Granted, there's nothing particularly offensive about it, but it's mostly just unspectacular traditional country versions of Christmas songs. I say mostly because the title track is the exception, and deserves to be part of the contemporary Christmas music canon. Harris may not be a household name, but one would think that the guest vocals by Dolly Parton, Neil Young, and Linda Ronstadt would count for something. Then again, this was actually released as a single back in 1975, and the album recorded four years later mostly as padding, so whether it's even necessary is questionable. 3/5.

Elvis Presley—Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas (1971)

This could also be called Elvis Sings Lame Renditions of Bad Christmas Songs for Money. The program contains 2 sacred Christmas songs, 2 traditional pop Christmas songs, a bunch of conemporary country Christmas songs that are so uninspired that none were good enough to be released as singles, and a decent version of Merry Christmas Baby. I say decent because it doesn't hold a candle to the Charles Brown original. The contemporary material wouldn't be horrible, except it's overly reliant on key changes to keep the forward momentum, and they include a vocal group called The Imperials who sound like they also did the Love Theme from Airplane. 2/5.

Bright Eyes—A Christmas Album (2002)

Bright Eyes is the project of Conor Oberst, a North Carolina singer/songwriter/indie rocker who released a bunch of shitty, half-written, self-indulgent albums before finding his footing circa 2005 and absolutely killing it thereafter. Indie rockers don't often release Christmas albums, but when they do they usually consciously try to do something other than go through the motions, and this album is no exception. Unfortunately, this means that we get what is possibly the only slowcore Christmas album. The 11 cuts are all either sacred or secular classics played in a way seemingly intended to make a festive season outright depressing. To make matters worse, he fumbles the ball by using Frank Sinatra's jollied-up lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" rather than the depressing original ones. It gets bonus points for trying, and there's reason to listen to this, even if you won't want to listen to it again. 2.5/5.

It's striking how often lists of "worst pop songs ever" are really lists of perfectly adequate pop songs with bad (or "offensive") lyrics e.g. perennials like Paul Anka's "You're Having my Baby" or Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park" — I don't think anyone would argue that either song is especially obnoxious from a compositional or performance standpoint.

"You're Having My Baby" is terrible from any standpoint, and the lyrics only make it worse. "MacArthur Park" is brilliant and was recognized as such at the time, but it suffered from three huge problems that have made it a Boomer punchline in the years since. The first is the unfortunate lyric about the cake, which is really the only thing that's remarkable about they lyric but nonetheless sounds ridiculous. The second problem is that in the musical world post-Sgt. Pepper there were a lot of attempts to write pop music with the same level of sophistication as classical music, and while MacArthur Park was definitely in this vein it featured an overwrought arrangement behind an actor who couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag. The final reason is that a decade later Donna Summer recorded a disco version. While disco's critical reputation has been salvaged in the years since, contemporary observers are generally talking about stuff like Chic that has some degree of R&B grounding, not Giorgio Moroder's Euro-trash arrangements. That song is an object lesson in why people began to hate disco.

But it's otherwise a great song. For years my only exposure to the song was my dad's vinyl copy of Maynard Ferguson's Live at Jimmy's album, and the big band version included on it is a tour de force. Pretty much every high school band director I knew loved that version, and I've played various arrangements of it in community bands and the like over the years. It's a shame that these days it's seen as nothing more than a punchline.

It occurred to me this year that I literally cannot think of any song where, if forced to choose between listening to this song and another song, I would pick "Merry Xmas Everybody": it is just that annoying.

I'd rather listen to this than anything by Frankie Does a Pound of Blow, Bangs a Hooker in the Back of His DeLorean, Then Watches Miami Vice and Drinks New Coke. I don't have a problem with that song, though they probably don't play it on the radio as much over here as they do in the British Isles. In any event, Wizzard is much better, if only because a.) Roy Wood actually wanted to do a Christmas song and wasn't acting at the behest of his manager, and b.) They understood that a glam Christmas song would work best if the 50s nostalgia factor was cranked to 11. Remember, this was the year American Graffiti came out.

The chord progressions and instrumental arrangement still sound fresh and unexpected eighty years later, and the production is warm and intimate.

Interestingly enough, the version that's almost universally played is actually a rerecording. Nat King Cole originally recorded this in 1946 with the King Cole Trio (Cole on piano plus bass and guitar). The first version is jazzier and only features the trio. The original hit version was the first version released and uses the same arrangement as the common version, though Cole's voice wasn't as mature as it would later become and still has bit of an R&B flavor. He recorded it again in 1953 to get a higher fidelity version on magnetic tape. Nelson Riddle, best known for his work with Frank Sinatra, provides an arrangement that is faithful to the original but a bit lusher. The mono recording also has Cole's vocals more forward. The version you are almost certainly familiar with is the stereo version from 1961, by which point Cole's voice had fully matured.

(it's no accident that "who originally sang AIWFCIY" is a common Google search: it does legitimately sound like a song first composed in the 60s and given a fresh arrangement by Carey in the 90s, and I mean that as a compliment)

Soul singer Carla Thomas did record All I Want for Christmas Is You in 1963. But it's an entirely different song so I guess it doesn't count. It's also not very good.

the nostalgic-yet-venomous lyrics make it easily the most bittersweet Christmas song ever composed.

I always felt that this was the song's Achilles Heel; as much as it tries to be cynical, it's really just a love song. If you want unfiltered Christmas cynicism listen to Blue Xmas by Miles Davis. Guest singer Bob Dorough does not sound as if he's capable of experiencing joy. If that's a bit too blunt, there's [I Bought You a Plastic Star for Your Aluminum Tree] by Michael Franks, who balances his cynicism with humor rather than sentimentality. Franks and Dorough both being Jews probably has something to do with this.

Anything by Michael Bublé:

There's a scene in the movie Ray where one of the guys in the booth is irritated that Ray seems to be imitating Nat King Cole and Charles Brown. Buble inhabit the uncanny valley where it isn't clear if he's trying to imitate Frank Sinatra or Mel Torme, all with a healthy dose of auto-tune on top to make things even weirder.

The Cult of Springsteen isn't as hard to understand as the Cult of Dylan (unlike Bob Dylan, Springsteen can carry a tune, and I can't argue with the sheer majesty of "Born to Run"), but the more of his music I'm exposed to the more overrated I find him*, and many of his affectations seem just as contrived as those of, say, Bono.

I once heard someone describe Springsteen's music as sounding like it was taken from a musical about rock and roll, and I have to say I agree. It's not so much that there's anything particularly bad about his music, it's just that it's dripping with so much blue collar earnestness that it verges on parody. To get back to the Wizzard song, one thing Roy Wood understood is that 50s throwbacks have a certain amount of inherent cheesiness and that by embracing that cheese you can toe the line between parody and earnest tribute; hell, Ween made an entire career on toeing that line. But it's a fine line, and on the other side of it is Meatloaf, an artist who actually cut his teeth in rock musicals. The cult of Dylan makes more sense to me because Dylan was instrumental in moving the music beyond where it was in the early 1960s. Springsteen inspired John Mellencamp and Melissa Etheridge but the whole Heartland Rock thing was basically a stylistic dead end.

I have to admit, the Cult of Swift is one of the things I find most baffling and alienating about the modern era. I'll hear people gush about how memorable and timeless her songs are, and then I listen to them and they sound functionally indistinguishable from those of any other teenybopper (by popular consensus her artistic peak was "All Too Well", and to me that sounds like a Sixpence None the Richer cut that they left off the album for not meeting their rigorous quality control standards).

I've felt the same way for a long time. For all of the hype Sift gets there is maybe one song that I'd recognize as hers, and it isn't due to lack of exposure, to be sure. I can't even say that I necessarily dislike her; everything I've heard has been in one ear and out the other. It's like her music is so unmemorable that my memory of it is being erased in real time.

Maybe I should listen to Nebraska from start to finish and it'll click for me.

Everybody, if they get the opportunity, should do this at 2am while on an all night drive.

Jesus our brother strong and good aka the Friendly Beasts is my go to this year.

Love:

No Place Like Home for the Holidays Out of the classic songs that get played over a store radio this time of year, this is the one that I whistle to myself when I'm cutting down the Christmas tree. My mother loves Christmas, which is the only thing I really like about Christmas, so that's what makes me happy to think about.

What are you Doing New Year's Eve Obviously a holiday season song rather than Christmas, but New Year's Eve is my favorite romantic holiday. Valentine's day is commercialized garbage, anniversaries are mostly kinda dumb in practice; but kissing at midnight to ring in the New Year is a particular moment that can only happen with one person every year, and having someone to kiss is a critical status symbol in high school/college, and being together is part of being a couple. The O'Jays do a really perfect, slinky arrangement. It carries both the longing and pleading, and a certain sly naughty offer to it. The speaker is humbling himself before the object of his longing ("Oh-oh, just in case, I stand one little chance, Here comes the jackpot question in advance..." "out of the thousands of invitations you receive") but the performance and arrangement reflects a confident offer of pleasure.

Hate:

Wonderful Christmastime I hate the Beatles, which makes this pretty straightforward. Saccharine and awful.

Happy Holidays My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays. Growing up I was a good little liberal, inculcated with the idea that the "War on Christmas" was Fox News bullshit and that inclusiveness meant wishing everyone Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, so that you wouldn't make people feel bad if they didn't do Christmas. This was based on growing up in a culture in which the religious majority-minority dynamic was built around Christians and Jews, and Jews historically took the view that celebrating Christmas was a threat to their religion, and equally they have no interest in me celebrating their holidays. I wanted to be tolerant, so I went along with it. Then as I grew up I got to know more Hindus and Muslims, and they love Christmas, and they would love for me to stop by on their holidays. I realized that nobody means Happy Holidays, it's just a corporate generic gesture, not the way one means "Merry Christmas." I don't feel good when someone wishes me Merry Christmas, and I'm not offended or left out when someone wishes me Eid Mubarak or have a good Diwali or whatever. We should all just wish each other to have a happy [holiday one actually celebrates] and we all understand that if we aren't celebrating, they're just hoping we have a good day that day.

Happy Holidays by Andy Williams was on repeat on an album playing in the nurse's station the night my second son was about to be born. I heard it many, many times as I sat there in an office chair in the wee hours off the hallway of my wife's hospital bed and waited while she experienced labor. I think I had never heard it until 2010. Which is odd. Special place in my heart anyway and I love it. Same with all the Home Alone featured Christmas songs, as well as Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas where I remember that scene in The Victors.

Happy Holidays My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays.

You've linked Andy Williams' Happy Holidays/The Holiday Season medley, which is the perfect subversion of the original and the general "happy holidays" sentiment: its chorus is Happy Holidays, but 90% of the lyrics are about Christmas and no other holidays are mentioned at all.

Which is in my opinion the best way to respond to the Happy Holidays term: I mean Merry Christmas, you mean Merry Christmas, we all know that Christmas is the only holiday that really registers on anyone's radar. Happy Holidays means Merry Christmas, it is an entirely Christmas-owned term. If the Jews want us to get Hanukkah in there, they better get started on doing some outreach and getting people on board, because right now my second favorite December holiday is Diwali. It's got nothing to do with Christmas, but the snacks are great and the celebrants are generous with them.

You've linked Andy Williams' Happy Holidays/The Holiday Season medley, which is the perfect subversion of the original and the general "happy holidays" sentiment

I find it obnoxious to listen to in line at the Home Depot. That's really all I'm saying about. I'm not doing literary analysis.

If the Jews want us to get Hanukkah in there, they better get started on doing some outreach and getting people on board

At scouts as a kid, the Dreidl was crackerjack, so there's been some effort. And in middle school chorus, the token chanukah songs were normally pretty good. So it's not impossible.

At scouts as a kid, the Dreidl was crackerjack, so there's been some effort. And in middle school chorus, the token chanukah songs were normally pretty good. So it's not impossible.

Yeah I vaguely recall someone coming to our schools a couple times, maybe making some latkes, and learning some songs. Systematize that, bring a basket of challah and some chocolate coins for the dreidel gambling game every year, and it'd be a fantastic initial impression.

But I think it would drop off pretty heavily in adulthood, because while I remember Diwali celebrations in the office quite fondly, I don't remember any Hanukkah equivalent, and I know I have Jewish coworkers. Which speaks to your initial point: Judaism doesn't seem to have much interest in us getting involved in their holidays. So thus I claim the "holidays" for Christmas and Christmas alone, as Diwali lands much earlier, the Asian New Year is later, I have never seen anyone genuinely celebrate Kwanzaa, and New Year's is basically a Christmas extension.

Wonderful Christmastime I hate the Beatles, which makes this pretty straightforward. Saccharine and awful.

pedant alarm Strictly speaking this is a McCartney solo single. Obviously I agree with you, I despised this song for years before learning it was written by a man widely considered to be one of the best songwriters of the twentieth century. What the fuck kind of off-day was he having?

My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays.

As part of my ongoing war against the intrusion of American culture into Ireland, I recently learned to my dismay that children in primary schools are now being instructed to say "happy holidays" rather than "happy Christmas". In Dublin, the river Liffey runs through the city, with the southside stereotypically considered more posh and affluent than the comparatively impoverished northside, and whenever I venture into the southside I discover that it's been so infected by secular woke nonsense that they literally aren't celebrating any religious holiday anymore. Seriously: the Christmas lights (for everyone knows that's what they are) fall under the banner of "Winter in Dublin".

Winter in Dublin. What the fuck. Every time I see that stupid sign I want to tear it down. I'm sure if I asked whatever idiotic gang of apparatchiks responsible for the decision why they went for "Winter in Dublin" rather than "Christmas in Dublin", they would be completely unable to articulate why, just listing off a string of incomprehensible woke word salad about "inclusive" and "modern Ireland". It's got me thinking about the concept of asymmetric multiculturalism: Christians in Christian countries aren't supposed to ostentatiously celebrate their faiths, but Muslims in Christian countries can do so to their hearts' content. No Muslim in Ireland is going to be saying "happy holidays" to any of his co-religionists when Ramadan next rolls around. But to my relief, I noticed that one set of Christmas lights on the northside wishes everyone a happy Christmas, not a happy (ugh) "winter in Dublin". Working-class Dubs evidently have no time for woke nonsense of this description.

(In Dublin City Council's defense, there's also this sign reading "Nollaig Shona Duit" on the southside's Grafton St, one of Dublin's main shopping streets. "Nollaig Shona Duit" is Irish for "happy Christmas to you". The message is crystal clear: you can celebrate your faith, as long as you do so in a language no Muslim is likely to understand.)

Not even an honorable mention for "Merry Xmas (War is Over)" in your least favorite list?

Even as a confirmed John Lennon hater (this article might as well have been written about me), I can't find it in my heart to get too up in arms about that one. It's inoffensive background music with a predictable melody and chord progression, and it seems that, for once, John was able to persuade Yoko not to do any atonal wailing and screeching atop it. Nowhere near as irritating as any of my least favourite Christmas songs, from a compositional, lyrical or sonic standpoint.

It's amazing to me that Jake Paul, a person I've only been peripherally aware of, has managed to reinvent professional wrestling from first principles, and make absurd money doing so.

For those blissfully unaware, Paul is a former disney channel actor and youtube personality who started setting up tomato-can pro boxing matches some years back, and slowly worked his way up through a series of has-beens to grandpa Mike Tyson. Whether those fights were on the level and he just won against bad opponents, or if they were works, is a matter of debate. Last night he organized a fight with a real contender, former heavyweight champ and olympic medalist Anthony Joshua, a fight that Paul was in no way qualified for, and in which he would certainly be murdered if Joshua chose. But, a fight for which each fighter stands to make around $90,000,000.

I feel like a crazy person seeing twitter fill with people gloating that Paul lost. As though that hasn't been the goal of building him up as a heel for years now, to set up a huge cash in when he faced a real boxer and people tuned in to watch him lose. That's always been the way of professional wrestling, build up a heel, make him win so that people hate him and tune in to watch him lose, until it's time for the big moment.

And people BET ON IT. This is like betting on the outcome of a TV show. How are gambling commissions allowing that to happen?

The phrase is overused, but generational wealth was produced in this spectacle. And I feel like I understand the past better. It was a classic "dumb guy" trait in TV and movies when I was a kid, especially older stuff, that stupid people believed that professional wrestling was real. And now I'm seeing people, many of them otherwise intelligent fight sport observers I follow, act like Paul's rejiggered version of professional wrestling is real. And they think they're the clever ones.

And people BET ON IT. This is like betting on the outcome of a TV show. How are gambling commissions allowing that to happen?

Gambling commissions are fine with Kalshi bets on who Taylor Swift will invite to her wedding, bets on who Trump will pick as Fed chair and so on, where obviously at least some people will have material non-public information before the wider market.

Polymarket is in flagrant violation of the ammended Onion Futures Act by offering prediction markets on the box office revenue of Hollywood movies.

"No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States."

I mean just look at this shit. The CFTC is asleep at the wheel.

Polymarket only has limited CFTC approval for some contracts in the US (officially) right now, it’s Kalshi that has much more freedom and they’ve signalled they’re fine with.

Aren't prediction markets regulated by the CFTC?

Seemingly every month I find a new reason to dislike online gambling. It's becoming an intellectual doubt I have about a lot of the rationalist "gambling is a tax on bullshit" types.

It is a tax on bullshit. The problem is that taxing bullshit impovershes 90% of the population.

I think the trend in influencer boxing is kind of a good thing insofar as it inspires otherwise directionless young men to gain some martial prowess.

But end of the day I'm bored of the pointless spectacle of this type of exhibition. Nobody's earning any real glory here, and we're definitely not getting to see the pinnacle of the sport, with the best competitors squaring off under a 'fair' ruleset and neutral officiants. Even if they're fighting 'for real' we're not really getting a definitive measure of who the better competitor is.

Oh, and you can just add in that the other Paul brother literally performs in the WWE.

So diversifying out to a different combat sport is probably part of the strategy.

Sometimes feels like we're hitting the purest distillation of sports as a moneymaking enterprise. The Athletic performance and outcome of the contests becoming fully secondary to the amount of money that can be earned from the spectacle. Get enough people to watch and to bet on the outcome (on both sides) and it no longer matters so much if you win or lose.

Which Jake Paul seems to have realized.

Where every single sports league is 100% commodified and there's no remaining connection between the team as an entity and their geographic location. You might as well play all the games in the same place at a certain point, why bother making the teams travel all around to play the games anymore? Make the fans fly to you! And it'll make it easier for players to swap to new teams too.

Hell, they should make it so that teams can trade players with each other during the games, that would add some interesting chaos! Its not like there's much loyalty left in the system, too much money to be made.

When all it means to be a 'fan' of a team is to throw money at them and let your emotional state be dictated by their performance. Its not like you can say you grew up in the same town as them, went to the same school, or share any genetic lineage with them. These are top talents scouted from around the country, often around the world, and you get to pay to watch them play, what does it matter whether they're wearing the same logo that you are?

I'm sure its been this way for a while, but yeah, even when its not blatantly scripted like pro wrestling, feels like the fix is always in, the game is designed to profit the players (and coaches, and owners, and advertisers...) and the fans, spectators and bettors are just there to provide the liquidity.

Did he not already lose to the far less impressive Tommy Fury?

Edit: what I mean is, this doesn't seem like a part of this "story arc" progression.

Yeah but him losing a narrow decision to a reasonably okay boxer wasn't the payoff people wanted at all. They wanted to see him get pulverized.

Yup. And then he'll build up another winning streak against broke guys, and the haters will work themselves into a fine lather about how they want to see him humbled, and then there will be another big payday against a name.

It's classic professional wrestling storyline building. Your heel beats a bunch of fan favorites, with the crowd tuning in to watch him lose, until it's time to cash in and let him lose.

Jake Paul beat Ben Askren. Why is Anthony Joshua a real contender but Ben Askren isn't?

Jake Paul beat Tyron Woodley twice. Why is Anthony Joshua a real contender but Tyron Woodley isn't?

Jake Paul beat Nate Diaz. Why is Anthony Joshua a real contender but Nate Diaz isn't?

It's been years of, "Jake/Logan Paul are decent amateurs, but they have no chance in this next fight is against a real athlete," and then Paul knocks the guy out. Would you have predicted beforehand that this is exactly where Jake Paul's career would plateau?

You possess no knowledge on this subject. That's fine, most people don't. But no one who does has been especially surprised by the actual outcome of any of Jake Paul's fights. He's defeated some over-the-hill MMA guys, the elderly husk of Tyson, and even a couple of random journeyman boxers here and there, but then he fought an actual serious world-tier heavyweight and got crushed.

That said, personally I really don't mind him. Honestly for how late he got started on the sport he's not bad, and the slobs he's fought are the type lots of guys start out fighting, especially guys without amateur experience. He might be some kind of edgelord by YouTube standards but until he rapes someone or gets some mob ties he's still a cuddlebug by boxing standards.

Dude, are you asking a serious question?

Askren, Woodley, and Diaz were MMA fighters, not professional boxers, and they all fought at 155 or 170. Joshua boxes at heavyweight, where he was once world champion. Joshua is definitionally a ranked contender in boxing, the others never were. There's no universe where an MMA welterweight and a heavyweight champion are comparable fighters. To say nothing of the difference in leverage and earnings.

I couldn't have predicted in advance the outcome of Jake's fights any more than I can predict what will happen in the next episode of a sitcom. But I can tell you how the plot arc will end.

I posted on 4chan earlier today, and I noticed that the CAPTCHAs have basically turned into IQ tests, requiring the user to select which abstract image from a group of five does not belong. I was amused, and I understand that it is necessary to create tougher filters to screen LLM-assisted bots, but I wonder what the long term impact of such gatekeeping will be? At this rate, I will not be surprised in a few months when sites start requiring users to solve Raven's Progressive Matrices!

If 4chan goes behind an IQ gate, I can only see good outcomes for the world at large.

As it is, the only reason CAPTCHAS aren't even more useless is because the typical consumer chatbot (as available to the typical normie) is simply too polite to lie about being a robot (and are also trained not to solve them).

How long until the bots do better on these than the average human?

>linking directly to a 4chan image that will expire soon

I backed it up on archive.org and archive.is before posting; I'll edit the link after it expires.

Dang, advised a buddy to shoot his shot with a girl in a discord he was into. Apparently as soon as he admitted he had feelings she immediately blocked him and left the server.

Not sure how this guy asked her out, but generally he's a pretty socially competent guy. Not autistic or anything, has been married before and dated a good bit so not an incel type. It's just nuts that ladies by and large can be so neurotic when it comes to getting propositioned. Now his whole status in this server with folks he likes is in question.

Idk, obviously I don't understand the female experience here, but it really strikes me as a lack of maturity to react this way!!!

Anyway to make it fun, what's your best story about getting rejected and/or rejecting someone romantically?

Now his whole status in this server with folks he likes is in question.

Was it in front of everyone rather than as a PM or something? Odd.

If he was doing this over Discord, presumably he didn't actually know her yet, or he would have done something else? Maybe she wasn't representing herself accurately? Personally, I've only spoken with people semi-anonymously on Discord, and would be a bit spooked if they inferred my location and invited me over, even just another woman as a friend. But other people seem to use Discord with their actual relatives when playing games together, I think. So it seems to vary wildly.

I don't remember any specifics of rejections, I'm very awkward and was even more awkward when younger, so I'm sure I said/did something terribly cringy. I do remember one time a guy that I was good friends with but not romantically interested it and I walked by each other unexpectedly, glanced at each other, and both chose to pretend we hadn't, didn't even wave. We later confirmed that, yes, we had both noticed that happening.

Was it in front of everyone rather than as a PM or something? Odd.

No it was a PM but she blocked him and other people and left the server, and he basically owned up to people and told them what happened.

He has known her online for a while, idk exactly how it went down but I'm assuming he said something like "hey I liked you and I'd be down to date." They are many states away from each other.

both chose to pretend we hadn't, didn't even wave. We later confirmed that, yes, we had both noticed that happening.

I think this is probably the better/more mature response, as opposed to nuking a whole friend group and causing a bunch of drama. I find that quite immature personally but idk what it's like to be a woman.

I suppose I know what it's like to be a woman, but not what it's like to have important friendships online that didn't start in person. Considering online relationships to be ephemeral and in some sense unreal seems to be fairly common, even on dating apps where the express purpose is to find someone to eventually form a RL relationship with, as annoying as that must be for the (usually men) getting ghosted. If someone on The Motte tried inviting me to their house, I'm not sure that I wouldn't simply never use this user name again. But DSL has in-person meetups (that I've never considered attending), so not sure.

Is that a dare? Sounds like a dare.

What is an adult doing on discord?

Anecdote: Some years ago, I was playing a semi-active role in my state's branch of the Libertarian Party. At the time, the party used Slack as its primary center of communication, and there was a minor crisis because Slack was discontinuing several free features on which the party relied. (Most prominently, Slack would now delete messages after a few weeks, rather than storing them indefinitely.) Unbelievably, the first instinct of these (state) Libertarian Party bigwigs was to switch to Discord! IIRC, they said to me something like: "We think that having the imperfect solution of Discord immediately is better than having the better solution of Element several months from now." I (merely a dabbler in this area) actually had to go to the effort of setting up an example Matrix/Synapse/Element installation in a Digital Ocean virtual machine (in the space of a few days, not a few months) before one of the bigwigs got around to duplicating the setup on his own personal hardware (not even owned by the party, I think).

I am an adult and I don't use discord a lot but I have at least two groups I participate with which are on discord. I don't know why discord specifically, it could be anywhere as far as I am concerned, but the fact is they are on discord, and so there are a bunch of adults there. That's just how it happens - a group decides "why don't we set up online presence?" and one of the people says "I know discord, I can set us up there" and voila - the whole group is now on discord. Could end up on Telegram or Slack or whatever - it's kinda random.

Gaming with friends? What do you mean? This guy has four kids but is a divorced dad and found a discord group he likes via his church, he games with his buddies. I think he's a great dude, I don't appreciate the snarky attempt to judge him based on a very simplistic characteristic. I thought you Trad Caths were better than that.

Look to the beam in your own eye, etc etc, eh?

I thought you Trad Caths were better than that.

No doubt this is meant as a joke but it grates.

Hah yeah I'm Orthodox so I sometimes poke fun at Catholics. But ultimately we both know the two of our churches are the strongest redoubts of Christianity by far.

That's always one of the possible outcomes. You take the risk, and often it doesn't pay off. And the girl doesn't owe anyone her acceptance of their advances, if she feels uncomfortable being propositioned, she can refuse, and she can leave. There's nothing immature about it. One has to decide if it's better for him to always leave in a state of vague hope but never know, or to risk it and know either way.

Saying "No" is always acceptable. A block, and then kicking off drama in a (digital) friend group? Honestly bizzare, and not what a normal rejection should look like.

Sounds like home boy really misjudged the chemistry / who this woman was at a minimum.

People meet in all kinds of weird places. But discord probably not ideal - you'd at least want to know how your potential mate looks like, not?

In fairness, my buddy met his wife on Discord. (Although, counterpoint, she suuuuuuucks, so be careful what you wish for, I guess.)

Nah I think it's still the best move to just shoot your shot.

Admirable, but mistaken.

Months-to-years of wondering "What Could Have Been" is way more painful than a typical rejection. Especially if it's someone you're really into.

A rejection by someone that you're really into can mean that you don't ever get to be around that person again -- which is also pretty bad, if you're actually really into that person.

Are you successful with women? Telling you, if you aren't willing to shoot your shot you never get anywhere.

Idk, I'd say it's actually far more risky shooting your shot offline. Going for ppl you know via internet communities at least has a gated downside risk.

Anybody remembers "elevatorgate" yet?

people you """know""" via internet communities

Didn't we just have a discussion regarding how, on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog?

Tell me you don't actually know any introverts without telling me you don't actually know any introverts.

Everybody has their blessings and their curses. I am sure your blessings are plentiful, but there are people for whom the chance of success cold-asking a woman out in person are exactly zero. It's just a fact. There are things that some people can do and some can't. Some can win a match with a professional boxer and some can't. Some can run a marathon and some can't. Some can bench press 2x bodyweight and some can't. Some can successfully charm women in person from cold start and some can't. Giving them advice "don't do shit you have - maybe small, but non-zero - chance with, and instead do shit which you have zero chance with" is strictly harmful.

Apparently things are different with younger millennials and boomers, but introverts have been courting each other for generations. They just invite each other out for coffee or a book club or some such tepid thing. I (a millennial who remember an analogue household) and the few but not none men who have asked me out (in person) are introverts. If things continue this way I feel like I'm going to have to send my son off somewhere less neurotic when he comes of age.

I admire your resolve in standing your ground here. I also dislike the term "shoot your shot" which brings unwelcome images of weird subreddits to mind.

I'd also suggest that like everything there are right and wrong ways to go about (it), with the latter far outnumbering the former.

It's a bad idea to shoot your shot when a (lets be honest, very likely) rejection leaves you worse off than saying nothing.

This is why dating apps are so big. The cost of rejection is zero.

Its also why asking out women from work is usually a bad idea. Massive downside risk.

Eh I disagree. Some table stakes can at least let the girl know you are serious.

I met my now wife at work. And she was the third person I "dated" from a work environment. (The other two might not count for different reasons).

I was aware while dating my wife that if things in the relationship went bad I'd have to leave that organization. She is/was well liked and well known there.

Life has trade-offs. You gotta decide what finding love is worth. If the answer is it's worth "nothing" and you'll take no negative tradeoffs in the search then I think you'll be searching for much longer. (All else equal of course)

You'll never get anywhere asking girls out on discord.

Maybe, maybe not. But I think @ThomasdelVasto has the right of it here. Assuming that the girl in question isn't someone you know through other means (i.e. you don't have better chances to ask her out), you get the best chances by shooting your shot. I'm not saying you should make Discord your primary means of meeting girls, but you also should take your opportunities when and where you find them.

The broader point here is that if your opportunities are coming from discord you're in trouble.

No, if your only opportunities are coming from Discord then you're in trouble. If it's just one source then you're fine. But either way, that doesn't mean you should disdain the chance to take a shot if it comes up. The guy who has other chances loses nothing by seeing what happens on both fronts. The guy who only has a chance on Discord should cultivate better chances, but still should shoot the best shot he has available to him.

Disagree! Many people find relationships online nowadays. It is definitely possible, hard and fast rules in dating are for suckers.

Do zoomers really ask girls out on discord?

It's safe to assume that every two way communication method widely used has been used to ask a girl out.

This guy is a millenial.

look in the dictionary for “Bleak”

it’s just a screenshot of this comment chain

Years ago, I was in a bookstore, and I realized I had forgotten to put my watch on that day. I asked the woman standing at the same shelf if she had the time. She looked me dead in the eye and said "don't talk to me".

She literally would not give me the time of day.

Fast forward a few years. I'm doing a particularly raunchy musical. I've lost a lot of weight, put on muscle, and I'm down to about 7% body fat. Part of the performance involved working the audience, and at one point I realized somebody had their hands down my pants. Looking down, I realized it was the same woman from a few years before. I pulled her hands out of my clothes, gave her a finger wag, and moved on.

She looked me dead in the eye and said "don't talk to me".

That is what I call immature and asshole behavior.

Daily reminder that women can be selfish scumbags too.

Years ago, I was in a bookstore, and I realized I had forgotten to put my watch on that day. I asked the woman standing at the same shelf if she had the time. She looked me dead in the eye and said "don't talk to me".

LOL this is a wild story. Really is crazy though. It's kind of overblown sometimes in trad circles, but I do think that women being bitchy nowadays and having no manners is a huge part of the decline in marriage and fertility crisis etc.

Becomes way harder to shoot your shot as a man when women are willing to act like this to you. It stings a lot more when you're younger as well.

ETA: also grats on getting swole my ninja.

In the old days women would be socially ostracized for shooting down men who were trying to respectfully interact in this way. Loose social networks or anonymity facilitate this kind of behaviour. Guys also use it to ghost, pump and dump etc, so it is what it is.

He messed up the power dynamic. Girls love guys who are in love with themselves.

Not true. Depends on the girl. You're sounding like @Sloot now.

Even if you don't agree with him, @Sloot is consistently hilarious.

I do agree, which is partially why I summoned him here!

Do not underestimate the nebulous wisdom of Sloot. I think he's in the far country of overly cynical and misogynist, but sometimes he is spot on, at least regarding the subset of young attractive females. (Do not ask me to link; I'm going on vibes.)

He's generally so accurate in his takes on the WQ that I sometimes suspect he's CovfefeAnon from X.

I think covfefe anon was covfefe anon.

https://www.themotte.org/@covfefeAnon

Today I got schooled about Brandon Sanderson on Discord. I made confident claims about Brandon Sanderson's writing: I said that his stories always have the same characters that go through the same arc that can be summarized as "angsty teen gets superpowers". However, this attracted the ire of the Chadliest Brandon Sanderson fan on this Earth, who wrote the following:

Except that's literally not most of his stories.

Of all his Cosmere books that in fact only describes the original mistborn series. It also describes Skyward but that's not Cosmere Doesn't apply to Stormlight, Mistborn 2, Elantris, Warbreaker, Tress, Sunlit Man, Emberdark, White Sand,.Yumi, or Emperor's Soul

So if you take something that's true of only 1 story out of over a dozen you're not going to convince people you know something about how he writes generally

If you want to say you don't like his prose, I get that, he writes in a very accessible and simple way that some people find boring. If you want to say you don't like his magic systems because they're formulaic and take away the mystery, I get that, it's a matter of taste. If you want to say you don't like that he doesn't write more graphic sex or violence and so you feel like it's juvenile, I get that, again, it's preference (though I might judge you for a lack of imagination). I've heard all those criticisms and they're valid

But when you say something that is just objectively incorrect, it only reveals you don't actually know what you're claiming, and you're basing it off incorrect shit you've heard off reddit or whatever

The thought upon reading this was "oh fuck, I just got owned". It's been a while since I've been owned this hard, and it was over Brandon Sanderson, of all things. So, for your own health, please be careful before you shit talk Brandon Sanderson. Always be sure that the person you're talking to isn't actually an Undertaker that can put you through 4 different tables at Summer Slam.

I like Sanderson novels, but it does seem a pretty pedantic own, since so much of his work is about angsty young adults getting superpowers Kaladin, Shallan, some characters in Elantris

I've been enjoying the new semi-series of Hoid novellas (Tress, Yumi, and The Fires of December has a nice preview chapter), though it's a bit odd how they've been bundled with other gift items on Kickstarter instead of having normal releases. I guess they make good gifts for the teens in one's life that way? They do also sell them normally, I think, but it's a bit convoluted.

Gods, Brandon Sanderson fans.

"Angsty teen gets superpowers" may not be literally all his characters, but it's present in almost all his books (and if it's not "teen" it's "young adult").

A more accurate description of every one of his books would be "Hero who refuses to bend his/her principles figures out exploits in the magic system to p0wn opponents."

I've read about a dozen Sanderson novels, and at this point I'm pretty much done with him. He usually starts a series with a great premise and interesting characters, and by book two or three I am sick of hitting Every Single Sanderson Trope by the numbers.

I've read about a dozen Sanderson novels, and at this point I'm pretty much done with him.

That's some stamina right there. I got through four and a quarter. Real props to the guy, he sure does churn out the words, and he seems like a nice enough bloke that I don't begrudge him the truly obscene wealth that he's milked catching a ride to fame on Jordan's coattails. But that fanbase, ye gods. And not to drag culture war into the Friday Fun thread, but his fictional takes on "diverse" characters are so anti-challenging it's depressing. Sci-fi and fantasy used to raise interesting and challenging questions about stuff like race and sex and gender. The gods of the Cosmere seem to be blue-haired HR ladies, everything is so bland and inoffensive. (And Sanderson's own public "evolution" on gay marriage seems pretty embarrassing, guy had a chance to yeschad.jpg and opted instead to fold and pander.)

He got beat up pretty hard by fans for being a Mormon. He did the grovel and "I'm learning" ritual and promised to put some gay characters in his books, which he did, but he handles them about as well as he handles romance. He just can't take the Mormon out of the Cosmere.

Yeah I consider myself a Sanderson fan and by far my biggest complaint about the guy is that he seems to let Tumblr/Reddit (same thing these days) dictate his writing a ton. It's really grating.

I don't really know why I don't like Brandon Sanderson stories anymore. If I had a checklist of boxes that needed to be filled in for me to enjoy a story, most of his stories would check all the boxes. I did enjoy quite a few of his books, I'd estimate I've read about 10 of them. Mistborn series, some of Alloy of Law, steelheart, way of kings, elantris, etc.

There is something that feels samey about the plot and arcs of all the books. And I often find my mind wandering to other topics while I read his books now. Its possible I just read too much of him.

There is something that feels samey about the plot and arcs of all the books.

He's the McDonald's of fantasy. Billions served, and you'll get the same assembly-line experience every time. And if you find it's not to your liking, that is simply an indication that your palate has matured. There's a place for McDonald's, and there's a place for Brandon Sanderson. But it has been many years since I particularly enjoyed either.

There are two ways to evolve the pallet. One is to go to nicer restaurants and eventually wind up in high cuisine where food is optimized for human consumption. The other is to go dumpster diving for unique tastes.

You can definitely find pallets near dumpsters, but I don't know that there's much evolutionary headroom for them.

That is part of the dumpster diving experience in literature, homophone words used consistently incorrectly.

The other is to go dumpster diving for unique tastes.

My flair isn't from fanfiction for nothing!

I cannot tell you how many puzzled looks I have gotten from other academics when bringing up stuff like Friendship is Optimal in the middle of conferences on AI. I think a large percentage of them just don't realize that science fiction writers have been constructing thought experiments about this stuff for decades. At most, they might reference some plausibly high-brow (by virtue of being politically en vogue) author like Margaret Atwood. It's understandable; the point of most PhD programs is to get incredibly knowledgeable about something so incredibly specific that the idea of being "well rounded" tends to go out the window completely--there are only so many hours in a day!

But sometimes it pays to be a bit eclectic, too.

Around the time Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there was a post here about actually consuming media before you make judgments about it, lest you be led astray by the memeplex (IIRC, it was a criticism of Joe Rogan that betrayed someone's ignorance, and they admitted they had never listened to a single episode).

The same thing's happening here. "Sanderson writes simple, consumable stories" combined with "'angsty teen gets superpowers' is a common consumable story" to lead you astray. You could make the argument for Mistborn (mostly the first book), Stormlight (only the first book, really), and Elantris. Warbreaker fits worse and could be excluded as an outlier without invalidating the argument. Looking at the rest? It just doesn't work.

Actually, I was set up in about the perfect way to give this opinion, if what you say is correct. I read the Mistborn trilogy, Skyward, and listened to a substantial part of the first book of The Stormlight Archive to the point where I could give some major plot spoilers about it. Also some short story about shadows or something plus an innkeeper who kills people.

That's kind of hilarious.

psychoanalysis glasses on Why does your book selection process send "angsty teen gets superpowers" Sanderson stories to the top of your to-read list?

Why does your book selection process send "angsty teen gets superpowers" Sanderson stories to the top of your to-read list?

>post about getting owned on discord on themotte

>get owned on themotte

Well, Mistborn was a recommendation from my mother, Skyward was a book she had that I was reading while bored at an event, and Stormlight Archive was an audio book that I pirated for her and then absorbed through osmosis as she listened to it. So it's all her fault, psychoanalyze her! I wonder how many moms have read all the Wheel of Time books.

Great haul from a nearby half-price books today.

  • Absolution, Jeff Vandermeer. I adored the original trilogy for reasons touched on here, and while I was colder on the third book, I still absolutely endorse it. When I saw a new book with sweet cover art, I had to try it.
  • Triplanetary, Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. That's how he's billed on the cover. I've never read a Lensman book, but it's well-known enough to have gotten a reprint listing all sorts of awards. Said reprint is still endearingly retro.
  • Red Mars, K.S. Robinson. I was sure this came up on the Motte recently; all I can find is discussion of Years of Rice and Salt. Ah well.
  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy. I have it on good authority that this is an unpleasant read. That doesn't actually tell me what to expect. Perhaps it will be improving literature in some way. Regardless, it's influential apocalyptica, so I feel the need to try.
  • Co. Aytch, Sam Watkins. A Confederate memoir. Picked up on the recommendation of a random Reddit thread.
  • The Killer Angels, Michael Shaera. Also Civil War, but historical fiction.
  • A sweet cutaway book about armored vehicles. What more can I say?

I was very meh on Absolution. Don't know why, but it just didn't do much for me.

I loved the Lensmen books as a kid. May have to give them a reread one of these days.

I did not much like Red Mars. I find KSR dry as dust.

Cormac McCarthy is very hit-or-miss for me. No Country For Old Men is fantastic, and Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books ever. But I have not much liked any of his other books, and I really disliked The Road. It was written like "Literary author thinks he's invented the post-apocalyptic novel."

Literary author thinks he's invented the post-apocalyptic novel.

Kek, that’s how I felt about Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America but for alt-history. I did like it a lot though.

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I genuinely thought that The Road was actually a very good book. Is it pretentious? Yeah, sure! But he does a good job of it! I keep coming back to it. There are lines from it that stick.

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

He turned and looked at the boy. Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it. He thought perhaps they'd come to warn him. Of what? That he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own.

When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up.

This is a great haul, congrats!!! Man I want to go back to the used bookstore.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy. I have it on good authority that this is an unpleasant read.

It's the most optimistic book that could possibly be written about an ailing father and thoroughly traumatized son in a world that no longer supports life. Seriously, it's heartwarming stuff. It will make you a better dad. The unpleasantness is only skin-and-flesh-and-bones-and-organs-deep; the whole point of the book is that there is a core of goodness that, if actively maintained, is invincible even in the face of certain annihilation.

Let me know what you think of The Killer Angels, I was just talking about it with someone.

Joss Whedon based a lot of the dialog in Firefly off it.

I read The Road a few weekends ago and while I did not end up sobbing, I did end up thinking for a good long while about how soft and easy my life is in historical terms.

I read The Road and was sobbing literally for hours when I got to the end. That's what you ought to expect.

Red Mars is a pretty decent book, even the weird and clunky sex shit is very mild for sci-fi. I do think the author's commitment to a materialist view of history comes at the expense of satisfaction for the reader in some parts.

The Road is a great, great read and deserves your time. Also very readable, not some ponderous tome that may Improve you. Read No Country For Old Men if you "enjoy" it.

Wrote a short blog post reflecting on being on twitter for a bit over a year! Didn't want to make a whole main motte post for it but I think it qualifies as fun if anyone is interested: https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/p/reflections-on-a-year-and-some-change

Nowadays I realize there are just a lot of dumb assholes on the internet. It’s not my job, and it’s not even remotely possible, for me to educate and convince them all to have the “right” opinions. Even if that were possible, I’m not sure I want to. Part of the fun of the internet is that people disagree frequently, and vehemently.

my clear pill is a lot of assholes on the Internet are drunk or high or are crazy and you should simply regard them as holograms

Probably not a bad idea! Hey sometimes I get drunk and go on the internet. Like right now. Stands to reason other people might do the same...

NFL THREAD

The NFL season is wrapping up, with just three games remaining in the regular season. The playoff picture has taken shape, and we're left with a real question for maybe the first time this century:

Are there any actually good teams in the NFL? Who are they?

We've definitely got some bad teams this year, but there's no really clearly good teams. This century, there's always been a Brady-Belichek team, or a Mahomes-Reid team in the mix, or the Legion of Boom Seahawks, or Peyton Manning was somewhere around. There's always at least one team that combines playoff experience, quality coaching, a reliable star quarterback. This year, the only team that fits that dynamic are the Rams, who remain Super Bowl favorites but have lost Davante Adams for the rest of the year and just lost to the Seahawks. The Seahawks are pretty good, but I'm just not going to have a ton of faith in or fear of a team lead by /r/TheDarnold. It's not even a dislike thing, it's just I don't think he can do it in the playoffs.

And for the most part, that's pretty much it. Last year going into week 16, there were five teams with odds better than 8-1 to win the Super Bowl, plus the Lamar Jackson Ravens sitting just below that. This year, those two teams are the only teams better than 8-1 odds right now. The Broncos are next, but I'm not sure I rate them; Buffalo comes after that and they will likely have to play three road games to get there. The Pats seem to lack that third gear, who even are their receiving threats? Houston has a brutal defense, but lacks much in offense. The Baker Bucs are a perpetual feel good story for making it as far as they do, but they're not going all the way. The Packers looked like SB favorites, but they have scuffled and just lost their best player for the year. The Lions look tough, but might not even make the playoffs, and as much as everyone loves Kneecap-Biting Dan Campbell, his rough and tough coaching style seems to leave the team injured by January. Nobody is taking the Jags or the Niners all that seriously. I guess the Bears have the whole pope thing going for them?

Which brings me, of course, to my Birds. The Eagles have been frustratingly uneven this year, and WIP talk radio fans have been frustrated throughout the year. The returning super bowl champs have achieved essentially zero consistency on offense, despite returning every starter except their RG. They lead the league in three and outs, their star receiver is complaining on twitch, their all-time-great running back has looked pedestrian. The defense has been better, but not always good enough, with a few frustrating game-losing lapses. Somehow, despite making the playoffs a likely five years in a row, making two super bowls and winning one, there are still fans in Philadelphia who want to get rid of Sirianni and Hurts, the winningest coach/qb combo the team has ever had.

That said, looking at expectations going into the season, they are at worst sitting at the median. My hope for the team was that they would 1) win the NFC East, 2) win the games I attended. They'll achieve 1) as long as they win one of their remaining games, or if Dallas loses any of their remaining games. On 2), they're 2-1 so far, with the loss on some bad luck terrible calls. Going into the season, their O/U was 11.5 wins. They could still hit the over if they win out, but they're likely to end up at 11 wins. Right where they were expected. And while I never expected a repeat, they have decent odds at a deep playoff run. Looking at the NFC playoff field, who are they really scared of? They already beat the Rams, Packers, Lions, Bucs in the regular season; not always convincingly but they're certainly capable of doing it again. The Seahawks are good, but /r/TheDarnold in the playoffs is always going to be beatable. The Niners don't scare anyone. The Papal-backed Bears shellacked the Eagles in the regular season, but that's the only team I'd feel really worried facing in the NFC? And once you get the to the big game, well, anything could happen.

Not so much that the Birds are that good, just that every team could beat pretty much every other team this year. I don't think I'd feel any differently for any of the other good teams this year. If I were a Chargers fan or a Lions fan or Bills fan, I'd be feeling pretty much the same. I feel like there's five or six teams that are going into the playoffs feeling like there's not going to be a game they're going into with less than a 40% chance of winning. This is going to be an exciting year. This is the best year to go on a surprising run since, what, 1998? It could be anybody's year.

Obviously, this is the Steelers year. While I'm obviously hoping for this outcome as a fan, this is more intriguing because to a certain type of Steelers fan this would be the worst possible scenario. For the past five years, there's been an unending chorus of people talking about how the Steelers suck and Tomlin needs to go, they're running a JV offense from the 90s, hasn't won a playoff game since the 2016 season, etc. I even have friends who think that being 9–8 or 10–7 is the worst possible place you can be because you don't even get a good draft pick. When people talk about firing Tomlin I jokingly tell them that Hue Jackson is available. This never seems to faze them much, largely because 1.) They obviously assume that the Steelers will hire a head coach who is better than 90% of people who have coached in the NFL since Tomlin was hired, and 2.) The correct hire obviously isn't a black guy.

This second point plays into it a lot more than you'd expect. While most Tomlin haters don't really give a shit about race, a not-insignificant percentage of them do, and plenty will openly tell you that the guy was a Rooney Rule hire who isn't qualified to carry Bill Cowher's jock strap. The fact that the man won a Super Bowl plays no part in this, because apparently "that was Cowher's team". Setting aside the fact that assembling the team isn't the job of the head coach, and if it were the Steelers would have selected an O-lineman over Ben Roethlisberger, the fact is that Cowher, in his last year, went 8–8 with a team that was one year removed from a championship, Tomlin only won in his second year, and he managed to go to a Super Bowl in 2010, four years after Cowher left and five after Cowher's last championship.

This argument gets even more idiotic when you consider the full implications of it; if it were true, the upshot would be that the Steelers haven't won a Super Bowl since 2008 because the teams simply weren't good enough to win one. Except the Tomlin haters will also tell you that there's no excuse for not winning when they had Bell and Antonio Brown. Well, which is it guys? Is he bad at assembling a team or a bad game-day coach? It obviously isn't the latter because he managed to win a Super Bowl and play in another one. One guys seriously told me that a team as good as the 2008 team coached itself and didn't need Tomlin. Ok, whatever. The other thing that really irks me about these people is that the argument only applies to Tomlin. The Penguins have won five Stanley Cups, not one of them with a coach beyond his first full season with the team. Bob Johnson is the most beloved coach in team history, but he only coached here for one year, and no one said that he only won because he had Gene Ubriaco's players. Scotty Bowman is a coaching legend and won it for them in Johnson's absence, but the players hated him and he didn't stay long-term. Fast forwarding to the Sid era, and Bylsma won his lone cup in a year where he took over late in the season. Ditto Mike Sullivan, who won two cups in consecutive years, the first after the much-maligned Mike Johnston was fired the previous December. Ed Olczyk was the coach when they drafted Sid and Geno; should he get all the credit despite being patently (and obviously) unqualified?

A Steelers Super Bowl win would mean that these people need to find more excuses to hate Tomlin, and this season gives them plenty of creative avenues to pursue. Steelers fans are historically known for being fickle, going from doomerism to confidence in a Super Bowl victory in the span of a single play. LAtely, though, everyone seems convinced that the team still sucks, regardless of how well they are playing. Aaron Rodgers looks positively elderly on TV, the most expensive defense in the league's play ranges from average to horrible, Patrick Queen is a disappointment (except when he isn't), Jaylen Warren should totally be a bell cow back (ha!), Arthur Smith runs a shitty offensive scheme that won't pass to the middle of the field (along with the rest of the league), they get lucky for getting so many turnovers, the offensive line absolutely sucks (despite advanced stats saying otherwise), the team loses games they should win, wins games they should lose because of "bullshit", and gets dog walked every time they play a good team (except when they manhandled the Colts). There would be nothing more satisfying than this purported disaster winning a championship in the shittiest way possible.

*As an aside, having a white coach would not make the racially based hatred disappear if that coach has anything other than a championship season. When Cowher was here people hated him too (how quickly we forget!) and came up with racial rumors that were just bizarre: Cowher and Kordell Stewart were secret gay lovers, which is why Kordell was still QB; Kordell was still QB because Cowher was having an affair with his sister; and Cowher impregnated a black woman who works for the Steelers. This last one is my favorite because it didn't explain anything. It should also be noted that the first one was an outgrowth of the rumor that Kordell Stewart had been arrested at Schenley Park's notorious "fruit loop", a public running track that's notorious for anonymous gay sex. There is no public record of such an arrest, but Stewart had to make an announcement to the team about how he wasn't gay, and every Pittsburgher's uncle knows the cop who arrested him.

The Steelers winning would actually be a pretty hilarious outcome this year, for many reasons. And hey, why not? The only teams in the AFC bracket I really like are the Chargers and the Bills, and are both wildcards and are known to piss down their leg in big games. Bo Nix seems like a good candidate to implode, and the Pats seem a little young as an org, which is funny to say given that they're not that far removed from Belichek.

When Cowher was here people hated him too (how quickly we forget!) and came up with racial rumors that were just bizarre: Cowher and Kordell Stewart were secret gay lovers, which is why Kordell was still QB; Kordell was still QB because Cowher was having an affair with his sister; and Cowher impregnated a black woman who works for the Steelers. This last one is my favorite because it didn't explain anything. It should also be noted that the first one was an outgrowth of the rumor that Kordell Stewart had been arrested at Schenley Park's notorious "fruit loop", a public running track that's notorious for anonymous gay sex. There is no public record of such an arrest, but Stewart had to make an announcement to the team about how he wasn't gay, and every Pittsburgher's uncle knows the cop who arrested him.

This is why you need people, you never learn things like that from TV coverage.

Now that Tomlin has gone the current fringe rumor is that he stepped down to avoid a media circus cause by him impregnating a 30-year-old white bartender. You can tell it's obvious bullshit because there's a discrepancy; sometimes the bar is on the North Side, and sometimes she's from New Castle. It's not clear if he had to step down because she was about to start showing, or if the baby was born in December. The biggest tell is that the rumor first surfaced back in July, then again after the loss to the Bills, and is resurfacing again now that he's stepped down. For some reason these rumors only circulate when the team is losing, as if the coach is incapable of infidelity when the team is winning.

The Packers looked like SB favorites, but they have scuffled and just lost their best player for the year.

I was lucky enough to get to attend that game, but man what a disaster it turned out to be. I didn't think the Packers were playing that well before the injuries (they seemed to be slowly losing ground after the early lead), but the injuries really put the nail in that game's coffin (and the rest of their season, I imagine). Injuries are a part of the game, but it's still a real bummer to see it happen to your boys.

I think injuries suck the most in the NFL, because you're sitting around with 52 guys that could win a Super Bowl and you're missing the one you need.

Though, of course, the Eagles won behind Nick Foles, so stranger things have happened.

I had some fun for maybe the first time ever doing some clothes shopping for Christmas. The main reason was my daughter was along with me and enjoying herself.

We were picking out clothes for her and her younger sister at Walmart. I was partly amazed at just how low in price some items could get. $3 t-shirts seems a little crazy to me. The most expensive item was a $12 sweater made of a fluffy white material.

It was also nice not having to try anything on. At their age you just buy on the slightly larger size and they'll grow into it within a year.

The crowds were also not as bad as I feared, or at least Walmart had it down to a science getting them all through the few dozen self checkout points.

I'm an unabashed capitalist, but even I sometimes forget the modern marvels right in front of my eyes.

We were picking out clothes for her and her younger sister at Walmart. I was partly amazed at just how low in price some items could get. $3 t-shirts seems a little crazy to me. The most expensive item was a $12 sweater made of a fluffy white material.

One of Gwern's ordinary life improvements since the 90s was that clothing is now 'too cheap to meter'.

My wife and I both like clothes, our minds were blown when we saw that people in the 1950s on average spent 10% of their income on clothing. Which would just be a mind-boggling amount for us to budget on clothes, how on earth would we spend $30,000 a year on clothing?

Why are you just throwing this humble brag out there? Look at the damage you've done.

Lmao I love the drama. Amen.

We should have some motte redistribution am I right??!??!?! EAT THE RICH!!!

Honestly, I figured I was on the low end here.

You might be on the low end of things by the average, but the variance is high.

I imagine you could throw it away pretty fast on boutique bullshit. $900 Gucci polos, etc.

Leaving aside absurd Veblen goods, I could buy the highest quality stuff at full price. But I'd very quickly accumulate too much of it, because top quality stuff doesn't wear out in a year. I can only own so many suits and leather jackets!

I think I mentioned a few months back that I once came across a book of etiquette from the late 19th century that recommended a gentleman spend two to three months’ wages on a good suit. Imagine buying a single set of clothing for $75,000.

That's just something made up by the suit companies to sell suits. Like the spending 3 months salary on a ring; you really expect me to spend 450k on just a ring?

LOL!

You're laughing because he's so poor, right?

Of course. What self-respecting woman would marry a man who only spends $450,000 on a ring? Pfah.

What the hell do you do for a living? Assassinate high profile political figures?

If you do you probably have to replace your fancy suits a bit more than the average guy.

He is Golgo 13.

I unfortunately make only a fraction of that. I was basing my numbers on FiveHourMarathon and his wife’s combined income.

Good Lord everyone on here is far richer than I am, apparently...

Yeah me too man. I'm glad I don't measure my self worth by salary because I would need an intervention after this thread, lol.

A passage from Cryptonomicon which had me laughing out loud on the train this morning (no spoilers):

Nevertheless, there are three messages from Kia, Epiphyte's only actual employee, the administrative assistant for the whole company. Kia works in a totally alienated, abstracted office in the Springboard Capital corporate incubator complex in San Mateo. It is some sort of a federal regulation that nascent high-tech companies must not hire pudgy fifty-year-old support staff, the way big established companies do. They must hire topologically enhanced twenty-year-olds with names that sound like new models of cars. Since most hackers are white males, their companies are disaster areas when it comes to diversity, and it follows that all of the diversity must be concentrated in the one or two employees who are not hackers. In the part of a federal equal-opportunity form where Randy would simply check a box labeled ᴄᴀᴜᴄᴀsɪᴀɴ, Kia would have to attach multiple sheets on which her family tree would be ramified backwards through time ten or twelve generations until reaching ancestors who could actually be pegged to one specific ethnic group without glossing anything over, and those ethnic groups would be intimidatingly hip ones — not Swedes, let's say, but Lapps, and not Chinese but Hakka, and not Spanish but Basque. Instead of doing this, on her job app for Epiphyte she simply checked "other" and then wrote in ᴛʀᴀɴs-ᴇᴛʜɴɪᴄ. In fact, Kia is trans- just about every system of human categorization, and what she isn't trans- she is post-.

This book came out in 1999. Intellectually, I was aware that what we call wokeness was previously ascendant in the nineties, at which time it was called "political correctness". Still though — if you didn't know better, you would assume that the passage above had been published in the last ten years.

There's also the minor subplot about his woke ex-girlfriend in academia. Including him getting dressed down by her academic friends for his privilege enabling him to learn a technical skill by reading a book and practicing. He made the mistake of trying to explain his technical skills as a result of study and practice rather than unearned privilege.

It is like mockery of tumblrinas, but 15 years early.

It is like mockery of tumblrinas, but 15 years early.

To quote another famous science fiction author, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet”. Those lines of theory were percolating within academia for years before they breached out into the body politic.

Those lines of theory were percolating within academia for years before they breached out into the body politic.

An interesting example of this is Mrs. Bridge from 1959, where the author is basing much of the background of the novel on his upbringing in semi-affluent KCMO in the 1920s-30s. There are asides and comments from background characters espousing views that wouldn't explode nationwide until the mid-to-late 60s, or even the 70s, yet they were already circulating in non-academic circles by the 50s (assuming the author heard them in the 50s and had his characters say them even though they didn't really say such things in the 30s, but who knows, maybe he's being fully accurate and those ideas really were the talk of upper middle class white people in the 30s).

Serves him right for trying to mansplain away instead of acknowledging his technical privilege.

That article is right on point and 15 years later on the dot. Neal Stephenson called it, yet again.

PCU dates back to 1994 and the whole film is about a character avoiding a cancellation mob (multiple actually) while trying to party in a fraternity. The screen writers wrote the film based on their experiences in college (one graduated in 1990). A character even proposes funding Bisexual Asian Studies by taking space and funding from the STEM budget.

The debates we're having about diversity in the workforce and affirmative action date back in more or less their current form to the 1970s at least.

I'm reading Eig's biography of Mohammed Ali right now, and it's fascinating how there are a lot positions that got mainstream news media coverage in the 60s and 70s that we would consider utterly absurd today. Black Nationalism, earnest black people who really did publicly believe in black separatism, were given TV coverage and newspaper op-eds. Two Yankees pitchers traded families in the 70s. There were huge socialist and communist organizations with broad support from the 1900s to the 1980s in America.

Even just watching sitcoms from the 90s, you see a lot of less traditional values that are constantly thrown in your face. Frasier, which I love, stars a divorced dad who is totally absent in his son's life. And this is not presented as a crisis, it is at most a minor personal problem every ten episodes. We would never accept that today.

Wokeness might be a local peak of leftism in 2020, and over time we can argue that Cthulhu always swims left, but there have been in certain ways higher peaks, and post Reagan we are more conservative than we were before.

Two Yankees pitchers traded families in the 70s.

Could you elaborate on this?

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 5 [1973]—Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, the Yankees starting left‐handed pitchers disclosed today details of an exchange of families. The pitchers, who have been the two closest friends on the team for several years, said they and their wives began discussing last July the possibility of an exchange and that they put it into effect at the end or last season in October. At this time, Peterson is living with Susanne Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 4 years old, and Reagan, 2, and they plan to be married as soon as they can divorce their spouses. That would be next October at the earliest, Peter son said.

Both pitchers, in separate interviews after the Yankees disclosed the basic details, stressed that there was nothing sordid about the situation and it wasn't a matter of wife‐swapping. “It wasn't a wife swap,” said Kekich, who married Susanne in 1965. “It was a life swap. We're not saying we're right and everyone else who thinks we're wrong are wrong. It's just the way we felt.” “It wasn't a sex thing,” Peterson emphasized. “It was not a cheap swap.”

The two Yankees and their wives began discussing the possible exchange last July 15 on what the pitchers said was a high plane and amid “a tremendous amount of affection and compatibility.” While remaining with their own families, they spent a lot of time together and individually —each player with the other's wife. There was such harmony, Peterson said, they even thought about having a double divorce and a double marriage and they discussed the possibility of dividing the children so that the older in each instance would go with the father and the younger with the mother.

From the 1973 NYT reporting on the swap

This article from New York magazine was where I first heard the story. Bronx Zoo indeed

Fond of long, introspective conversations, Kekich was drawn to the thoughtful Marilyn Peterson, while Fritz, always in the moment, paired off with Susanne, a former cheerleader and cross-country runner. Gradually it became apparent to all four that perhaps they were married to the wrong people. “By American standards, I had a good marriage,” Kekich said. “But I wanted a great marriage. I was idealistic, I guess.”

By their spring-training press conference, Kekich and Peterson were hardly speaking to each other. Much had happened in the interim. The couples did “swap lives,” moving in with each other’s spouses in the fall of 1972, with differing degrees of success. Peterson and Susanne Kekich were happy. Kekich and Marilyn Peterson were not. The physical attraction between Marilyn and himself was strong, Kekich would say, but since they were “born under the same sign, we sometimes butt heads. She and I are on a higher pitch in our emotions.” Kekich claimed everyone had agreed that if any of them were unhappy, the entire deal was off. Peterson said they had already tried that (the couples had attempted to reunite for a time) and it hadn’t worked. In a statement, Peterson said he and Susanne were both now “free people” with “free minds.” It would have been perfect if things worked out for everyone involved, “but I don’t feel guilty.”

Kekich cut a far more sunken figure. The terms of the swap dictated that the kids would stay with their mothers. But now Marilyn Peterson was taking her children to her parents’ home in Illinois. His daughters living with Susanne and Peterson, ­Kekich was alone. Calling himself “one of the biggest soul searchers around,” Kekich said he would break up his family only “for love far greater than any I have ever known.” Now he was “dubious” such a love existed.

Asked if he expected to be traded, Kekich said, “I’m here. We’re still teammates. I only want to be where Fritz is.” It was “the only way I can be sure of seeing my daughters.” This was not to be. After pitching fourteen innings for the Bombers in the ’73 season (walking fourteen batters), Kekich was dealt to the Cleveland Indians. Still a Yank, Peterson finished the season with a dismal 8-15 record and was also shipped out, to Cleveland, though by that time Kekich had already moved on, to Japan. Still, when it came to the Trade, Peterson was generally considered to be the winner. After all, he and Susanne are still married today, with children of their own. This result was predicted by Dr. Joyce Brothers, famed TV psychoanalyst. “It’s very rare that a four-way swap ever works,” Brothers said.

I don't think we have anything quite that wild today. I guess the Musklings count, but he at least has the decency to try to hide it. There's the WSJ article I read today about a house built to accommodate a rich gay throuple, but this is a little more than that isn't it?

Supposedly for years Affleck and Damon wanted to make a movie about it, out of pure hatred for the Yankees, but to my knowledge it never got off the ground.

I think it's probably true that the Overton window from the 90s thru say 2016 was actually remarkably narrow. A good chunk of the western world had converged on...let's call it post-socialist bourgeois liberalism as The Way of Things. By contrast, in some ways the 60s and 70s were super left wing but you can find other public figures espousing equally right wing views, and being taken seriously. This was also the era of George Wallace and "segregation forever" after all. The Students for Democratic Society and The John Birch Society were formed within two years of each other. I think the 2016 election was less a harbinger of a rightward lurch in American politics as such and more an announcement that the consensus around narrowly defined norms of political/economic/social life had begun to dissolve - at least amongst the masses. It's taken the elites a minute to notice that however.

let's call it post-socialist bourgeois liberalism as The Way of Things.

I think the term you're looking for is Reaganism, Thatcherism, the Reagan-Thatcher consensus, or the Washington Consensus.

Some of it is a narrowing of the Overton window, but I think in other ways it's useful to see as a rising and receding of the tide, as a genuine improvement. For the divorced dad example: it was very common in the early years of no-fault divorce for dads to simply abandon their children after the divorce, and this was seen as fairly normal. Frasier is one example, another in James Clavell's Noble House (published 1981 and set in 1963) a character left his wife and kids and reflects with self satisfaction that they got "enough" money in the divorce that he doesn't need to be involved in their lives, the well researched portrayals in Mad Men are a contemporary example portraying the historical norm. This was normal, and not considered particularly noteworthy or blameworthy, divorce was considered bad but once it happened it was natural that the father would move on from the children. Today, we see that as bad, we see it as important that a divorced dad stay close with his kids, do his best to remain in their lives, or at the very least feel bad about it if he can't do those things.

I consider that to be actually good moral progress on the topic.

On a related but admittedly anecdotal note, it seems to me that a lot of men my age (mid thirties) prioritize family relative to career in way that earlier generations didnt, at least going by cultural depictions. Ive known more than one man in a "prestige" career - finance, consulting, military officer etc - say something to the effect of "if the wife could support us I'd be happy to drop out and stay home with the kids". I wonder how much of this is a change in default life scripts. At one point it was assumed you'd have kids; now this is no longer assumed, people who do choose to have kids are presumably more committed to the whole project. The decline in employment stability probably also plays a role. It makes a lot less sense to give your life to a company when you're not expecting a pension after 40 years

divorce was considered bad but once it happened it was natural that the father would move on from the children.

This is still commonplace in Japan. Even some married fathers, as long as they send money home, live in a different city from their family (Tokyo, etc.) due to employment, in a set-up called tanshin fun'in/単身赴任. The emotional aspect of a father bonding with his children (in particular dads with daughters) is not considered culturally salient (at least this is my own perspective.) Exceptions abound, no doubt.

A father divorced from his wife, though, yes, it is not uncommon to ask the young person where his or her divorced father is and to receive a shrug in response. Edit: Alimony as we understand it in the US is not a thing here.

I find Anglican Chant underrated. It descends from traditional European liturgical chant, the Gregorian chant, but adds harmony and new melodies. The text used is often an old rendering of the psalms in 17th century English or earlier. It is the music of America’s beginnings: not only was the first song ever sung in America from an Anglican psalter (a song of thanksgiving, which you could still sing today if you so desired), but more than half of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Anglican and three of the first five presidents.

Sometimes the chants sound like they would fit well in a supernatural and dramatic RPG like Bloodborne, if you were to slow them and add reverb some effects. (Some imagination required). They can be delightfully pitiful, and few music settings can capture this spirit well, certainly no settings still in use today outside of well-endowed Cathedrals.

Turn thee, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and deliver my soul;

O save me, for thy mercy’s sake.

For in death no man remembereth thee;

and who will give thee thanks in the pit?

Other settings are glorious and joyful, of course:

He hath made the round world so sure,

that it cannot be moved.

Ever since the world began, hath thy seat been prepared:

thou art from everlasting.

The floods are risen, O Lᴏʀᴅ, the floods have lift up their voice;

the floods lift up their waves.

The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly;

but yet the Lᴏʀᴅ who dwelleth on high is mightier.

My favorite is from the Queen’s funeral, I think.

Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit? • or whither shall I go then from thy presence? • If I climb up into heaven, thou art there; • if I go down to hell, thou art there also. • If I take the wings of the morning, • and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; • Even there also shall thy hand lead me, • and thy right hand shall hold me. • If I say, Peradventure the darkness shall cover me; • then shall my night be turned to day. • Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day; • the darkness and light to thee are both alike. • For my reins are thine

Now a lot of the musical settings are bad, sadly, but when they’re good they’re really good. And it’s an acquired taste, as they insist on fitting each line of variable size into the same steady melody.

The psalms are interesting because they’re so… self-absorbed. Almost narcissistic. “For I have heard the blasphemy of the multitude, and fear is on every side; while they conspire together against me, and take their counsel to take away my life.” So dramatic! It’s like the most dramatic teenager telling you about drama in their school (they all hate me… they want me dead…). The psalms were always designed to be communally-sung, even if ascribed to David, so this is interesting to dwell on — songs that are communal while conveying so much individualistic conceit. But I guess this isn’t unusual in popular music, where people rap along to gangster rap about opps and triumphing against them.

Pslams are great for the drama, which can really come out with modern translations/settings:

Psalm 2:

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain….

You will rule them with an iron scepter
You will dash them to pieces like Pottery
Therefore you kings be wise, be warned
You rulers of the Earth.
Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling!

Psalm 6:

Lord, I am weary with my groaning.
Lord, I drench my couch with tears.
I waste away from grief.

Psalm 7:

Or they'll devour my soul, like a lion
Tearing me to pieces while my screams ring out in vain!

Psalm 10:

For the wicked in their pride
Refuse to seek Him
All of their thoughts are,
"There is no God."

And his ways seem to prosper all the time
Your judgements are too high
They're out of his sight!

Psalm 14:

As if they were bread, they consume
They devour my people
They never call on the Lord
Too busy doing wrong

I bought a bag of pre-ground coffee the other day, thinking I could save some money by getting one of my cups of coffee per day from a much cheaper source. I'm not sure if this was a particularly bad one (a search didn't reveal any customer/reviewer dissatisfaction with it) or my palate has just fully adjusted to the experience of whole beans that I grind myself, but I had a remarkably bad experience with it. The coffee was fucking soulless. It didn't even have the classic smell of coffee. The taste had no appeal or depth at all. I don't know what they did to it when they processed those poor beans, but it was almost unsuitable for human consumption. Jfc. I've thrown the bag in the trash now.

@Muninn

I recommend Lavazza espresso and a small espresso maker with steamer wand (~100 but worth it if you drink lattes). I basically only drink homemade lattes. But, also, I was a barista for a couple of years, and have a proven tolerance for making lattes (they are not hard, but you do have to stand there and steam the milk).

It is not that I am incapable of appreciating good coffee, it's just that I don't particularly care either way.

Back in med school, I had a crippling caffeine addiction. Yes, this was before I got my ADHD meds, how did you guess?

Anyway, I used to wake up in the morning, and couldn't be arsed to take milk out of the fridge or borrow a roommate's kettle. I just poured instant coffee powder into an empty plastic coke bottle, added some cold water from the tap. Swirl for taste, and then pour it all down my gullet.

There was almost a queue in the dorms to see this bullshit the first few times I did it. Ah, good times. I eventually upgraded to warming up the water to be slightly warm and using a mug. I'm very civilized now.

Pre-ground anything that was once alive is generally bad.

The whole reason you grind a food/spice in the first place is to expose the surface area to increase the rate of chemical interaction. When you do this in advance, you just expose it to the air, where you increase the rate of decay, which destroys all the interesting flavour and leaves you with the classic taste of cigarette ash loved by middle classes around the world.

By similar logic, for beans like coffee, you generally want to keep them raw or frozen for long-term storage. Once you roast them, you’ve killed the bean, which obviously disables its immune function, so all the microorganisms that share your affection for good coffee now start to feast. Grinding, again, just exacerbates the rate at which competing microorganisms can consume your coffee before you can.

Personally, I always order from a distributor that roasts right before delivery, but do the grinding myself just before brewing.

It depends on the brand and what process they use. Some are ok but a lot of it is pretty disgusting. In my experience you won't really save money buying pre ground, because the decent stuff isn't meaningfully cheaper than buying beans.

It could be meaningfully cheaper where I live, but I'm not gonna bother with testing them all. I pay over 20 USD (eqv) per pound of specialty whole beans. I can't order from abroad due to protectionist policies.

It probably depends on the brand, process, and how many months after roasting and grinding it's just been sitting there on a shelf. I remember I bought a different brand of pre-ground coffee right when I got my coffee equipment and it wasn't nearly this bad. It had that typical coffee smell at least, and this new abomination didn't.

There are mass imported non-specialty whole beans available here that I've tried and they're okay. I'll be using those for my "secondary cup" of the day, whereas the primary one is the really enjoyable one.

Try the Mexican/Puerto Rican stuff. It'll be packed into a brick, not in a can.

I guess you and @Muninn just don't like coffee very much. I'm being serious. Most people buy their coffee in giant tubs of Folgers or Maxwell House. Most of the "high end" coffee is sold pre-ground in bags at grocery stores. Most of the premade coffee people buy isn't from dedicated coffee shops but from diners, gas stations, and fast food restaurants. Go to a grocery store and see what percentage off coffee on the shelves is whole bean. Dedicated coffee shops usually do grind their own beans, but that market is dominated by Starbucks. I'm of the opinion that if you discount 90% of the market as undrinkable garbage, you don't actually like coffee. It's like someone who says they "really like pizza" but they'll only eat Neapolitan-style pizza with basil and fresh mozzarella.

Hmm. A bad, plebeian take, and unskillfully delivered, sorry.

A more fair comparison in your analogy (reductio ad absurdum) would be to claim that someone who shies away from the oft-sold, cheapest, processed frozen pizza made with the lowest quality ingredients, partly destroyed by the processing and stored for way too long, doesn't like pizza. Which is still a dubious take but it's closer to what we're talking about with coffee. The beans do suffer from being left exposed to oxygen after grinding. That's a fact.

Having discernment is not absurd. It means you appreciate the food/drink in the forms that bring out their qualities, and don't bother with the forms that do not. That's legit imo.

The actual comparison for fresh ground coffee beans is brick fired pizza vs everything else, though, isn't it? And while I'll agree that brick fired pizza is better than dominos, we would refer to your hypothetical person who eats pizza only if it's brick fired as 'doesn't like pizza but eats it brick fired'.

The actual comparison for fresh ground coffee beans is brick fired pizza vs everything else, though, isn't it?

No, it isn't. To simplify it completely it's something with significantly ruined ingredients vs not ruined ingredients.

If 90%+ of the pizza sold in the US were frozen pizza and most people didn't think the difference in quality was salient enough to spend a few extra bucks on pizzeria pizza even occasionally, then I'd agree with you. But almost everyone agrees that frozen pizza is an inferior convenience product in a way they don't for coffee that you don't grind yourself. If I'm visiting friends whose culinary habits I'm unfamiliar with for the weekend and they tell me in advance that we'll be having pizza for dinner Friday night, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if they made frozen pizza, but I wouldn't think "wow, these people must be really into pizza" if they made it themselves or ordered from a shop. I would think they were more into coffee than the average bear if I wake up on Saturday morning and they're grinding coffee beans.

Were you listening to the Dude's story, Donny?

I don't think that's a fair assessment. One can dislike the mass market version of $thing without disliking $thing as a whole, because the mass market version is almost always a watered down, lower quality version of the original. If the mass produced coffee came first, you'd have more of a point, but it didn't.

No, I agree with you.

It's like people who write on a computer. Like, what are you even doing? If you aren't sharpening a quill and using ink you sourced locally, you're not writing you're just, I don't know, digital lettering. Ugh. As a true writer, I can't even. People these days are just not at all aware of what it means to scribe.

the mass market version is almost always a watered down, lower quality version of the original.

This is wrong. It's an infinitely better product because it's convenient, cheap, and tastes good unless you've retardmaxxed your tastebuds for no other reason that snobbish elitism.

Industrial strength coffee won WW2 and got us to the fuckin' moon before the Russians.

I'm not a coffee guy and I wouldn't dream of speaking for coffee. But I am a cheese guy, and I'll tell you right now that mass market cheese is almost without exception garbage. Sargento, and all that stuff? It's not worth the calories. Tillamook is decent but even that pales in comparison to any cheese you can find in Wisconsin from a typical grocery store. So yeah, mass market versions of a product tend to be an inferior version, because they cut corners. It's something I've seen first-hand, and while I'm not in a position to comment on the coffee debate it would hardly surprise me if the same rule applies.

FWIW Sargento is made in Wisconsin and sold in the grocery stores. It's fine for things like Mac and Cheese or Cheesy Potato Casserole or queso salsa. But they also sell things like Sartori and BelGioioso and lots of local micro producers which, as you note, are incredible for straight cheese eating. (I just now realized the Sar in Sargento is Joe Sartori, who sold his interest in Sargento to work on the more crafty Sartori cheese.)

Except what OP is describing isn't $thing either. What OP is describing is a 1990s invention that was only possible because of mass-market industrialization and technological advancement. If you go back to the way the Turks were drinking coffee around the time it was introduced in Europe, beans were roasted in a pan over an open fire, ground using a mortar and pestle, boiled in sugar water and drunk unfiltered. The roast was unlikely to be consistent let alone follow the precise roasting curves of today, and I don't know of any try-hard coffee snobs who would approve of the brewing method. Even the seemingly simple pourover wasn't invented until the 20th century, well into the era of industrial coffee production. There isn't some question of authenticity involved here, because historically "authentic" coffee probably tastes like crap.

turkishGreek coffee is... well I like it. Goes great with a cigarette and a pastry.

It's also fun to read fortunes in the leftover grounds.

I went to a coffee roasting event with an Ethiopian woman, and it was fun, smelled great, and tasted fine for black coffee. She told a story about highly caffeinated goats where coffee used to grow wild in her homeland.

Humans have been developing food technology for about ten thousand years, from domestication and selective breeding to improved processing techniques. Would I find you in Middle Kingdom Egypt saying that if you don't like the bitter and poisonous watermelons of our forefathers then you don't like watermelons at all? Would you deride the sweet watermelon as "a Menhtuhotep II era invention only possible thanks to a selective breeding program"?

No, I'm saying that if the only watermelon you like is some special cultivar that's only available in specialty stores, costs 20 dollars and has to be prepared in a very particular way, it's safe to say you don't really like watermelon.

You're missing the point. The watermelon we have today is the special cultivar. Presumably at some point you'd say that people who only like this cultivar don't like watermelon, and now you wouldn't.

Seems like an unfair comparison. The whole bean coffee I generally buy from my local midrange supermarket (city in the southern US) costs $12 a pound (compared to roughly $8 a pound for a 2.5 lb tub of the cheapest Folger's grounds) and is vastly better in a normal drip process. The grocery is doing enough volume that roast dates are consistently in the past month (vs typically 1-2 years for Folger's).

I think you may be generalizing from top-end third wave cafes to say that everything better than bottom-tier is snobbery. Coffee is coffee, and bad coffee is preferable to no coffee, but there can still be a reason to want more than the minimum viable experience here.

People who drink Starbucks don't really like coffee, they like Starbucks syrups.

It's more like: imagine someone who really likes Tomatoes. They grow different varietals from seeds and buy them from Farmer's markets and they eat them raw and sliced with a homemade light dressing. But they don't like tomato sauce.

I don't think it would be fair to tell such a person: "Actually most tomatoes are eaten in tomato sauce, if you don't like tomato sauce you don't really like tomatoes."

Fine, eliminate Starbucks from the equation. That's where the vast majority of whole bean coffee is going, and the typical Starbucks customer certainly isn't grinding their own beans at home. But even at the independent shops I go to it seems like half the menu is sugary concoctions and I often have to clarify that, yes, I just want a black coffee.

letthehateflowthroughyou.jpg

Soulless is a good word for how pre-ground coffee tastes once one's palate has become accustomed to fresh beans. It's more like coffee flavored water than actual coffee! Once coffee is ground, all of that fresh coffee flavor locked into the bean is now exposed to oxygen and that flavor unique to that particular batch of beans is literally evaporating by the minute. Even if the beans were ground right at the store when you bought them, you'd have to rush right home and make coffee with the grinds to have a shot at a decent-to-good cup of coffee from them before the staleness started setting into the taste.

When I have to travel, I can subsist on the drek that's offered up at hotels and such, but it's never my preference. One of the joys of the craft coffee revolution is that there's a decent chance that I'll be able to try out some local coffee shop even in BFE and if not, I can try to fall back to a Starbucks for some Blonde Espresso ('bout time they started going down that road, a smart move IMAO) or decent drip coffee at the worst.

Yeah. But I'm now convinced that this bag was worse than average, because I remember trying a different brand of pre-ground coffee not that long ago and it was "okay" and smelled like average Arabica beans. This one definitely didn't. I can't imagine my snobbery has rocketed that much and changed my nose that much in just a couple of months. I'm leaning towards being unlucky with the new bag of cheap stuff.

I think some of the disagreement around the discernment and snobbery in coffee and other food/drink comes from seeking enjoyment vs getting [active ingredient delivery system].

The cheapest coffee, wine or pizza can deliver their caffeine, alcohol or tasty calories, and serve their purpose in that way, and at low cost due to all the cutting of corners, which has some value to many consumers, but that's just one dimension inside the category. If you want enjoyment you want a product that represents some of the better raw ingredients prepared in a less destructive way.

Yeah. But I'm now convinced that this bag was worse than average, because I remember trying a different brand of pre-ground coffee not that long ago and it was "okay" and smelled like average Arabica beans. This one definitely didn't.

Probably true! My reply was totally tongue in cheek and at least a little hyperbolic in that particular sense.

I think some of the disagreement around the discernment and snobbery in coffee and other food/drink comes from seeking enjoyment vs getting [active ingredient delivery system].

The cheapest coffee, wine or pizza can deliver their caffeine, alcohol or tasty calories, and serve their purpose in that way, and at low cost due to all the cutting of corners, which has some value to many consumers, but that's just one dimension inside the category. If you want enjoyment you want a product that represents some of the better raw ingredients prepared in a less destructive way.

I agree with all of this as well. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong or inferior with mass market coffee, it's that I quite enjoy the ritual of sipping a nice fresh shot of good espresso or cup of pourover coffee and discovering the flavors that said shot or cup contains, which is not something I can do with the mass market stuff. In fact, I'd say that it's highly impressive how brands from Folger's and Eight O' Clock to Starbucks can crank out a specific taste profile for their coffee year in and year out given the inherent variability of the beans themselves!

I think some of the disagreement around the discernment and snobbery in coffee and other food/drink comes from seeking enjoyment vs getting [active ingredient delivery system].

But also it comes from not wanting to get on a runaway hedonic treadmill. If you refine your tastes to the extent that 70% of the market no longer pleases you, and on average you need to spend 2x to get the same hedons, have you truly benefited?

This is not a straightforward question because there are second order effects here too. For example, raising standards throughout your society may result in better quality stuff at the same or lower prices. But worth considering IMO.

I understand the point. But on the other hand, life is short and you only live once. Why settle for mediocrity if you have bit of extra money? I wouldn't say you get exactly the same hedons at twice the cost. There is, at least for a while, more pleasure, and a health boosting feeling of a bit more abundance, luxury, confidence. And you get to chat about it with fellow snobs. Might compare it to flying business vs economy class, or a nice new car vs a run-down old one. You enjoy the experiences more, even though you get used to most of that change after a while. There are things I paid a premium for, like my TV and my recliner, that I still appreciate every day, even though they impressed me more in the first few months I had them.

And, on the personality level, some people are just different and more sensitive to subtle differences. It doesn't fully make sense to talk about personal preferences as choices. You either have them or you don't. It's partly inherent to the individual's phenotype (or whatever the term is for what's unique about each baby and not just copied in from the parents' genetics and environment). Not just upbringing. There are some insensitive clods in rich families and some sensitive kids in poor families.


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