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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   2883 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why is horror the exception to the theater recession? SW is underperforming right now but another horror movie is overperforming. It's been this way for a while, a lot of the surprise hits are A24/indie-style horror films.

I’m not sure SW indicates a general theater recession. Aren’t we more or less on par?

I suspect something like what @07mk said. Blockbuster sci-fi is expensive and the space is more saturated than horror. Probably makes it easier to construct a fresh, memorable one.

Either that, or it’s just been too long since the last horror revival. What was that, 2009?

Horror is evergreen because it's a way for young women to evaluate potential mates in a stress situation.

SW burned their core audience and the bloom has come of the audience they were trying to add, which leaves a lot of underperformance until Disney lets it rest for a long while.

That reminds me. Backrooms comes out this week, which is a big entry in the liminal space horror genre. I'm planning to buy a movie ticket for the first time since Top Gun 2.

It could be for a similar reason to the rise of indie studios in Videogames? Arguably corporatizing these "art forms" leads to a lot of optimization that audiences eventually burn out from. Indie creators do interesting and artful things.

My guess is that horror movies are in the sweet spot of being not too high budget while also being a significantly better experience when watched in one shot on a large screen in a dark room with a crowd compared to watching alone at home. Spectacle movies like Star Wars fit the latter but not the former, while comedies fit the former but only a little of the latter.

At what stage would you say the household is rich?

  • you don't have to worry about running out of money as long as you don't retire prematurely and don't upgrade your lifestyle
  • you can retire early
  • you can retire early and leave a nest egg for your children
  • you can retire early and your children won't have to work for a living either

All of these are defining "rich" relative to your expected level of spending, which is not how the general public think of the term. Someone who FIREs into a lower-middle class lifestyle which they need to clip coupons to maintain may be "rich" in some spiritually meaningful sense, but Joe Public is going to think of them as a bum.

The stupid think of rich as "currently enjoying a lifestyle above upper-middle-class". (Complicated in the US context by very high salaries and share options in some upper-middle class career fields such that a lot of upper-middle-class people can support a lifestyle above upper-middle class, particularly if they retire to a low COL area). The smart think of rich as "able to support an upper-middle-class lifestyle indefinitely without being subject to the grind and risk of an upper-middle-class career" - and so do most of the rich.

The other point is that if you define "upper-middle-class lifestyle" as a fixed income, then the gap between 2 and 4 is quite small - the difference in PV between "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle for 40 more years" and "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle in perpetuity" is small because of discounting. So the real difference between 2,3 and 4 is about the cost of grandchildren. 2 implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for retired couple" whereas 3 (partially) and 4 (fully) implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for family probably including private school fees".

So what do I think? Well if you have grandchildren who receive a lower-middle class upbringing, whether because you can't afford to help your kids or because you refuse to, then you failed at being rich. And if you don't have grandchildren, then Darwin has found you wanting and selected you out. If, as Gordon Gecko said, greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit, then I suppose you have failed at greed.

So to answer the original question, I think the ordinary English meaning of "rich" is most consistent with 3, but with the proviso that you can maintain an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Rich is the last one, in my book. You may keep working but it's for status/personal reasons not to cover costs.

This is a wealthy first world nation conception of rich, I think. My parents thought hot potable running water, not having to see other people's shit floating down the river, and a job as being rich. Now that they've adjusted to a higher standard of living they (and me) would say #2.

Two. Anyone who says anything higher is suffering from the financial equivalent of hoeflation.

Agree with the below, option 2 is the correct answer. The trick, of course, is that our lizard brains will conspire to convince us that we can't really retire just yet, now can we, not with $Bill to pay for and $Thing to afford.

Objectively option 2, but I wouldn't feel comfortable until option 3.

Option 2

IMO, every retiree should consider himself rich.

Does anybody here have experience with OSR D&D?

Yesterday, I ran a first session of the classic adventure module Caverns of Thracia. I did this to familiarize myself and my players with old-school mechanics in hopes of running, at some point, Deep Carbon Observatory. That captivated me a while back when I was trawling through greatest hits of the OSR, a logical next step from my on again/off again interest in the abstract concept of roleplaying games. Why do I care about that in the first place, seeing as how little I actually play such games? The margin is too narrow to contain an explanation.

But I digress.

Character sheets were simple enough. 3d6 in order, pick race/class, secondary stats. They handled this well enough until we got to equipment. Two of the core mechanics of old-school D&D are “can I afford to lug this around?” and “can I afford not to?” New players can’t really answer either of these questions. Asking them to tally encumbrance is fine. Asking them to plan a baggage train’s worth of loadouts with a limited budget is too much. Simplifying the mechanics with something like an inventory-slot system only helps answer the first question. It does nothing to pare down an overwhelming solution space. Still, this section got my players into a hilariously paranoid spiral over the presence of garlic and stakes in the (basic, non-adventure specific) equipment list. By the time we finalized gear, they were convinced that vampires and werewolves would both feature prominently. I count that as a win.

Actual adventuring started off just fine, too. “A break in the foliage reveals long, low stone walls. The lack of tree cover behind them suggests a plaza or platform. Further structures are visible to the southwest and north. What do you do?” I chose not to switch to adventuring turns until they needed light sources, so this was freeform. They encountered a camp of tribesmen in the southwest ruined tower, but the reaction roll was neutral, so they were able to back off without shedding blood. Investigating that plaza revealed a staircase down and a pair of distorted, doglike guards. Fortunately, those guards were distracted by the campfire smoke from the previous encounter and remained unaware of the party. When a minotaur sauntered up the steps to discipline his guards, the party wisely chose to back off and find another approach.

The next platform they investigated was keyed with a lizardman ambush, a volley of darts followed by a retreat into favorable terrain. As written, this involves half a dozen 2HD monsters getting the drop on the party. I couldn’t tell if I was running exploration or surprise rules wrong, because I couldn’t tell what the players should have done differently. I ended up toning down the number of lizards since the party was so small.

We ended the session there, with the cleric injured but no one dead. I count that as fortunate. Nobody seemed too frustrated, but they have no obvious avenues of progress, and a distinct lack of firepower against anything that wasn’t already determined to run away. I really hope they aren’t convinced that those lizard men were guarding something important.

Real hours: 2.5
Exploration turns: 0
Combat rounds: 1

The fact that we didn’t actually get into a dungeon with corridors and traps has thrown me for a loop. Has anyone here played Thracia, or can anyone point me to actual play of the surface? Am I doing this right?

Never played Thracia, but I am old enough to have played plenty of OG D&D/AD&D, and two and a half hours just to get a little bit into it sounds entirely reasonable, especially given the whole equipment kerfuffle. A good all-day session for us would net about a floor of a dungeon, and my favorite DM was a gleeful sadist who expertly created all sorts of diabolical traps and general mayhem that he used to take down higher level PCs with otherwise unimproved orcs, goblins, kobolds, and ogres.

The next platform they investigated was keyed with a lizardman ambush, a volley of darts followed by a retreat into favorable terrain. As written, this involves half a dozen 2HD monsters getting the drop on the party. I couldn’t tell if I was running exploration or surprise rules wrong, because I couldn’t tell what the players should have done differently. I ended up toning down the number of lizards since the party was so small.

Having run some old school adventures, that sounds about right. Those original modules could be absolutely vicious at times.

I have no experience with OSR, but from what I gathered browsing one (1) OSR-related blog, the inventory problem is often solved by hiring people to lug your stuff around behind you while dungeoneering.

That’s the baggage train to which I was alluding. It’s an interesting optimization puzzle…which I wasn’t willing to inflict on a small party fresh out of managing their own encumbrance. Not yet.

What's your hit rate when shopping for clothing (casual wear)?

Trying to figure out if I'm uniquely bad at this, or if it's normal and I just need to be buying more stuff to increase successes, or instead skill-up and reduce the failure rate. I think once I've walked out of a store with clothing, there's maybe a 50% chance per item that it actually works out for me.

I must be so bad at it, because I am not even sure what does it mean for a clothing item to "work" for me. I mean, if it does not cause me physical discomfort when I wear it, and does not look ridiculous, it works? That said, my wife pre-approves almost all clothing items I buy anyway, so maybe "working for me" is part of the criteria, I have no idea. Also, I very rarely find myself in a situation where it matters what I am clothed in, provided it is clean, conventionally looking and approximately matching the season.

Pretty good - I’ve worked in clothing for a few years tho and have a fiancé. Prior to this I was a mess.

Have a Dillard’s near you?

Walk up to someone and ask for help.

AE too - probably a few other nationwide places I can’t think of right now where people may truly be able and want to help out.

80-90%. The misses are usually because I get so fed up of not finding what I'm looking for that I end up compromising and regretting it.

80-90%.

If I order online it's typically stuff I've already tried out before.

Rather high, maybe 90%. I don't buy stuff that doesn't work for me, unless I make a mistake. Like, I had a white medium-sized polo and bought a navy medium-sized polo. Same company, same model, different color. Too small, should've tried it on. I also bought a super-slim dress shirt at the end of my cut. And some skinny chinos. These are probably my only big duds. I wear the rest, but there are specific items that are in constant rotation and outshine everything else.

100%, except for cases where it stops fitting (either because I get fatter or it shrinks in the wash). If I buy an article of clothing, it's because I like it enough to wear it.

75%. Slowly moved up over time from a bottom of like 20% when mom stopped buying clothes for me.

It took me a long time to figure out I like cotton, some polyester, and hate most other fabrics. It took me longer to figure out I dislike clothes with the brand name displayed. And so on. A decades long trial and error process, and I still make mistakes because I shop mostly online now and it's hard to judge fit from a picture. 90% if I happen to buy in person, I rarely miss then.

I will say that I no longer care how I look and that comfort, fit, and price are all I care about in that exact order. Most of my clothes is from Target, Old Navy, and Gap.

Basically 100%. I wear everything I keep, though I usually order a variety of sizes and colors and return half or more of my order right away.

How do you end up disliking half of what you buy?

  • bad guess about how the item will fit after washing or wear. This is especially a problem with shoes. Some people seem comfortable with a full +1 size of slack, but I want mine to be snug within 1/4 size of perfect, which usually entails buying them just slightly too small so that they are the right size after a few weeks of use, but it doesn't always work.
  • insufficient courage / better judgement - I thought I was that person. I'm not that person, so the item goes unworn.
  • some unforseen issue that I couldn't have reasonably predicted when trying the thing on. (unfixably scratchy tag, weird stitching that turns out to be a problem in everyday use, etc.)
  • and similar

I can understand his point. Some people just have horrible fashion sense and their ideas about what they think will look good just don’t match when they suit up. I get most of my clothing from Buckle. It’s become my default, one stop shop for everything and the style is right up my alley.

Sure, but once you try it on you can make the decision to not buy/return it. The question is how do you try something on, like it, then start disliking it.

If you change your mind too much as time goes on, that’s different from simply disliking half of what you buy.

At first I thought you were asking how many of the clothes you try on work out for you and you buy them, which my answer was going to be like 10 percent, but then I re-read your question and realized you're asking what ends up working for you after you take it home.

In that case it's probably around 75% for me. I try to be extremely picky in what I purchase because I hate wasting money on stuff that doesn't work out. The biggest culprits of things not working is stuff shrinking after the first wash and the irritation of having a slightly inferior product compared to what I already own and I can't stand to trade down when I have something better on hand. Also I have a habit of thinking something looks good in the mirror without realizing it's uncomfortable as hell which I can't unnotice the first time I try to actually wear it

For reference I have a degree in fashion design and shop all the time and this is still a terrible problem.

If I find something I like from a brand that makes the same things all the time (like MUJI, Uniqlo or LA Apparel) I will happily buy multiples of the same style in different or same colors which helps a ton but is incredibly irritating when they change things or discontinue items and you have to start all over

ha. yes, I genuinely regret not buying a lifetime supply of some items before they discontinued them. Would have felt extremely autistic to do at the time, but I miss them and nothing has replaced them.

Yeah don't worry about how autistic it is, there is so much crap in the world that when you find the perfect thing just get tons of it. I have 3 pairs of my favorite pants which were a random seasonal piece from Express, I'm going to be annoyed if I can't find a 4th pair since I've already worn through the first two

I’d been looking for a particular pair of men’s, blue Stacy Adams for years before finally coming across a brand new pair that was just my size once on eBay. I instantly bought it despite it being on the pricier side of things, specifically for the reasons mentioned. Directly on their website they’d long since been out of production.

There used to be a company called Trunk Club (that I think was bought out by another entity), that sought to solve this problem for you. What you would do is image yourself, and an associate with I guess(?) a qualified fashion sense would go out and shop for clothing and brands on your behalf, you’d pay for the clothing plus the markup for the shopper, and your clothes would be shipped directly to your front door. You’ll could still return them if you didn’t like them. I never used them at all but I found it very interesting when I first heard about it.

Yup there have been a handful of services with this model over the years, they never seem to catch on. Actually fashion startups with sort of gimmicky business strategies (rent the runway type things for example) almost never work out, I suspect investors are not usually the type of people to understand the fashion industry, and fashion companies are notoriously poorly managed in general

By fashion management are you talking about the retail side or brand management? I’d imagine luxury and even mid-tier brand managers understand the trends and forces quite well. On the outlet side of things, I can see how they’d be suffering.

Ehhhh it's kind of a mess all the way around. There are a handful of companies like Levi's which are grandfathered in and have a very specific niche that they do well enough that they are hard to mess up and I would describe as well run, though even those have rough patches.

Luxury brands are currently going through a huge problem where they've inflated prices outside of the reach of aspirational shoppers (basically everyone but the very rich) with zero increase in the quality of the goods they are selling- this is the case right now with every brand in the category from Chanel to the LVMH labels to McQueen. I believe I just read in the Business of Fashion that the luxury market (as in the number of buyers consuming luxury goods) has shrunk like 40 percent in the past 5 years. Of course before this LVMH for example was doing great for over a decade so things are cyclical and to some extent outside the control of management but the mishandling of the price point and quality control has been ridiculous and unnecessary and avoidable IMO.

Fashion management is also very prone to misunderstanding the customer's needs or desires, doing a poor job of matching expectation with product selection, they tend to fall for flavor of the day gimmicks that often fail, there is often friction between the business and creative sides of the businesses, and so on

That's insane, is this online shopping from unknown brands or emergency shopping right before an event?

My hit rate is 100%, because I'm picky and I only shop in person and I try everything on. I often leave without buying anything, because I know what fits and what looks work for my body type and aesthetic.

Either you need to simply walk away more often, or this is a skill issue. The latter can be condensed into a hand full of straight forward rules. "The cuff needs to be this long", "the shoulder seam needs to sit right on this bone", "lifting both arms must look just so", "squatting in new jeans must feel like that and show this much ankle". The exact values for all that can be gotten from YouTube or guides on manosphere blogs and /r/malefashionadvice. All 3 are dangerous, because half those people dress like retards, so look at the pictures and decide if you want to look like that.

I've added a couple of additional rules that save me lots of time by not even trying things on ("absolutely no synthetics, 1% is unacceptable", "the maximum size of a logo is 1/2", "no baggy/skinny cuts", "only plain, neutral colors"), but that's basically it.

99%? If I try it on and like it, it's gonna be good. I usually thrift these days, but I don't think there's any secret, just be picky before you purchase, not after. I usually try on like 2% of what I see, and buy 20% of what I try on.

My hit rate is about 75%, which is embarrassingly low when you consider that I'm buying nice designer/vintage stuff. Usually because I see something I love and convince myself the measurements will work, and they don't. For less fashion-inclined people, I recommend finding brands you like and building a uniform out of them, so that when you buy the next piece you know how it'll look and fit - personally, my no-thinking uniform is RM Williams boots, Darn Tough socks, bn3th underwear, Outlier trousers, Wolf vs Goat tshirt, Spier & Mackay turtleneck (don't actually love those but don't have a great brand for turtlenecks yet), Arcteryx jacket. For less fashion-y friends I recommend Uniqlo/Muji/Spier & Mackay/APC. Solid, muted colours, no graphics. If you want a statement piece, go to grailed or ebay and search for Stephan Schneider, there isn't a single designer who's better bang for your buck and the cuts are very forgiving (don't be like me! Read the measurements!).

I almost entirely buy clothing online, with probably an 80% success rate, but I am quite picky and think about it for several weeks ahead of time.

Lately my preferred method of getting clothing is from Uniqlo collaborations, where they preview their items a month before the sales date, and if I still want something a month later, I generally really do want it and will wear it. Occasionally I have to send something back, which is annoying to do, more than other companies. Also their collaborations, specifically, are a bit better quality than other clothing at that price point.

I do not wear jeans at all, and still wear skirts with leggings in situations where jeans would be appropriate, because they never fit correctly.

My husband buys items in person but does not try them on, and wears literally everything he purchases for several years. This seems to be some combination of not being picky, and having the body type that most clothing is designed for.

<...> having the body type that most clothing is designed for.

I realized a few years ago I had achieved a body that was perfectly compatible with at least several brands I liked. Not too short, not too tall, not too fat, not too athletic. This meant I could buy practically anything they had for sale off the rack. Sadly, one of them must've diversified its suppliers and this is no longer true for their knitwear.

Cultural question but what kind of knitwear does a Russian man wear? Jumpers?

Ordinary cotton T-shirts are also knitwear.

Any kind? I like turtlenecks, but you can wear crew necks, V-necks, quarter zips, full zips...

I think I'm probably at 70%. Yeah it's just a problem and it pays to develop a keen instinct to return anything you're not sure about as soon as possible. If it looks good you'll know. If you're not sure you'll end up regretting keeping it probably nine times out of ten.

Works out how, exactly? Are you talking overall comfortable fit, or just pure looks?

some combination. basically: will I ever wear this thing, or will I hate it for one reason or other (fit, looks, quality) and decide buying it was a mistake?

Huh. That would be a problem, yes.

Granted, I have a near pathological fear of purchasing clothing brand new, so I always tend to buy things either used or clearance. Probably cuts down on buyers regret a good deal.

How old do you think were when the transition from your parents worrying about your health to you worrying about their health happened?

I'd say late 20s for me, not very long back really. They're in their 60s now. I suppose it's confounded by the fact we're all doctors, and I have a (small) degree of confidence that they can look after themselves and vice versa. Still have to yell at my dad to get his heart checked, and my mom to up her semaglutide dose, but they need to check in on me too so it all cancels out.

At the age of 49 I received a call from home. It was morning --a Saturday in Japan, so evening in my home state. It was my mom. My dad had begun having petit mal seizures several years before. We didn't know why, or at least the doctors didn't explore why or venture a guess why, though maybe they did in adjusting his medication for what I believe was diabetes, but they ended up giving him carbamazepine as treatment, which he would eventually refer to as his crazy pills: "Your mother is always reminding me to take my crazy pills." My father was over a decade older than my elderly mother at this point, so I tended to have my radar tuned to his zigs and zags. But I never really worried much about his health beyond that. He was robust, actively volunteering to deliver food to "the old folks" when he himself was 80, went to church, took daily walks, all the benign yet pro social activities that suburban old white men do. COVID would change all that but that's an entirely different story. This story is about the phone call from my mom where she told me, in what seemed an almost embarrassed voice (she always tended to laugh a lot, and there was some ghost of a laugh here as well) that she was entering hospice, and that she loved me, and that I shouldn't worry about her.

This was typical of my uncommunicative family, but x 10. Usually in the weeks and months before someone enters hospice care you have visited them bedside in a hospital, or sent them get well letters, or heard about their disease from friends and felt like you really should take them some flowers. But no. My mom had gone to a doctor for back pain I suppose a few weeks earlier and been diagnosed with Stage IV multiple myeloma. They'd given her less than a year, though soon she would find researchers coming out of the woodwork to suggest possible new treatments. She refused them. God would take care of her. Which of course eventually he did, though not as she had perhaps hoped and expected.

And so it was that I flew home and left my work situation dangling, and sat by her bedside in a large room richly panelled in dark wood with a view into a patio dappled in sunlight and small birds. She sometimes just kept the TV on. She wore a wig or headscarf. I had seen her not more than two years earlier planting flowers with my very young (at the time) second son. The whole situation seemed unreal. Bone cancer (yes not solid tumor, but still cancer.) She had never smoked, and probably had no more than five sips of alcohol her entire life. And here she lay, a shell of her former happy self, the same kind of resigned Patience in the face of impossible hardship that I had seen in her sisters, my aunts, when horrible family situations had been discussed in the past. No outright tears, no wailing against unfairness, no anger. Just an acceptance of what, in some form or another, awaits us all I suppose (perhaps not you, @selfie.)

I could stay a week. My mom had stopped eating or drinking, so the hospice nurses were not optimistic about how long she would hold on. The hospice chaplain I knew from childhood --she had been in my Sunday school class and was a year older than I was, but quite beautiful. Blonde, blue eyed, trim, with a calm demeanor; you felt you could lie with your head in her lap and listen to her speaking and never need anyone or anything else. She asked me how I was doing. "Fine. How are you doing?" I asked. She laughed and told me I was terrible. Michelle. That was her name.

The two days before I was to return to Japan someone had brought pork chops to the hospice kitchen. This was a place full of donated food--cookies, key lime pies, doughnuts, fried chicken, cornbread, sometimes fruits, all sorts of soft drinks and coffees and teas. But it took the pork chops and gravy to rouse my mother from what was supposed to be her death bed, her following hand over hand the hallway railing. And she ate.

I came back here. She would last another ten months--my mother was the only person I know whom hospice kicked out. She returned home. From my father's account it wasn't pretty. And in the end, as one does, she succumbed. My father told me he was praying for God to take her at the end. He talked about the death rattle, told me it's not something he ever wanted me to hear, and certainly was happy I hadn't heard it from my mother. Seven years later I'd hear it from him, but that, again, is another story.

Anyway I was 49.

For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry. I'd say that words are worth very little, but that would be a cynical lie. I know I've been in bad places and kind words even from a stranger helped.

My grandpa isn't all there anymore. At 96 and change, the actuarial tables aren't looking good. But he's at home, and goddammit, he might have spent his life at hospital but if he goes, he'll go at home. Or stay home, surrounded by people who love him. That would include me, if work lets me fly away. This is a grim hypothetical I'm forcing myself to confront instead of unaddressed, and I'm worried about my parents because I'll be damned if they don't another 20 years of reasonably healthy life. Might as well hand in my badge and walk away if I can't do that.

Hoping you're okay now, and the grief has been dulled by the passage of the time. Too much to expect it to just go, it won't.

All is well, thank you. At this point I'm projecting forward to what my own sons will deal with. At some point thunderstorm golfing seems viable. Nothing like a lightning strike to end it quickly, and with a bit of oomph, all while sparing one's family from witnessing the slow decline. Just a joke. We, none of us know when the bell will toll.

I was only around 9 when I tried really hard (but failed) to get my mom to quit smoking. In later years she tried a couple times to quit unprompted, but only managed to cut her habit in half. I was around 36 when the lung tumors got her, while her last grandchild was still a baby too young to talk.

Ironically she managed to quit cold turkey as soon as she saw the blotches on a lung x-ray, though at that point the cancer had metastasized and she only had months left. I think if she'd known she really was capable of quitting she'd have managed to do it decades earlier.

My dad I never worried about until he had some major health scares starting that same year; he hardly touched anything more vegetable-like than iceberg lettuce or corn, but even after he'd retired he generally exercised (doing volunteer work) well enough to counterbalance his diet, and the cancer that got him was probably mostly bad genes on that side of the family.

Fuckin cancer, man. You stay well.

Thanks. I got my first tumor cut out a couple years ago, but it was only a basal cell carcinoma, which is like the yapping baby chihuahua of cancers. Fortunately, too; if I'd ignored anything actually dangerous for so long ("boy it's weird that this scar is still sensitive to any little scrape", I thought to myself intermittently for a year, as I literally put band-aids on my damned cancer) I'd be dead.

I'm not old yet but I've already had a life to be immensely grateful for. What's killing me (albeit only metaphorically so far) is that, as the name would suggest, bad genes are genetic. Not only did I get my dad's allele, so did at least one of my kids. Of all cancer's victims in my extended family so far, though, only one died really early, IIRC in her 40s; everybody else either died around 70, or got cancer in their 60s but managed to beat it for now. Even my dad almost managed to beat his; it looked cured and it didn't recur for a year. Hopefully we'll have made even more oncology progress by the time my kids need it.

Somewhere in my early 30s I guess. I was 32 when I got married, and around that time my mom started to have health issues. Notably, one time when she was visiting she was super short on breath and wound up having to go to the hospital because she couldn't breathe. I chalked it up to altitude sickness or something, but right before I got married she got a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. I guess in a sense there's not much to worry about, because her condition is what it is. Can't be fixed, only slowed. That was almost 9 years ago, and she was given 10 years by her doctor at the time, so yeah.

Similarly around that timeframe (though maybe a few years later), I started noticing my dad was having more and more health issues because he keeps pushing himself like he's a young man still. But he's not (he is 69 in three weeks), and his body frankly can't take the intense physical work of farming like it once could. He has had a torn bicep, injured his butt some kind of way I forget, and so on. But he's a stubborn Polack (just like me, hah) and he isn't likely to change. I just try to gently encourage him to sell the rest of his animals and pursue his hobbies, like woodworking (which has its possible injuries but isn't as hard on the body as the shit he gets up to now). Perhaps one day he'll listen.

I, uh, don't worry about my parents' health much. There's nothing I can do about it. They're both incredibly stubborn people who will (not) take care of themselves, bonus points for the stepmom.

I will say that I wasn't ready for the moment I felt compelled to protect my father (a big, imposing Marine veteran) in a physical altercation. He ran his mouth and picked a bar fight he couldn't win, the other guy fought dirty, and in a flash I went from being as annoyed with his drunken bullshit as everyone else in the bar to being willing to fuck that guy up or get my ass kicked trying if he wouldn't take my offer of "this is over; we're leaving". I was...32?

Funny enough, I must've made an impression (I can't fight for shit but I'm crazy and loud, inherited that from mom's side.) because that incident took on a fishing story-like life of its own where I allegedly brandished a chair in my father's defense.

I can't imagine taking my dad to a dive bar, and neither of us are willing to start fights (I'm a gentle soul), but I do appreciate you standing up for your dad. If someone did actually lay hands on my family, you bet I'd come in swinging.

The story makes it all worth it. I think you left an impression on your dad, the "my little boy is all grown up" kind. And that's really all we can ever expect from our dads.

I don’t know that my parents have worried about my health since I was a small child. Not in any active way that I was made aware of. My worry about my parents health is abstract. Yes they’re getting older. My father is definitely in worse shape these past few years. It is what it is.

It was my late thirties when this became a Thing for me. Dad was in his early seventies and starting to exhibit signs of cognitive decline, and mom started exhibiting signs of her own several more years down the road.

Ouch. I'm sorry man, that's the worst, because there's very little you can do about it once it kicks in. One of the many reasons I tell my parents to start or continue semaglutide is the immediate cardiovascular benefit, which translates to drastically reduced dementia risk. I'm guessing this comes too late for you, and if so, my condolences.

It does indeed, for the both of them, and I appreciate your well wishes. The scary part is that my family had no previous history of dementia or Alzheimer's, so now I'm pretty freaked out about my own chances. That said, dad did have bad sleep apnea, and taking care of a spouse with dementia makes for a massive risk of dementia in its own right, though watching them both go through it one after the other has definitely increased my receptivity to the brain infection hypothesis...

Were any of them ever screened for the genetic markers for it? There are well known risk factors associated within different variants of the APOE gene. Other forms have different associated vectors, but this is something that’s caused a little bit of worry even with me when I got to thinking about it one day. My genetic tests are all clear, I’m not a carrier for the genetic determinants, but it makes you wonder.

No, neither of them ever were. Ironically, my wife's maternal side of the family has a history of Alzheimer's, but thus far her mother's siblings seem to be dodging the proverbial bullet.

I mean, AFAIK the infectivity thing is mostly for neurosurgeons? People who are actively at risk of inhaling potential abnormal proteins.

And Alzheimer's, in particular, is quite common even without a family history. If you have the option, I would strongly advise starting on a GLP-1 drugs. It's too late when the AD has already set in, but I'm not sure if it makes a difference during the mild cognitive impairment stage, and you're better off starting early. Might be worth getting screened for APOE-4 allele if budget allows, that's a massive risk. 50% of AD cases or more have at least one of them.

It's still a relatively understudied potential cause/risk factor, due mainly to a preoccupation with the amyloid tangles and plaques in the brain, but it's gaining momentum and mainstream interest, especially as said focus has yet to produce effective treatment.

Oh, different thing than I was envisioning. I was talking about the elevated risk of neurodegenerative disorders in neurosurgeons. I mean, I doubt it's all easily condensed down to a single factor, but we quite recently found out that gum infection is linked to cardiac disease too. So I suppose I'm going to keep my eyes peeled and brush my teeth better.

It's been a fascinating rabbit hole for me personally, both because I am well aware that Science™ advances one funeral at a time, and so had been looking at alternative hypotheses for Alz/dementia, and also because out of the blue my dental hygienist started discussing the topic on her own as she had recently gotten the infodump hereself.

I sometimes wish I was a dentist (not pretty enough to be a hygienist, but I could do with a harem). Mostly for the captive audience for my lectures.

I suppose 10? But none of us has ever been terribly worried about one another's health, other than everyone else about my brother's mental health.

I don't know if there was ever really a transition. It's been something that I've had to consider my entire life.

For anyone out there who has a drinking problem, seek help. If you have kids, do it sooner, rather than later.

Somewhere in my 30s. Let's say around the pandemic. Before that there was a period when we didn't worry about our respective health, at least openly.

So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Sayers' Whose Body? Also reading Abelson's The Seven Liberal Arts after rereading Sayers' essay The Lost Tools of Learning.

Finished Dungeon Crawler Carl book 8, a Parade of Horribles. Still love the series and love recommending it to people but its starting to feel like the series needs to wrap up.

An old anthology of Lovecraftian Horror. It's interesting to see how views of both the supernatural and technology have changed since its publishing.

I'm re-reading Worm and gah it's so incredible. I see why it became a rationalist favorite. I need more books like this in my veins, stat.

  • Super Supportive for a much slower-paced slice of life superhero story

  • Worth the Candle for a pinnacle-of-the-genre litRPG full to bursting with worldbuilding and introspection

  • Practical Guide to Evil for a similar deconstruction of the genre (in this case, fantasy) full of tactics and an incredibly large world

Some other lesser recommendations are Fate Points, Industrial Strength Magic, and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Most of Wildbow's other works are good too; I particularly like Pact and Pale.

I've read the last two, idk if slice of life is my thing. I might check out Wildbow's other stuff.

I take offense at calling Pale slice of life just because it still includes some slice of life.

Almost finished with A Parade of Horribles (Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 8) by Matt Dinniman. It's definitely delivering the expected goods, and the only reason that I haven't already finished with it and moved on is because despite being somewhat ridiculous from a strictly gaming standpoint, The system of Nil series that I was reading turned out to have enough meta-level commentary that I ended up finishing that out first.

Pouncing on the next chapter of Man Eaters of Kumaon for myself and reading Rikki-Tikki-Tavi to the boy.

My favorites of the Wimsey novels are Five Red Herrings and Have His Carcase.

Strong Poison is the best one. It's not even close! I also enjoy the sequels that were written by someone else (The Attunbury Emeralds) during the 90s.

Nothing, but at least that means I'm not performing a close reading and textual analysis of the DSM-5, ICD-10 and ICD-11.

I genuinely would take recommendations now. Recommendations for the recommendation would be that I mostly prefer nerdy hard sf bullshit, but I could branch out.

But if someone were to recommend Heidegger, I'd say hi, and then dig two graves before embarking on a journey of revenge.

I mean, I could recommend you a novel, but I have something of a conflict of interest.

Heh. Fair, if you still need eyes on the final draft I can go for it with more time and energy this time.

I was just joshing really. If you would like to read it and see what happens next, I would of course be interested to hear your opinion. But I don't expect you to go through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb, and if, based on what you've read so far, it doesn't seem like your cup of tea, that's completely fine too.

I usually go for coffee, stronger and a quarter of a quarter of a substitute for the medication I need. But please do send it through, since you're expecting no promises about anything (and thank god for that haha, my soul is barely recovering).

try Robert B Parker Spenser series. genre is hardboiled detective fiction. i started with Looking for Rachel Wallace. i am 7 down in the series.

hard SF: if you haven't, then Anathem and Seveneves.

I will take a look, I do have softness for noir.

I did read both! I loved Anathem, one of his best, but Seveneves sorely disappointed me. The story should have just ended 2/3rds of the way through and it would be a much better book for it.

Funny, I liked the last third best. Read the book through in the middle of a screaming once-in-a-century hurricane, really kept the mood up.

Currently reading:

  • Desolation Island Patrick O'Brian
  • The Monastery of the Damned Nicholas Tobias
  • Interwar Articles Ernst Junger
  • The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 Mark Peterson
  • High Output Management Andrew S. Grove

I’m trying my hand again at A Fire Upon The Deep. I made an attempt at it some years back, but it’d always been one that remained in the back of my mind and I’ve since had a commitment to myself to eventually return to it. I think what may be key to it is to go slower than my usual reading speed.

I found the tomato surprise about the pack aliens clever, but annoying.

Wait, what’s the surprise? The echolocation thing was introduced organically, as was the genetic/value drift from avoiding inbreeding. At least, I don’t remember the plot hinging on anything else that should have been common knowledge to a bunch of stranded humans…

The very first chapter set on the planet is written from the viewpoint of one of the alien packs, so you keep encountering weird turns of phrase that make no sense and have to slowly guess what the hell is going on: "Okay, does each dude have a pack of doglike animals with them that they have a tight bond with like in Starship Troopers? No, do they control them like riggers in Shadowrun? Wait, there's no one else, does their conscience simply hop between the dog bodies? Oh, o-oh, I get it now, it's like a hivemind, but with a small number of animals, an oligomind!"

Which is, as I've said, a clever trick, but I still don't like it.

I read it not that long ago, and enjoyed it. I want to claim I finished every novel set in that particular universe, and that's probably true.

I thought it was fantastic the first time, but have never been able to re-read it and I have no idea why. But I've read A Deepness In the Sky twice and loved it both times.

The galactic Usenet feels hilariously dated nowadays.

It ranks up there with the sock puppet subplot in Ender’s Game, yeah.

I go back and forth on the viability of that in the modern era: there are certainly solo discussion influencers on social media that shape ongoing politics, if not as directly. This site has loose associations with several such folks.

But it certainly would take a Wiggin-caliber poster to make it viable, and to have that much sway. But I also don't see any of the current crop parlaying it into global political office.

I don’t know why that is either… Because I’m not a usual fiction reader, but I love stories like that. For some reason it just never clicked with me previously. One thing I will say though is audio productions of all the old classics have offered me a great deal of renewed enjoyment to re-experience. I’d recently listened to the Dorsai series a couple years ago after I’d read the books even years prior to that, and it was a great experience.

I really need to read some Junger. Never heard of him before the SSC reviews of Marble Cliffs but his work sounds so cool.

There are basically three Jungers - the man lived to be a hundred and two. The early Junger, roughly Storm of Steel to The Worker, is a warrior-poet writing on his war experiences and how the War (and particularly the emergence of technology's power over man) changed the world. He rejects the Nazis when they come to power and his techno-nationalist thought takes a mystical turn, this is where we get Marble Cliffs and some of his real hidden gems. After WWII, he's able to write more freely, and his thought becomes explicitly centered on individual inner freedom under the rule of technology, with The Forest Passage and Eumeswil his best-known works, as well as his writings on psychedelics (he was a friend of Albert Hoffmann and coined the term "psychonaut"). All his books except for his diaries and correspondences are very short, so you can start anywhere that takes your fancy.

Try reading On Pain by Junger. That’s one of my favorite short-reads of all time. Storm of Steel was the first work of his I’d ever read and I was hooked after that.

Nearly finished The Matriarch.

I recently finished reading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps better known as the Ice-9 book, first published in 1963. It seems like it's supposed to be a highly satirical book that probably made a lot more sense at the time it was published. For me, reading it in 2026, it seemed kind of weird and lame; a bunch of weird characters who didn't make much sense running around and doing stuff that doesn't make much sense. At least the chapters are strangely short, I did at least manage to finish it. I was more interested in the Sci-Fi Ice-9 stuff, but that was maybe like 10% of the book, mostly the last few chapters, and very little discussion of it. I expect a good Motte thread about the idea would be way more interesting. My recommendation is, if you're genuinely interested in 1960s-era social commentary, it may be worth a read. If you're interested in Sci-Fi around the Ice-9 idea, don't bother.

Thanks, saved me a read. I've never been very happy with Vonnegut. Increasingly kind of confused as to how he attained the status he has.

Vonnegut’s non-linear storytelling never appealed to me one bit, but reading Slaughterhouse 5, I could understand why people were drawn to him.

The Mottetariat seems to have swung so far against Vonnegut that now I have to reread his work to come in here with a sharpened memory and rant against the slander. I greatly enjoyed Vonnegut as a 19 year old. That might be the prime time to enjoy Vonnegut's satire.

19 year old

Actually this explains a lot.

Currently reading Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. What's striking to me is how much of a not-Darwinist Darwin is. I mean, he's a naturalist, yes, but check this out:

As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and perfected through the principle of inherited effects of use

That sounds like Lamarckism to me. Bro be out there batting for the other team. And it's not like he wrote this when he was 12, before he had his head screwed on straight. This was toward the end of his life!

The classroom story we were told about the history of evolution, at least in my school, was very misleading. In my school, we were taught Lamarck was basically the Aristotle of evolution, saying a bunch of harebrained nonsense he made up, and Darwin was basically Newton who came along and explained how it akshually worked. But that is not at all how this played out.

No, because of "inherited effects of use" and not "inherited effects of greater reproductive fitness"

Fascinating. I love a good conspiracy theory. Something about DarwinismTM doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not a young earth creationist, but it does seem there are a lot of big outstanding questions. And it’s presented to every Westerner as a fairy tale story in school.

Why is this? Well it’s obvious. Politics.

Try bringing this up in typical PMC company and see their reaction.

This is a pretty low form of contrarianism. You can't possibly apply this level of skepticism to everything.

The supply curve offers higher quantities at less fidelity. The demand curve is populated by bored high-schoolers. Solve for the equilibrium.

Alternatively: fairy tale stories are a map, the map is not the territory, and ain’t nobody got time for a better map.

Nah, this is pretty common. Like if you read Maxwell 1865, it looks nothing like the modern presentation of Maxwell’s equations. It’s not because people are lying, it’s because the underlying idea has been substantially cleaned up from the first person to stumble upon it.

Another example: calculus didn’t even have any rigorous foundation until a century after Newton, when Cauchy finally came up with the modern epsilon-delta thing we teach everyone today.

Modern presentation is only wrong in the sense that it’s biased towards presenting the polished ideas in their final state, while attributing this to the original thinkers, when in reality, there’s usually a big story between "guy who originally thought of this" and "what we’re actually presenting to you in class today."

The Gaussian distribution is another example. The distribution itself was proposed by Gauss, yes, but the justification for why this distribution is indeed the peremptory-correct distribution was done by Laplace (who had proposed several prior attempts at his own normal distribution!) The logic of why the normal distribution is the normal distribution—what we now know as the Central Limit Theorem—is the meat of the story, and yet Laplace’s name is merely a footnote to anyone except math nerds.

Yeah, and furthermore for calculus we all still pay the price because limits are honestly only taught as a holdover from that attempt to prove to other math people calculus was legit. You don't actually need an understanding of limits at all for nearly anything you do in calculus, but the big standardized tests include it so everyone is forced to teach it anyways.

Also IIRC neither Laplace nor Gauss were the actual very first dudes to propose the Normal distribution, that was actually de Moivre as a binomial approximation (who ALSO got robbed of Poisson distribution naming rights). Though Laplace was doubly a reputational victim, since he furthermore got robbed of credit somewhat because he was the dude who did most of the work with Bayesian statistics and inference much like he did for calculus. Sir Bayes didn't even publish his stuff himself. And Laplace did most of the cleanup work for Newton's gravitational theories.

But yeah, naming in math and science is a bit of a mess.

Yeah, and furthermore for calculus we all still pay the price because limits are honestly only taught as a holdover from that attempt to prove to other math people calculus was legit.

I'm going to defer to the mathematicians on what it is "for", but analysis is one of the major fields of modern mathematics - you need limits to do almost anything rigorous with general real numbers. I agree the only thing you explicitly use limits for in high school maths is making calculus look rigorous, but other very obvious applications in "maths for physicists" are summing infinite series and explaining what it means for numerical algorithms to converge. But limits come up everywhere - in frequentist statistics probability is a limit.

Still on The Glass Bead Game. Haven't formed a firm opinion just yet despite being nearly 60% done, but intrigued enough to continue. I get that it's a kind of hagiography of Knecht that's not supposed to be taken at face value but I'm hoping there's more to it still.

For me, the interesting questions were not about looking past the face value of the text but about why this hagiography was undertaken. It's also fairly fun, imo, to read.

Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson.

Haven’t decided whether it has school textbook energy or if I just associate the antebellum material with high school. Setting that confusion aside, I found the beginning extremely compelling. It opens with sheet music: one tune, two sets of lyrics. Eloquent.

There are parts I want to write up for the Motte and parts I want to quote directly. Mostly about the absurd growth of mid-1800s America and how it mapped to the economic and social movements we learned about in school. Consider the Great Awakening. The standard AP explanation is “well, excess land is a pretty good situation for splinter religious groups.” This is underselling it. A glut of natural resources corresponds to a shortage of skilled labor. That suppresses the anti-capitalist sentiments which wrack Europe around this time, and it takes the pressure off social strife, so there’s less unrest and less resistance to industrialization. Moving along that curve pushes the modal worker out of the home and into the factory, or in the case of women, into education. So the next generation is both richer and better educated, creating a much more literate, socially conscious class which is still aligned with the industrialization project rather than conservative. Each surplus reinforces the others.

And none of this is touching on the Peculiar Institution! That’s like half of the opening chapter.

I have a lot more to say about this, but I’m going to hold off until I’ve read some more.

Ah yes, the famous "frontier thesis". Interesting to me that this thesis is not actually a modern invention, it dates back to 1893, only three years after the frontier 'officially' faded into nonexistence.

But I do think it's a decent one. There aren't many places and times in history where you could legitimately say "don't like it? Pack up and leave!" and you literally could just leave to somewhere without much rule of law, but still survive. And like, two of them are intertwined with US history.

I remember reading it years ago, and found it excellent. Should probably re-read it, and one or two of his other books.

I've been reading Collapse on the tenure of Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union upon recommendation of a friend. Zubok mentions off-hand this artifact of Soviet accounting that intrigued me. Apparently the state maintained two forms of currency:

  • Nal: Synonymous with cash. Wages were paid in it and could be used to purchase goods at cooperatives.
  • Beznal: "Virtual" cash. This was purely for use between Soviet enterprises and by the state. Never intended to be cashed.

According to Zubok,

‘The Soviet state could spend many billions of beznal money for financing big projects, and yet the inflation of cash—and prices of consumer goods and services—remained more or less under control. The profits from state enterprises could not be translated into cash. Even at the most difficult moments of history, such as during World War II, the Soviet financial system had not broken down.’

This supposed ability to avoid inflationary pressures is striking to me. Does anyone have more details or sources I can read up on?

What's everyone's favorite AI image generation model?

I'm running a Pathfinder campaign, and being able to generate on-demand NPC art that looks like the vague idea I had in my head for a character is a huge step forward from having to scour the internet for stock art and make sure I haven't reused anything.

Unfortunately, I've been working with Microsoft's Copilot and ChatGPT (with a brief disappointing dip into Gemini), and recently I've noticed that both of them seem to have regressed in their image generation models: wonky eyes that don't get better, one side of the face significantly differently styled than the other, and my personal most annoying issue, being unable to generate with transparency in the background. ChatGPT can do this, but Copilot and Gemini regularly fail over and over at this task, often generating a white-and-grey square pattern that browsers will use to indicate transparency, but that's the actual background of the image, and you can see points in the background where it messed up and did the same color multiple times instead of alternation. These all feel like issues from the early days of image generation, so I suspect they've regressed their free models to something that's cheaper for them to run.

I'm not opposed to paying for it (though free is clearly better), but I'd really rather pay someone other than OpenAI, I just don't like Altman or how the company is run. And if I'm going to pay someone I'd want a good text model as well, I often use the text models to generate names or flesh out ideas.

I pay for GPT and I still get some really choppy images, especially if I have been in the chat log for too long, I think they just want everyone to eventually buy the most expensive version out there, which at some point I was frustrated enough to opt into whilst preparing my doc and working under some dastardly timelines. I am glad I eventually decided against upgrading to a higher tier and only utilized the Go-Pro I have had for a year or so.

Would recommend checking out recraft.ai

I always request a black and white sketch/pen art style, harder to screw up. You can always remove the background with a browser tool after the fact.

This is good information, but I was really hoping I would not have to do either of these things. At some point I was able to get reliably quality artwork with transparent backgrounds, so I know the technology is there. It's possible it's not something I can access.

I think chatgpt works well enough but have noticed that quality drops off fairly quickly if you make multiple requests in a day, regardless of whether they're in the same conversation or not.

I believe there is some kind of stealth rate limiting going on and you only get a few quality requests a day until you get the dogshit version.

This actually fits a lot with my experiences: I can get good results, but sometimes it just absolutely fails in a way the makes me think I'm getting different underlying code.

I have generated a lot of images in a day, including hitting the ~hourly-rate limits multiple times, and I can't say I've noticed this at all.

It has been very noticeable for me so either you're using a different version than me, it's a time of day/load balancing thing, you lack basic visual discernment or maybe they're A/B testing.

I think my vision and discernment is fine, actually, but sure. The other explanations are at least plausible.

I use both GPT Image 2 and Nano Banana Pro 2, but these days, mostly the former. NB was clearly better until I2 came out, and you can probably use them pretty interchangeably, but I get subjectively better results from the former, particularly if I use it through the GPT 5.5 (Thinking) route, which allows for a combination of thinking and image gen.

Seconding this. I have a paid subscription to both openAI and Google and openAI's image gen is currently the better once since they released last

I anticipate Gemini Omni or whatever to eclipse openAI's current offering sometime this summer

So, since Colbert is now off CBS, first of all he hosted a really quite funny hourlong program on local community access in Michigan, hosting an hour of "Only in Monroe". This reminded me in parts of when he was, well, more funny - on the Colbert Report in particular, which I have fond memories of. So to have a little time capsule, let's go back and watch an episode from 12 years ago! Also two years after a re-election of an influential president now a good portion into their second term, but it's Obama this time around. Link (best I could find) and cleaned transcript

I find it an interesting mini-window into the happenings of the culture war! There's some good stuff here, Colbert Report never fails to get a laugh from me.

First we have a report about Chinese cyperspies who had charges filed after hacking five US companies and stealing solar secrets. In retrospect, China totally got away with this one, which was IMO a significant Obama admin failure. More topically for use, we have a somewhat racist joke! Yes, for those of you know might not know, Colbert plays a parody of a conservative in this show, so sometimes being offensive is part of the joke - honestly I thought he did a really nice job of straddling the line overall to keep both the comedy and honestly offer some criticism along the way (and not all of it hits Republicans, of course!) But it's still interesting that in this era Colbert can still get away with it. 2014 isn't actually peak woke, you might say.

Yes, cyber spies! It's like a regular spy but instead of a tuxedo you wear an adventure time t-shirt with nacho stains. (laughter) The Justice Department has put out this wanted poster to help us identify these dangerous online criminals. So look for it at the post office, when you go pick up your email, (laughter) and it's a true rogue's gallery. For instance, Gui Chunhui -- who also goes by the alias KandyGoo [sic], a clever way to pass for an American, name yourself after our two most popular foods -- and the infamous Wang Dong, whose name in English translates to Peter Johnson, Jr. (laughter)

It is about time they nailed Wang Dong! I get email offers from Wang Dong all the time, and the pills he sold me never arrived. Now how will she call me Mr. Pleasure at sight of extraordinary power manhood? In an attempt to give an edge to Chinese industries, these guys stole trade secrets from corporations like Westinghouse, U.S. Steel, Alcoa, and the renewable energy company SolarWorld. Of course, the Chinese can't do their own solar research since they no longer have access to the sun. (laughter)

Folks, this is a major threat to our financial future. The Chinese already know how to manufacture all our electronics. Now they're trying to learn how to design them. If they also figure out how to buy them and drop them in the toilet when they're drunk, America will have no role in the world economy!

So in a way it didn't age well twice! Or maybe just once. I don't think the jokes were that mean-spirited. And then we have Hillary Clinton show up as a topic! Yes, she's getting ready to run at this point in time. Karl Rove alleges she has brain damage. Some news clips are played alleging that Republicans are scared of her running so they are trying to talk her out of it or throw water on the idea. There's some jokes about how they aren't going to take it easy on her for being a woman, and jokes about TV Republicans hitting their wives. And a dated primary preview!

Point is, if we're going to stop Hillary, nothing is out of bounds. We have to be completely vicious to her, because the only alternative is running a candidate people like. Jim, who do we have on the bench?

[News clip] Senator Rand Paul is the early frontrunner for Republicans in 2016. [News clip] Mike Huckabee jumped to the head of the pack. [News clip] Rick Perry. Chris Christie. Senator Marco Rubio talking 2016 --

[Stephen] Oh, my God... (laughter) We've got to hit her hard!

Thank God the rest of these losers aren't running again, except for, well, Rubio of course. I can't wait to see clips of his debate meltdown circulate again. Also, bit of a prescient call by Colbert about the tone of things?

In a glimpse of Comedy Central's 2014 America, we then have a Tosh.0 ad, a hard cider ad, a $40/mo T-Mobile 4G LTE data plan ad (500MB cap! unlimited talk and text!), an ad for the Edge of Tomorrow movie, an Infiniti car ad, honestly a pretty cool Sapporo premium beer ad, a California Great America theme park ad.

After the break? A news item about Europe proposing a "right to be forgotten" to Google and such. Whatever happened to this? Apparently, Google (heh) tells me that basically it got limited to European visibility, and only for names; so nothing disappears on the US or worldwide side of the Web. But I will say, corporations are much much better at doing this than people seem to be. However, I think there's still a healthy market for reverse-SEO, though with AI stuff who knows how this will pan out in a few more years.

We then have an Inside Amy Schumer ad, a decent lengthy Apple ad for the iPad Air with a Dead Poet's Society tie-in and one with a travel blogger, a Sharpie ad, a Bacardi liquor ad, an American Express bank ad, a Dignity Health ad introducing the ability to wait for your appointment via online scheduling, a Fiat x Godzilla movie crossover ad, and a one second flash of a lingerie ad that gets cut off. Honestly it doesn't seem like ads have changed all that much. Although modern ads maybe lean a bit too hard into overdone, overplayed "skits" rather than more "cinematic" type ads?

Finally, in a bit that will interest some people here, we had the creator of Mad Men hosted, going in to Part 1 of the final season (yes apparently splitting up the second season to milk it was a thing even back in 2014 at least). Although he claims it was a scheduling issue. IDK man. Anyways:

It's been on for seven seasons. Let me summarize what happened: Don smoked, banged everything on the Eastern Seaboard, sold California, sold some soap, was grim about it. And smoked some more. Is he a criticism of the American male? Because I'm an American male, and should I be taking this personally?

[Weiner] I don't think it's meant as a negative thing. I always sort of thought that he was about the sort of split message that the American male gets: that you are told that you -- to be attractive -- on the one hand, you have to be, like, you know, Little League coach and, like, P.T.A. guy, great husband, great dad. On the other hand, you are supposed to smoke as much, drink as much, and get laid as much as possible.

[Stephen] And get the other guy. [Matthew Weiner] And be carnivorous in business. [Stephen] Right. Those two things. I'm always surprised how much people get off on him winning, but I don't judge him at all. None of this is supposed to be a judgment of the audience. I was afraid he was judging me. When the show started, he was a shiny object, fun, sexy, but as it goes on, he becomes an even more complex character. Why present something complex? Why can't I just be kind of fun and sexy, you know, good-looking guy, and then take all that inner life and just keep it down until one day it just kills me, and then, you know, my loved ones read my letters and cry forever? (laughter)

[Weiner] That is the theory. What you just described is a good theory. [Stephen] This is 1969. [Weiner] Yeah.

I never watched Mad Men, but I know it had at least some impact. Some allege it impacted fashion and brought back some of the furniture and suit aesthetic, cocktails, and I'm sure it had some impact on gender narratives, or at the very least promoted a certain view of historical gender narratives. Thankfully I don't think it really brought back smoking as something cool, although it possibly coincided with the Juul vape wave a year or so later. Is there really a duality in male expectations? Yeah, kinda. You need to be safe, but then also randomly dangerous with swagger at other times. And you need to be oozing confidence in business.

So, anyways, what did we learn from our glance into the past? Well it's just a point in time, but an effectively random one. It's interesting to me how evergreen some of these issues and situations are, in a sense. Worries about cybercrime, nation-state hacking campaigns, industrial espionage against the US, the struggles of the social media age and privacy. A Democrat that seems poised to sweep the primary field early on having laid a ton of groundwork (Newsom), against a grab-bag of unlikable Republicans, who might have a dark horse jump in later on and upend things (TBD, but I sort of think there's a decent chance the nominee isn't Rubio or Vance! not a great chance but maybe 30%?). Is there a prominent TV show right now that talks about masculinity in any big sense? I don't really think so. Ted Lasso sort of presented an alternate vision, Succession had a bit to say, Yellowstone maybe theoretically but it's I think too soapy to really count. I think it's fair to say that the media culture has fragmented significantly since the mid-2010s, at least it feels that way?

(Also, is Mad Men worth watching?)

(Also, is Mad Men worth watching?)

Depends on your standards.

If you like S1 of Mad Men and feel you have time to watch more, sure. Unlike most of the of tv, it didn't feel childish all the time, only now and then. But on the scale from "philosophical arguments presented in form of literature" to "mind-numbing entertainment you watch because you are too tired to think", it is clearly entertainment. Several seasons of Don Draper and the rest being themselves , perhaps growing a little and changing a little. Enjoyable, but I wouldn't feel like I'd lost anything too valuable if I eventually forget most of it.

I loved seasons 1 and 2 of Mad Men. They felt adult and novelistic in a way that Breaking Bad was claimed to feel but, to my mind, never really did. For some reason I've never watched further than that though.

It's the best show ever made IMO, worth going to the end.

Beware that the Blu Ray boxed set is horrible. Impossible to get the disks out. One of the ~20 things I've bought physical media for.

I loved seasons 1 and 2 of Mad Men.

For some reason I've never watched further than that though.

Keep going. The show is fantastic.

Come to think of it, my fiancée and I did watch the first episode of season 3 awhile back, but for some reason gave up. Not because we weren't enjoying it, I think we just got distracted or left it too long before watching the next episode. I would like to pick it up again.

But it's still interesting that in this era Colbert can still get away with it. 2014 isn't actually peak woke, you might say.

Progressives still do this now with SNL just telling nakedly racist jokes. They just need the barest fig leaf of an excuse and they'll roar with laughter at a white man saying the meanest, most racist shit.

This is called, I am told, "media literacy".

It's called having your cake and eating it too. It's tough for progressive comedy to emerge from the end of wokeness and actually allow raunchy humor.

In the context, it is quite funny without betraying the premise of wokeness, as the jokes are explicitly writen by the black comedian to make the white comedian uncomfortable and viceversa (and they don't see the jokes until they see them on the cue cards?) which is a funny premise in itself.

a white man saying the meanest, most racist shit.

This is too obtuse of a characterization, like saying that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a show for Audiences to laugh at racist people who wear blackface.

I haven't watched SNL for years but I remember Archie Bunker. Norman Lear was pretty progressive in his day.

If you are in the mood: Google "snl joke swap" some time and watch some funny really edgy race humor. Or "mid day news". Their crassest race humor is their most popular bits.

Im not sure what we should call the phenomenon you're describing but its basically the male equivalent of the Madonna-whore complex. Definitely a thing.

via gemini:

colloquially known as the "Knight/Beast Complex" (or Saint/Brute) and the popular cultural idiom "Every woman wants a bad boy who is good only for her."

Are people here as autistic as everyone jokes that everyone is or is that just humor? In the survey posted a month ago (tongue-in-cheekily) I was forty something percent German and about as much autistic, but that was entertainment. Are people going on diagnosed autism or just vibes?

Don't answer of course if this is personal.

If I'd been born ten years later, I probably would have been diagnosed with autism and identified as trans.

This is an indirect way of saying that I am neither.

I got 49% German(I'd always thought myself culturally Francified, if anything) and 24% autistic. I've never thought of myself as autistic and find the modern mania for diagnosing every difficulty irritating and off putting for those who genuinely could help themselves, and possibly offensive for those with special needs.

I come from the Before Times, when Autism wasn't a Thing at all, and then it was Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, but when I was told that I was probably autistic by a licensed mental health professional a few years back, I just laughed and laughed. My own mental model of myself was that I didn't have any wetware that ran human social skills, and had to learn by trial and error how to emulate these things, which could be pretty painful and also seemed to involve way too much of the, "oh yes, the Emperor's fine and gaudy new clothes look especially extravagant today," style of discourse for my taste. When Asperger's became a Thing, it seemed trendy and I never paid too much attention to it, although I did identify strongly with the idea of neurodiversity because I knew damn well I was not normal and never had been. Discussing what autism actually was with her, and subsequently doing my own deep dive into the actual condition and diagnosis, was revelatory to say the least.

also seemed to involve way too much of the, "oh yes, the Emperor's fine and gaudy new clothes look especially extravagant today," style of discourse for my taste.

That's a brilliant description of how so much of everyday conversation is demanded to go by "normies."

I would 100% have been diagnosed with autism as a child if I hadn't been sent to an elderly child psychologist who didn't get the memo that everyone's autistic now. Sensory issues were particularly severe and they did all kinds of bizarre exposure therapy like stuffing me in a beanbag full of plastic ball-pit balls and rolling it around. Just got 'diagnosed' with "some kind of processing disorder we don't have a name for" - notably, I scored very high on the first IQ test, then my score dropped ten points when they introduced one that had a handwriting component because I bombed that part so hard. I grew out of everything just fine; I think if you're smart enough and not too autistic you can just make social interactions your special interest for a year or two and get even better at it than normies. Ended up getting like 60% German and 10% autistic on the test.

I have an officially Level 2 Autistic kid who reminds me a lot of myself at her age... but I have not been diagnosed.

I was according to the quiz 46% Autistic and 56% German. I was also formally diagnosed as a child around like 8(??), though at the time my diagnosis was Aspergers. Which has been rolled into a general "on the spectrum". I'm pretty high functioning, and my special interests have help me mostly pass.

My girlfriend got 30/60 German/Autistic on the quiz and only really passes because she's quiet af so people don't notice or clock her.

I grew up going to school with some profoundly autistic kids. They’ll always be my barometer. I’m not terribly inclined to joke about it.

There’s something about the way “autistic” is used in red/gray circles that reminds me of stereotypical gender discourse.

Pop autism is the blanket socially awkward losers lacking brain cells to pretend they are sheldon cooper level geniuses skinsuit around themselves without having to test either autism or iq. Taxonomical categorization simultaneously resistant to actual falsifiability by narrative diktat despite objective measurability being available. Without the association of autism=genius there'd be nothing else awkward losers can use to comfort themselves so they evade endlessly.

Issue is whether someone uses autism as an excuse versus autism as a lexical shorthand. Thr latter is normally able to pivot away (probably most of us here) the former will double down and demand more accommodations.

According to the quiz, 27% German, 16% autistic, neither prevailing. I do seem to get along with autistic people, and am more autistic than the average basically normal woman.

I'm not autistic, I just happen to be nerdy enough to blend in.

I've never been diagnosed, but if I am at all autistic, I am only very mildly autistic at most, I think. I was probably more autist-like when younger (when it comes to social awkwardness and issues with eye contact), but I grew out of it over time as I had more social experience.

I also suspect, while having no solid proof, that doing MDMA a few times in my 20s might have helped permanently make me a little bit less autistic. WARNING THOUGH: You cannot expect to do MDMA and become less autistic. It is a potentially dangerous drug and it can have very different effects on different people.

In any case, most of my social improvement had more to do with social experience than with drugs, I'm sure.

I've never had an unusual degree of sensory sensitivity compared to the average population. I don't have any significant issues with social interaction or reading people's facial expressions or subtext. I still have some minor issues with eye contact if I am feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, but I think that's probably pretty common with neurotypicals. Overall, I might actually be more socially adept and socially comfortable than the average person.

I do tend to get heavily into "nerdy" interests from time to time, but not in a compulsive way and not to the detriment of my general functioning, I think.

I tend to be uncomfortable with change, but for what it's worth I also don't particularly like rules and structure.

I do have some psychological issues, but they resemble things like anxiety and ADHD more than autism, or at least autism as I understand it.

I agree your observations on both growing out of autism and MDMA. I think I'm culturally autistic (both my dad and brother got diagnosed recently) and went through some childhood events that I think predisposed me to having poor social skills, but not particularly autistic on a genetic or biological level. Autism is polygenic so it makes sense for me to think of people as falling on a bell curve of autistic genes/traits, and I think I'd be somewhere between 1 and 2 STDEV right of mean by that metric. Autism diagnosis rates are about 3-4 percent which conforms to diagnoses requiring about 2stdev.

“Your result: Neither (24% German, 36% autistic”

I’m definitely not normal, and certainly possess some autistic traits as well, although I don’t feel like I entirely fit in with the autists either.

The style of discussion prevalent on TheMotte certainly selects for autists.

I've never been diagnosed, but yes, I'm plausibly "autistic" under current use of the concept.

When I was young, only the most severe cases of "autism" were ever diagnosed, and IIRC it was considered by most to be a form of "childhood schizophrenia." I was in my 40s, give or take, when the "spectrum" really sank into the zeitgeist and people first started commenting about me being "on" it. Some of my children (who are all now adults) do have psychiatrically diagnosed autism, based on criteria that would clearly apply to me, so it seems fair to say that I'm genuinely autistic, insofar as any such diagnosis admits of authentication. Specifically, my social interaction norms are deep into "spectrum" territory, while my repetitive behavior and sensory processing tendencies are less severe but still noticeably autistic.

But I am "high functioning," especially verbally, and as an adult it seems pointless to get a personal "diagnosis" for a variety of reasons. Would I get an embossed certificate for my wall? I think that clocking me as autistic sometimes helps other people but I've lived an above-average life by most metrics; if it ain't broke, don't fix it! I do look back at many interactions of my youth and, viewed through the lens of disability, a lot of my suffering was arguably the result of other people genuinely abusing me. But they couldn't have known that any more than I did, and blaming myself (despite never really knowing what I had done wrong) probably developed my sense of agency.

As a fellow young at heart if nothing else, I sometimes wonder if, years before it was common, I shouldn't have been diagnosed with something, or if the something I should have been diagnosed with that veered me (and continues to veer me) from typical normal hasn't been identified yet. But as you imply, the usefulness of a diagnosis is debatable, particularly if framed as a disability rather than superpower or talent.

Every quiz I've taken has me not too far from the upper bound of as autistic as you can get while overall still functional. It tracks with my habits and preferences, but no formal diagnosis.

No formal diagnosis here either, but if Beavis and Butt-Head could ever fit the diagnosis that surely would’ve been me as a child. I somewhat felt like I was being targeted in goose’s rant several years ago, taking shots at my personality, :/.

Mostly on the level of "quirky" rather than "disordered". I could have probably gotten a diagnosis if my parent had known how to game the system as people do these days, but realistically all that would have done is let me avoid learning how to hide it.

I've taken some other autism tests and been found to be... definitely not. I have a few autistic friends who can't comprehend how I'm not, though.

Self-reported psychometrics tests always seem dubious to me, including personality tests. (This does not mean I'm suggesting you're autistic.)

I'm in the fun spot of some old friends claiming I'm the most engineery person they have ever met (and they know quite a few engineers) while also scoring quite low on tests (12% in the one that was posted), and having been tested (for my ADHD diagnosis) without showing any signs of autism beyond typical "yeah, the guy's an engineer"-level things.

Like yes, some Stuff Matters, but only in the right context. Yes, if you fuck up basic engineering principles in a job or when building something important you're a fucking idiot but also I couldn't give a damn about which order the cutlery is in or changes in daily routine.

I generally get on well with other engineers but much less so with people who are clearly on the autism spectrum.

My mother claims that I received a (now-technically-outdated) diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome at age 16 (as part of my defense against a frivolous criminal investigation). However, she doesn't actually have the records to back that claim up, and I personally do not recall being informed of any diagnosis at the time.

You wer investigated for a fraudulent marriage?

Q: We have the court file showing that your ill-fated high-school crush was on a girl, not on a boy.

A: If you have my court file, then you should know that that old crush was Indian as well, just like my husband.

A paper that I gave to an unrelated acquaintance (in which I fantasized about kidnapping the crush, trapping her in a cage of sonic stun guns, and making her play Scrabble with me) somehow fell into the hands of the school administration, was misinterpreted as a "terroristic threat" against the crush ("zero tolerance" for """guns""" even if they're nonlethal), and was reported to the police.

Going to have to update my Motte dossier.

Was sure we would have had convicted felons here on this board. Not terrorists types though. Didnt figure anyone, including veterans, had the combination of stupidity and ineptitude to fall into being a dipsjit terrorist.

To clarify, I was not convicted. Rather, the (again, frivolous) charge was dismissed before trial, on condition that I switch to the other high school in the district, have no further contact with the crush, and get a few sessions of "therapy".

You're suggesting veterans are stupid and inept?

Inelegantly worded and I'll take the hits. Generally meant that the veterans here even potentially rightwing as they may be aren't going to be criminally inclined in my reductive and not very well thought out assessment. That most terrorists are stupid and inept is a seperate and unfortunately worded association.

I'm joking. I'm just on the male-spectrum, not the autism spectrum; I've checked.

I was pretty autistic on that test - in the same range as @ToaKraka, who seems to be our gold standard here on TheMotte.

I was also diagnosed as an adult when seeking treatment for PTSD. Up until that point, I had no idea. Growing up, there were a lot of comments about how "that boy ain't right" and how I needed to "act normal". The idea that it might be something diagnosable or treatable didn't exist in those communities. Instead of an IEP, I got my ass beat until I could fake it well enough to get by.

Now that I know, it doesn't really change much. Mostly it just informed the PTSD treatment. Well, it informs treatment and gives my partner a new way to playfully make jokes about my behavior at times.

TK: Please don't take the gold standard comparison as an insult. You're one of my favorite people on this forum. The weird shit you dig up and post brightens my day whenever I see it.

Decoupling is autistic in nature, and the rules of The Motte select for extreme decouplers. Everyone else crashes out sooner or later when their sacred cow is violated in front of them.

Also, I am 42 German and 47 autistic, which is disturbingly close to both ToaKraka and Southkraut.

There is probably a correlation between high-functioning autism and ability to decouple, but you certainly don't need to be autistic to decouple.

Decoupling is just basic logical thinking. You don't have to be autistic to be able to be logical.

I was diagnosed before I could speak (that was one of the criteria).

That's interesting. According to family, I was non-verbal until I was about three and a half, then immediately started speaking in complete, grammatically-correct sentences.

There's a classic joke (apparently usually aimed at German personality stereotypes?) along those lines:

An American couple adopts a little German baby boy. As the years go by, the parents become deeply concerned because the child grows to be four years old without ever uttering a single syllable. They take him to speech therapists, pediatricians, and specialists, but every test shows that he is completely healthy, intelligent, and physically capable of speech. He just chooses not to.

Then, on his fifth birthday, his mother serves him tea and a slice of chocolate cake. The boy takes a bite, sets his fork down, looks up, and says in a perfectly clear, advanced voice:

"Mother, this cake is altogether too dry, and the tea is a bit tepid."

His mother gasps, drops her plate, and bursts into tears of joy. "My God, you can speak! Wolfgang, you can talk in full sentences! Why on earth haven't you ever said a single word to us before today?"

The boy blinks, shrugs his shoulders, and replies:

"Well, up until now, everything has been satisfactory."

Was that at age what, like a year old? Or did you begin speaking later?

I think so. I speak now.

Maybe it's interesting: I feel like my social (neurotypical) skills have developed, but slower. I was a very weird kid, even looking back from my perspective today. Nowadays, I understand e.g. the Social Shapes Test, I act socially acceptable (at least nobody tells me otherwise), maybe I can pretend to be normal. Although I'm sure anyone around me for more than a few minutes notices that I'm "off", because I barely talk (unprompted), fail to make eye contact, and my interests/philosophy/personality is different than anyone I've met in-person (even other autists and nerds unfortunately).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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