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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   4731 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

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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What are your Christmas Eve plans? Obviously not everyone here celebrates Christmas, but I live in land of fake Christmas where the busiest shop on Christmas eve is KFC and Colonel Sanders is dressed as Santa, tonight is the only important part of the season and that only because it's when families eat Christmas Cake and young people have romantic dates.

As a dad of two, I of course made spaghetti and a couple of homemade pizzas. Tomorrow on the 25th I will be making chicken with cornbread dressing and, yes, greenbean casserole. It is what it is. My redneck background is never far. Also I am going to try out an eggnog recipe. and enjoy a few days off.

So what are we doing, Mottizens? Regardless I hope all have a pleasant holidays.

Edit:

In the days leading up to now, I have watched, with my sons, the first two Home Alone movies, Die Hard, as well as the best version of the Dickens story out there IMO, the 1970 Albert Finney Scrooge.

I've already been in church for a morning nativity play and in a few hours we're going to have a Julbord with the family.

New for this year's celebration in Sweden was that in addition to the traditional Disney cartoon reel there was a similar thing put together but with traditional live action Astrid Lindgren Christmas stories and some newer animated stuff. Pretty nice imo and i feel like something like this might have a better future than the somewhat dated and historically unconnected Disney cartoons tradition that I feel like its on the way out.

What happened to the tradition of burning down the gavlebokke? As a Swede can you shed light on this?

Well... It's illegal, there are guards posted, there is camera surveillance and at least some years it's been impregnated with fire retardants.

The guy who burned it down in 2021 got a fine of some $10k and 6 months in jail.

Also, its Gävlebocken or possibly Gaevlebocken if you don't want use umlauts. Double 'k's aren't used in Swedish except in conjugations where two 'k's meet. Gävlebocken is a conjugation of Gävle (a town name) and Bocken (the buck), meaning the Gävle buck.

But it never used to stop people? It was a euro custom I enjoyed watching from abroad.

It used to stop people all the time.

That’s just lack of willpower.

I thought it was claimed by the birds this year?

For me, The Muppets Christmas Carol will always be the definitive version.

Oh I wouldn't dare quarrel about it Most who care at all have a soft spot for some version.

It's Scrooge (1970) for me as well! I had no idea the whole thing was on youtube, thank you so much and merry Christmas!

My girlfriend is baking some sort of biscotti. We'll take those and some other snacks over to my parents' house, where we will drink wassail and sing along with Christmas music. I may break out the trumpet.

Do it!

We're planning to go to old town and walk around looking at the luminarias. Maybe we will eat tamales, as is tradition.

I have a four year old, so she's really into stockings and Santa and elves and whatnot.

Excellent! Now I want tamale. I've become proficient at making many foods from (not Japan), but never learned tamales.

I don't make them either, they're pretty labor intensive, and I don't have the right sized steamer.

If you live near a store that's selling corn husks, masa, lard, green Chile, and the right cheese to make them, you're probably living somewhere where you can just buy them.

Right. And I can barely get cheddar much less Oaxaca or whatever. It took me forever just to find cornmeal for the cornbread.

This made me curious how hard it might be to source ingredients. The pork and beef style don't need cheese, and it probably wouldn't be so hard to get ingredients for the filling. It doesn't seem like Japanese food includes animal fat, but I don't really know. The masa and dried corn husks seem like the hard part.

I wasn't sure why masa is so different from corn meal and not interchangeable, and it looks like something about soaking it in a highly alkaline substance such as wood ash or slaked lime for many hours to weaken the cell walls, which is why it's so soft.

Yes the masa and cornhusks are the hard part. Not impossible, no doubt, but a big challenge. Plus I've no experience myself making them and it would be frustrating to go to such lengths just to screw them up.

Growing up, the only thing we ever did for Christmas Eve was to go to church in the evening. It was only time of year we would normally go. It's been years since we've done that. Lately, my siblings, sister-in-law, and I go to my parents' place for supper and put our gifts under the tree to be opened in the morning.

I was the same. I appreciate your opening gifts on the 25th instead of like the barbarians I have met who open them on Christmas eve.

We only opened one on Christmas Eve always pajamas, as an adult I realized it was so we'd look nice in our Christmas gift opening pictures the next day.

Did you really put them on without washing them first?

Not who you're asking, but I find the world is divided into people who must wash an item before wearing it and those who don't care. I am in the latter. Also what about hats or scarves or gloves? Surely these don't get washed. To say nothing of suits or woolen or silk items that need professional care.

I wash hats and scarves. Not sure why you wouldn't. Aren't they starched the same as anything else? I don't categorize them as pajamas, though.

Wool scarves and hats of silk or wool are typically more of a pain to have cleaned. Particularly if newly purchased, it seems a tedious delay in the wearing.

Yes of course, it was tradition and we didn't buy clothes from repurposed pesticide trucks. Kids pj's in the 80s weren't starched.

That's actually kinda keyed all things considered, might have to adopt that

We always opened presents on Christmas Eve growing up, but that was purely for practical reasons. On Christmas morning we had to milk cows, and (presumably) my parents didn't want to try to milk cows at 4 am while also corralling children who were too excited about presents to focus on anything else. But now that I'm grown, we generally do Christmas Day in my house.

Well, obviously there are extenuating circumstances for some, though I won't use that "exception proving the rule" phrase around these parts out of consideration for the angst it causes. What was the Santa story for you as a kid? Or was that kind of tale too unlikely for the practical minded farmer?

We got told that Santa came while we were outside doing chores (in actuality: my mom put the presents out during that time, of course). That actually worked for a while, though one year I did get the idea to sit and watch the house like a hawk. When I didn't see Santa but presents still happened, I realized what must be going on. I was around the age a lot of kids figure it out though, so the unorthodox Santa explanation worked well enough in the end.

Also in the land of fake Christmas. My wife made the cake this year, infinitely better than whatever we ordered from Lawson last year. The main course was some A4 wagyu steak I picked up at Costco, which turns out to be a fantastic way to season your cast iron.

Excellent, sounds like a lovely time.

I'm going to reheat noodles and take the maximum dose of stimulants so I can get some studying done. The former was a gift given to me, the latter a gift I give myself. God knows no obese men in red are going to fit down the skinny ass excuse for a chimney in my kitchen.

Tell me more about these noodles.

They're from a cheap and cheerful Chinese restaurant I like, now, going into the differences between "Indian" Chinese food and authentic Chinese food as eaten in China, that's a long story. I suppose it can be summed up as being way spicier than the original, and a few dishes that have seen divergent evolution, especially sides.

What happened to your greasy biryani street food???

Of course I know him, he's me!

I just had it for lunch and it's mostly assimilated, I'll be burying the remains in a few hours haha

Sunday morning service, Christmas gathering with family, Christmas Eve Mass, and finally Lessons and Carols service with some friends. Having Christmas Eve on a Sunday this year really made it a church-heavy day.

It's a Finnish tradition to do most of Christmas stuff - big dinner, presents etc., state ceremonies - on Christmas Eve. Presumably previously this was so that the Christmas Day could be given to religious things and rest, but of course in these secularized days most people don't do the religious stuff.

After becoming more active in the Orthodox Church (Finnish Orthodox Church is in the New Calendar), where Christmas Eve is still the day of the fast, I've tried to move things to the Christmas Day, causing a bit of friction with my Lutheran wife, but this year I gave up and we had Christmas dinner and gave out presents on the Eve, and I also went to church on that day and skipped today. Christmas Day church has been hard for me anyway since I don't have a car, public transport is not on and I about 10 km from the church.

We had, from the traditional Finnish Christmas table, ham and the casseroles, alongside roast beef, Karelian pies and a feta salad. And egg butter with Karelian pasties, it astonishes me that such a simple thing as a mix of eggs and butter would be quintessentially Finnish/Estonian thing.

My sister, who lives in the same city as me, visited, and our mom is also spending the Christmas with us. This meant the kids got a lot of presents and were happy, including the first skis for our 3-year-old.

I had never heard of any of those dishes until now, but I'd eat them all.

My understanding with Orthodoxy is that the fast shouldn’t be strictly legalistic. I’d imagine if your family always does the meal on Christmas Eve you could break the fast a day early, but I would talk to your father of course.

I got to go to both church services and spent time with family. We did a big old potluck with turkey, green bean casserole, mashed taters, corn pudding, etc.

We had some young ones running around this year too, and it truly changes the whole event. Kids bring a lot of light and energy to these sorts of things.

They definitely do. My boys have allowed me to relive many holidays: Hallowe'en, Christmas the big ones. Good times.

Small question: what's up with the new user filter? Is this message even visible?

I can see you.

[SAURON] I ... SEE... YOU...

Was planning to comment on that today myself. It makes sense as a hazing/selection process; to select for posters who are committed/neurodiverse enough to not just give up and leave, but patient enough not to chimp out over being ignored.

It does seem to create a dilemma over what to do if the filtered post was one you really want an answer to, though. In most cases it'd be egregiously obnoxious to keep posting the same question; but the filtering/wait period introduces that nagging doubt that maybe the person with the perfect answer is on here and just didn't see it.

I just didn't want to waste effort on it if I was shadowbanned.

I asked about this a month ago and got a response from one of the mods.

Typically I read all the comments by a particular user. Trolling stuff never gets out. If we have recently banned or perma banned users I have to be on the lookout for similarish commenting.

There are certain thresholds you have to hit before your posts and comments get auto-approved.

Spam and bots are not serious problems. But trolls and ban-evaders are major problems. The time delay of a moderator reading the comments and approving them helps lower the effectiveness of trolling, and makes bans actually costly (unlike on reddit, where they were trivially easy to dodge as long as you didn't piss off the admins).

We try to lean heavily towards approving new comments and posts. So all of your comments will eventually get approved.

And when I asked about reposting a question/topic from the previous week:

As a general rule, reposting from a previous week's thread is ok.

Intentionally reposting from something that is already in the thread is frowned upon.

The rule of thumb I use when modding: is there already a live discussion on this topic, if so, just join that. The deader the previous discussion the more ok it is to repost it and start it up again.

That's helpful but it would be nice to see it fleshed out.

There's a new Open Thread on ACX today.

Am I just imagining it, or were SSC open threads way more interesting a few years back? I remember spending an unreasonable amount of time reading them, and would re-load them and scroll through hundreds of pages of half read comments to see updates. Now they seem kind of dull for the most part?

Adding: also, they seem more difficult to participate in. If I do ever comment, someone either slaps it down dismissively, or there's simply no response.

Another thought: maybe all the interesting stuff is happening on the hidden open threads?

Absolutely. They're awful now.

The substack move hurt, in that half the thread seems to antiseptic substack guys trying to grift.

Antiseptic?

I'm trying to capture the vibe of Twitter and substack and other social media personalities who feel super fake all the time... Who talk in this newscaster tone, always respectful and nice, Flanders like. The opposite of dick stretching I guess.

And the ACX threads in particular make them that way?

No, the move to substack did. Substack threads on popular substrate all feature people posing and posturing to try to get followers.

I thought that Substack was ACX threads' substrate. I also thought that ACX was always on it, and that the "move" was from the Slate Star Codex domain to the ACX Substack. I wasn't following things closely at the time. Thanks for clarifying.

That's the question, right? Where do the interesting people hang out on the internet?

Where do the interesting people hang out on the internet?

If one knew, one would be there.

I think part of it is that he isn’t writing about the same topics as he used to so people who follow him now are following him for his newer interests around city planning and the like. Those people are less interesting than people who followed him back in the day when he was anonymous and willing to engage more controversial topics.

Am I just imagining it, or were SSC open threads way more interesting a few years back?

Well, you can check, the old threads are still right there. From the last time I had this thought and checked, they were significantly better back then, but most of the comments were still meh. There are still some good comments on today's regular ACX posts, as seen in occasional 'highlights from the comments' posts.

I doubt the hidden ones are much better.

Am I just imagining it, or were SSC open threads way more interesting a few years back?

Substack is a terrible platform to host these threads. When the number of responses exceeds a couple hundred, the page slows to a crawl.

How do you do an ideological/bullshit beliefs reset?

I have certain beliefs left over from my childhood and teenage years that are objectively wrong or misguided, and I know they are as much when I think about them rationally for often as literally as 2 seconds but this takes up bandwidth.

These are not political or philosophical but mundane heuristics and rationalizations. Following is a made-up example so please don't offer me advice on this, but it captures the spirit.

Let's say as a kid spending 5 units of currency bill was a substantial spend. It was a significant part of my allowance. Now as an adult, that 5 unit bill still hurts to spend.

The above is not the end of the world. But it's annoying.

The fact that you rationally recognize such beliefs to be maladaptive is more progress than most make.

I'm not aware of any empirically validated strategy, but my advice would be to train yourself to consider specific situations as triggers, such that whenever you encounter them you jolt and remember to think things through. Eventually it should become engrained through force of habit.

If you're feeling experimental, well there's LSD, but loosening one's priors is not universally a good thing.

Cartesian doubt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_doubt

It's painful and I have not done a full inventory but if you do you will be surprised how much BS you believe.

I think it’s best to reason from the idea of useful information/heuristics. If you are using one on budgeting, I’ve always been rather a fan of using usefulness compared to hours worked. If you’re getting clothes that aren’t just going to be used for one year and tossed is better than getting fashion. And so if you’re only going to wear it three months once a week spending more “work hours” on that isn’t good. If you’re buying entertainment, something you’ll use a lot is something to spend more on than something you’ll rarely get use from.

So, what are you reading?

Can't say I'm reading much. Poor Edmond Dantes is in prison. I suppose I'll pick up something Christian soon.

Have you read "Till We Have Faces?" You might enjoy it, it's the rare book that's enjoyable both on the first read and on subsequent reads as well.

Yeah I think it's my favorite of Lewis' fiction, especially the first half.

It's on the list now, thanks.

Just now rereading this for like the fourth time. It's fantastic, and Lewis himself called it his best book.

Finished Prit Buttar's Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front, 1944-45. The endgame of the Eastern Front tends to get short shrift in popular history with the exception of the capture of Berlin, and this is a very interesting book about a very messy series of campaigns. A must-read for lovers of war crimes.

Currently reading a collection of dissident (leftist) Soviet author Varlam Sharlamov, called Sketches of the Criminal World. More grim stuff, but quite darkly humourous at times.

dissident (leftist) Soviet author Varlam Sharlamov

Have you read his Gulag stories?

The book I'm reading is the second volume of a 2018 translation of his gulag stories.

Looking forward to your thoughts on Monte Cristo.

I’m almost done with Dreamland. Been enjoying it so far.

I just ordered a book of Kafka stories from eBay. I read The Metamorphosis in high school and recall enjoying it. We’ll see if his stuff is a bit too…grey for my liking.

It's the only Kafka I've read, but A Country Doctor is a must-read.

Planning to finally start Blindsight when I get on the plane tomorrow. It gets so much praise that I don't know if it's going to be one of those highly-praised books that's really good, or one of those ok books that everyone decided to ostentatiously praise as part of some mutually-reinforcing social phenomenon at some point.

Hoping for the best.

A friend lent me Sum, a collection of very short stories about different permutations of the afterlife. It's refreshing to read something that gets straight to the point.

Just finished The Mountain of Silence which is a fun story that discusses the practices of Eastern Orthodox Christian mysticism. It was a fascinating and beautiful read, shattered many of my preconceptions about Orthodoxy.

The Eastern mystical tradition has quite a bit in common with Buddhism and other more popular mystical traditions in the West, but is still quite distinct. I hope we see a resurgence of monasteries in the US.

Someone gave me "Breath" by James Nestor as a Christmas gift. It's setting all of my woo alarms. I'll report back.

Merry Christmas from furthest east!

Christmas in Japan is always a weird experience. It only exists in your house, if you ignore the bizarre Chinese-whispers you see in shopping malls and stuff over here, and even then, only if you make it happen. We made it happen this year and the young'uns have never been happier. Even roped in the Japanese in-laws this time and they're enjoying this strange foreign holiday.

Hope all of y'all celebrating today have a good one! Christ is born!

Merry Christmas to you too! Last Christmas I was by myself in South Korea and I mostly ignored it so that I wouldn't be sad I was missing it at home. I think I facetimed my mom and probably ate western food but otherwise didn't do much. Hope you and your family enjoy your Christmas in Japan.

Glorify Him! :)

So what's up with the amphetamine shortage? I can't tell if this is a shortage shortage, or if you just have to call up your psychiatrist in a panicked tone and mention the fact that you are literally out and won't be able to work tomorrow, and then they'll point you towards the secret stash.

Asking for a friend obviously.

And here I am swimming in them. Shame it's so hard to get the better class of stimulants, I'm not fond of Ritalin.

Any idea why this is the case? I don't know what the situation is in India, but I have read about other countries prohibiting medical amphetamines and allowing medical phenidates. I've never seen an explanation for the distinction though. Is it just fear of the second order effects of introducing a legal path to acquiring the, ahh, better stimulants?

They're legally (and for the most part medically) considered equivalents in the US. Though as you note and in my own experience, one is a lot better than the other in terms of side effects etc.

I would wager it's largely the stigma around amphetamines in general. I don't know any good reason why you'd ban those and allow phenidates, though I know Japan takes the opposite route and bans both, RIP ADHD-ists.

I don't think it's so much a fear of allowing legal amphetamines as much as an aversion to the entire class in general. And there's not much impetus to change things, at least in India, awareness of ADHD is minimal, and "a" drug exists, so it's not like it goes entirely untreated. MPH is ok, in effectiveness if not in terms of how pleasant it is to use.

(In terms of pure availability, India manufactures a ton of the stuff, including what you might import in the States, so it's little surprise we don't have a shortage)

So the status quo allows ADHD to be treated without introducing the wildcard of amphetamines. This makes sense. From what my Indian friends and acquaintances tell me, mental/psychiatric health awareness in general is minimal there so I'm not surprised there is no urgency to make changes to a system that provides at least some avenue for treatment.

I know multiple people that purchase all of their pharmaceuticals, from OTCs to scheduled drugs like modafinil, from online Indian pharmacies (mostly as a work-around for various insane US pharma and insurance pricing) so that also makes sense. Thanks.

Do you live in a college town?

One of my coworkers who is a programmer/SE mentioned to me he couldn't get any and it was affecting his job performance and we are a SV company with excellent health care coverage so it has to be real. This is in the Denver area. Like he is a top level SWE so if he can't get it nobody can.

Basically this is a long standing issue stemming from restrictions on production that pops up periodically. Not a new problem but it affects different people at different times depending on where the meds end up getting distributed.

One example: https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/16dur21/stimulant_shortage_im_giving_up_yall/?rdt=65353

"Listened to a great podcast recently with an ADHD expert, who noted that in a recent meeting with the DEA and FDA all the reps of manufacturers said they were having no problems with demand and production, as has been noted in several comments. The distributors were the problem. The wholesale distributors got hit hard in the Perdue Pharma settlements. For things like supplying 450,000 opioid tablets to a single pharmacy in West Virginia, in one year, et cetera. So they just decided, extralegally, that they were going to limit distribution of ANY Schedule II drugs to pharmacies. Pharmacies cannot supply what they cannot get because of the distributors decisions."

This seems like the missing piece of the puzzle to me. The shortage has been going on for over a year at this point. If FDA/DEA quotas were the issue then the FDA/DEA could simply raise the quotas. But if manufacturers and distributors are afraid to ship out drugs in a way that might look suspicious because they're afraid of being sued, that is a much harder problem to solve.

Reminds me of the Covid vaccine rollout hiccups, but slightly less stupid because bad things can in fact happen if crates full of amphetamine end up distributed but unaccounted for.

Tagging on to your top level post to ask a question of the other users. Several have mentioned that AMPH is a ‘better’ class of stimulant than MPH. Why do people feel this way? Subjectively, it seems like amph is ‘speedier’, which means more enjoyable but also more prone to distraction, and with a bigger lag/crash after it wears off. Mph, in contrast, feels like less of a boost and more of a removal of fatigue, with less of a crash (but potentially a headache later).

Obviously responses are individual. What is the rest of the Motte’s experience?

メリクリ!🎄

Does anyone else occasionally feel that Christianity is real and Jesus is the Lord? I grew up somewhat Christian going to church but my parents stopped making me go around 14 and I quickly became an atheist. However, throughout my life there have been moments (very short) where I believe in Christ. Tonight was one where my fiance and I watched a beautiful choir in a beautiful church and as I held her hand I felt God. I felt Jesus and his sacrifice.

Of course, intellectually I know this is nonsense Christianity has been proven to not be true and just a superstition but there is something about it that draws me back so close to almost believing it.

I became an atheist around 8 at the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Then when I was a teenager, I tried to believe in God because I wanted to believe there was a powerful being I could pray to who would solve my problems, but I just couldn't get past the ridiculousness of things like Jesus walking on water of magically multiplying fish. It just seemed so stupid that I every time I tried to take it seriously, I felt like a fool. I do like the aesthetics of church and mass (though I hate standing and kneeling), but I just can't bring myself to believe things that go against reason.

I generally believe it but also fairly frequently have doubts. I still consider Christianity to be undoubtedly useful even when I’m really not certain if it’s true, so I try to keep practicing regardless.

This essay of Greg Egan might help you.

I don't. Perhaps that is because I don't go to ceremonies designed to cause such a feeling.

There are anecdotes of people who thought they were reasonable and strong-priored enough to resist cult indoctrination going to cult indoctrination sessions and buying them hook, line and sinker.

Christianity has been proven to not be true

That would be quite a feat.

Unfortunately, no.

Does anyone else occasionally feel that Christianity is real and Jesus is the Lord?

I mean, I'm a Christian so I would say I feel that more than occasionally. ;)

Christianity has been proven to not be true and just a superstition

So far as I'm aware, no such proof exists. The general reasoning I see given for atheism isn't "Christianity is proven false", but "Christianity isn't proven true and so one should assume it is false until proven otherwise". The two positions are very different, with different implications on how you should think.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose you saw a unicorn on the street today. If unicorns are proven to be impossible, then you are probably hallucinating and should see a doctor. But if it's merely the case that we don't believe unicorns exist until we have proof they do, congratulations cause you just proved unicorns exist. That's why the distinction between "proven false" and "unproven, assumed false for now" matters. In the former, evidence for the false proposition can safely be considered faulty. In the latter, evidence for the proposition can potentially show that the proposition is true after all.

Back to Christianity, that means that if you feel you have reason to believe in it (which I'm not saying you do, only you can decide that), then you shouldn't set aside those reasons because "eh it's proven false, it's just superstition anyway". Instead, you should follow up on those reasons and see where it takes you. Maybe it changes your mind, maybe not, but it seems to me that it's worth investigating just to see what happens.

Personally, I would encourage you to continue to seek the truth as best you can. YMMV, but my own experience has led me to believe the wisdom of "seek and you will find". I spent many years being atheist/agnostic, and at times I despaired that I would ever be able to resolve the questions I had inside. But in time, God led me to the answers I wanted in a way that I could accept. Now looking back on it all, yeah the path was winding and at times dark. But given who I am, and how I see the world, it probably couldn't have worked any other way. So while the journey was long and tiring (mentally), it was my journey and I'm grateful for it. And it's not over yet, of course.

I hope you find the answers you seek, man. Even if you wind up deciding "yep it's all bunk", I hope you're able to have the peace of having found those answers. Good luck, and Merry Christmas!

But if it's merely the case that we don't believe unicorns exist until we have proof they do, congratulations cause you just proved unicorns exist.

No, you are still vastly more likely to be suddenly hallucinating in comparison to meeting mythological creature that nobody had found any evidence for hundreds of years. The same can be said about attributing internal feelings to hypothetical unseen all-powerful being and not some mundane neurological reason.

On the other hand, if I see a unicorn in the street, and the neighbor tells me yep, that’s what it is, and neither of us have been drinking, and the pack of neighborhood children run over and pet it, and they say it’s a unicorn…

There's a nigh infinite number of ways to approach this. I would recommend perhaps starting at the beginning of the fabulous Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (https://shwep.net/). Christianity did not evolve in a vacuum. It's a part of western thought with roots dating back to pre-Socratic philosophy. It may benefit you to have a more complete picture of how it came to be and the issues that early Christian thinkers like Origen and Augustine wrestled with. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians, and there is almost certainly a Christian path that is true for you.

Oh, to return to the time when delving into a site like this doesn't require engaging in countless hours of the inferior activity of listening instead of a considerably smaller time of the superior activity of reading.

Amen brother. Amen.

Nope.

Does anyone else occasionally feel that Christianity is real and Jesus is the Lord?

Yes. I am a Christian and know that Jesus is Lord, the living God, who died to save us from our sins and rose again, who was born on the first Christmas as a baby born of the Virgin Mary and is literally present in the Eucharist for the salvation of all men.

Of course, intellectually I know this is nonsense Christianity has been proven to not be true

No, it hasn't. You can claim evidence for Christianity has been brought back to unfalsifiable claims; I can point to falsifiable claims that Christians will point to, although I acknowledge that eg the tilma of Juan Diego isn't a slam dunk argument even if no one has managed to disprove it and that the core claims are unfalsifiable even if I think that the balance of evidence and arguments weighs in favor. I'm not aware of anything that has disproven Christianity, although probably a few specific sects staked their existence on falsifiable claims.

and just a superstition

That's not what a superstition is. A superstition is a specific belief about how the world operates(eg if you break a mirror you'll have seven years of bad luck) which is rooted in magical thinking.

I've had those moments occasionally, when I was younger. Now my daydreams are filled with AGI.

Yep. I had moments like that over my life, they slowly increased as I learned more about Christianity and started to take Him seriously. Now I do believe that Christ is the Lord, although I’m occasionally still wracked with doubt.

I think the key is that the intellect isn’t often the best way to live life or make big decisions. Living from the heart seems to work better, at least for me.

Should I be worried about my fiance's animal love? Before she moved into my condo it was me and my one cat. I'm not going to lie here I love that cat but since she moved in she also brought in 2 cats and a dog. This isn't a huge condo just a 2 bedroom and her dog is huge. So now we have 3 cats and 1 dog.

Then she became obsessed with fostering some kittens so we added 3 kittens to the mix. Then she got a bunch of emails from the animal shelter and she convinced me to take a dog for the holidays. Then, apparently she got an email about these kittens who had no home with their mother of which there are 4 and she made an executive decision to save them. So now I have my cat, her 2 cats, her dog, 3 kittens, the dog staying with us for the holidays (which she'll probably not let me return until it gets adopted), and then the cat and 4 kittens.

She's happier than a pig in shit with all these animals posting them on her facebook and instagram. Is this normal?

I love her and plan on making her my wife. I've already told her we're not adopting any of these and they are all going to other families. Part of me loves her for her kindness and love towards beings that need help, but this is insane. Last week when I was in meetings, cats kept trying to get on the keyboard and on my compute when I was talking to the CTO of my company. I had to lock them in the room pet room to work. When she moved in she took over my "man room", but this many animals is insane. She wants multiple kids so she's not trying to replace the with animals but this pet love is insane.

We have 2 dogs and 10 cats in my condo right now. This isn't normal right? She also teaches kids math as a data scientist so she is obsessed with helping people. But I feel like there is a certain point where it's insane. Should I crack down and tell her how crazy it is with how many animals live in our condo, or should I just let it go. I'm torn on whether I love it or think she's pathologically altruistic. If I put a baby in her, maybe she'll relax.

Is this normal?

Not really, no. That's a lot of animals in a short amount of time.

I love her and plan on making her my wife. I've already told her we're not adopting any of these and they are all going to other families. Part of me loves her for her kindness and love towards beings that need help

She's not being kind towards you, the person/animal who she's supposed to care most about in the world. Assuming you've clearly stated your preferences. I think it's time to draw a line in the sand. Pathological altruists who want to save every last animal or feed every last starving African often don't have enough room for a husband or wife in their lives. Building a family requires choosing and prioritizing your own over the rest of the world. You can't be an completely open-hearted starry-eyed do-gooder when you have husband/wife and kids.

If I put a baby in her, maybe she'll relax.

In the long term, maybe. In the short to medium term it will probably make things worse including in ways you hadn't imagined.

And he'd better make sure that he's resolved this issue before he puts a ring on it.

I get the impression from her this will change once we have kids. She just sees us as having extra and wants to use it to help animals. She just falls for those emails that get sent out about emergencies. She doesn't understand they are trying to make her feel bad and take in these pets. I honestly didn't care until we got to double digits. I didn't care until she brought in double digits. Plus she's not trying to get me to take her anywhere on an expensive vacation just adopt cats and dogs.

So, soon you'll have several kids and 20 animals in your small home. Can you live with that?

I'd put the brakes on this animal project pretty hard before marrying/having kids.

I always get the squick when someone asks if a baby would fix it. It’s completely unfair to the baby to put him in a situation where he’s the thing that’s going to save the marriage because quite often not only does that not work, but quite often ends up setting the poor kid up for a bad situation, either because the parents end up splitting up or because he’s unconsciously being blamed for not fixing the problem the parent thought a kid would solve.

I think at minimum some serious counseling is in order as this sounds a bit like animal hoarding. At minimum the fact that she’s bringing in animals with no regard for your feelings or the welfare of the animals involved (there’s no way that you have space for 10 cats and 2 dogs in a condo). Especially if you’re even thinking of forming a family, this is a serious issue. If she won’t be willing to rehome at least the “foster” animals and talk to a professional I don’t see this working long term. And it is ultimately just as cruel to the animals who need space and a clean environment to live in.

Man I wish my girl loved animals one tenth as much as yours does instead of having her first instinct, when presented with a cat, be how to best cook and eat it.

I got the jungle fever bad.

If I put a baby in her, maybe she'll relax.

Yes, the hormones do that, but it all comes back with a vengeance afterwards.

I had to dissuade my girlfriend from stealing/kidnapping a particularly cute cat we saw on a walk in London (it didn't have a collar or tag, but it was clearly well cared for), so I share your pain. She insisted on adopting another dog when her living circumstances and finances made keeping one with her while she lives alone a stretch.

I'm pretty sure a kid will at least divert such interests, and it's a relatively small price to pay for living with someone kind and caring. Well, maybe I'll think otherwise if she goes to the lengths your girlfriend has, hell, she unironically wanted a cow, but I put my foot down and told her the only way a cow enters my future home is in pieces as a steak haha.

No, this is not healthy. Set up a double date with @grognard and see if you can pawn her off to him.

This is pretty wild, but from my own experience a woman's pet love really ramps up when she starts getting 'ready for kids' and diminishes when the kids arrive.

My wife needed a dog when we got married (we had never even discussed it before). That dog was the world to her up to the day we came home from the hospital with a baby. Then it was just a nuisance to her.

My feelings towars the dog meanwhile never changed: he was always my bud and never a surrogate kid.

But in your case yeah shes going overboard, it's not normal and so I'm hesitant to tell you to shrug it off. But I'd also put money on the probability that it's related to her biological clock firing in weird ways.

My sister needed a dog from the day she turned twelve until she got married. She had a kid less than a year later and got rid of 2/3 dogs within six months, and the last one doesn't spend much time with her anymore.

Deprioritizing the dog or being annoyed is one thing. I have to admit I find it very strange to not like a dog anymore, treat it as "just a nuisance" after having a kid.

Well, I mean the former two adjectives. I didn't describe it correctly in one word. She still liked him, but in a completely changed way. The doting disappeared.

Ah that lines up a bit more for sure

I have a few friends, mostly female, who are similarly obsessed with animals, though perhaps not quite to that extent. It works out okay for them since they live on farms, and their spouses make clear that the chickens, rabbits, pigs, horses, cows, cats, ducks, etc., are their responsibility and aren’t allowed in the house. Since you have a condo, I assume you live in town. Is it feasible/desirable for you and your fiancé to move out to the country sometime soon? If so, it’s probably a manageable problem. If not, you might be in trouble. That many animals in a condo isn’t healthy.

If I put a baby in her, maybe she'll relax.

Yeah, this. Women have an instinct to take care of small, cute, helpless creatures. Normally that instinct is supposed to help them raise their children, but with no kids they redirect the impulse towards cats and dogs instead, not unlike a man who masturbates to porn for lack of a girlfriend. She'll stop obsessing over fur babies once she has some real babies. Move up the wedding date and get to work.

You can have seven dogs in a house with a fairly small yard- I've seen it before and it's a quality of life reduction but it's doable. You can have a dozen cats too.

But the key thing there is they have unrestricted access to the outside, keeping twelve animals in a two bedroom condo is just insane.

If I put a baby in her, maybe she'll relax.

More than likely, yes. My sister did. You need to sit her down and explain in no uncertain terms that you love her and want to marry her, but you can't accommodate twelve animals in a two bedroom apartment. The foster animals need to go back to the shelter by x date and we can't get new ones, there isn't space, sorry, and what's your ring size. Throw in that you think she'll make a good mom and you think her instinct to take care of things is really attractive and feminine, but part of that is accepting that you can't care for twelve animals in a two bedroom apartment.

If she doesn't want you to make the final decision then having a kid won't calm her down, she's just crazy, and you need to break up with her.

I am a massive dog nut, always had one. Have two now.

This is an unacceptable number of animals given your living situation. You don't smell your condo right now, anyone new to it does. It's bad.

Every dog beyond one and every cat beyond two is irrevocably degrading the living situation without specialized air filters and daily cleaning.

What happens when you both want to do a weekend trip? How much are you spending on food? How are you managing the relationship between the animals? I'd argue that having a smaller number of pets under your care will improve their QoL.

Correct. Due to irresponsibility on my end (roommate had one cat, I adopted a stray cat, didn't get one of them sterilized in time, and the female had a litter of seven of whom all survived), I wound up with nine cats in a similarly-sized condo. It was a nightmare. Once the kittens grew enough to walk the place was permanently trashed. I spent a fortune on food and litter. It was very difficult to find homes for them in a town that's overrun with stray/feral cats.

I've since gotten it down to three (still pushing it IMO; two are being babysat until roommate moves in with her boyfriend and the end goal is to have one cat) and it's a night and day difference in terms of QoL.

Happy side story though: One of my friends took the worst, most feral of the two kittens I had for barn cats, and over a period of months the worse of those two has become an adorable, fully domesticated housecat. I didn't believe it when she told me until she showed me pictures of it.

That is a happy side story, and I like barn cats being useful even if it hadn't "graduated" to house.

The first two cats and dog make sense, since she already had them and pets are usually assumed to move with their owners, but the others sound like too much, and not compatible with living in a condo. I don't have any useful advice on insisting that it's crazy and not sustainable at all.

I suppose a baby could help. Are you in a position to ever get more land? Several friends who like animals married, had three children, and now have goats, a dog, chickens, and a garden. All of these things go really well with the children. If we ever know someone who would take care of them when we're away, we aspire to have three alpacas, which are apparently lovely, gentle with children, and only defecate in a single spot in the yard.

We have 2 dogs and 10 cats in my condo right now. This isn't normal right? She also teaches kids math as a data scientist so she is obsessed with helping people. But I feel like there is a certain point where it's insane. Should I crack down and tell her how crazy it is with how many animals live in our condo, or should I just let it go.

You've heard of or read those news stories that pop up, about people who have lots animals, in filthy conditions?

One of the paths that leads to this is that the person or family can foster four pets. Then eight pets. Then twelve, sixteen. It works, for a while.

Eventually some other crisis happens. The household can't take care of them all. But having a dozen or more pets is normalized. Stress accumulates. Quality of care drops, and drops.

Right now I don't think you folks are in a position to cope with a life downturn.

Just to give an example, what happens when one of them brings in fleas? Getting rid of fleas in one cat is a pain in the ass as it is.

Something no one else seems to have mentioned is that you are almost certainly in massive violation of your lease and/or condo association agreement, and very possibly local zoning and animal control ordinances. That many animals in a 2 bedroom condo isn't just unsanitary for you, it's a public health hazard. You will get evicted/cited/fined if nothing changes. It's only a matter of time before your neighbors start calling the cops on you.

I was able to get foster homes for a bunch of them soon so like half should be gone by New Years.

As is tradition, my sister and I got into a heated argument, this time about Israel and Palestine. The argument started as a disagreement about the meaning of "from the river to the sea" and then became about the conflict and history of the region generally.

Now, my sister, despite her strong feelings about the subject, knows almost nothing about the history of the region and seems to have gotten most of her information from TikTok. Nonetheless, she raised some points that I don't know as much about as I should, and I'm hoping someone can help me learn more about the following claims. These are all things she claims have been widely reported in the media (other than CNN et al.) and is absolutely certain are true.

  • Israel has dropped white phosphorus on Gaza.
  • No babies were killed. The video evidence was faked or actually of things done to Palestinians.
  • Israel is bombing Northern Gaza indiscriminately.
  • Hamas is has not been proven to be operating out of any hospitals.
  • Israel has cut off all food, water, electricity aide (I know there was some of this, but has it continued and are they completely blockading it?)
  • Israel killed the Palestinians when they tried to leave Northern Gaza. She denied there was any evidence Hamas actually did this.
  • Israel bombed Palestinians as they left to go to Egypt.
  • The UK and the US were allied with Israel from the beginning and supported the establishment of the country.
  • Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israelis during the occupation. EDIT: I mean during peacetime and not casualties. I'm not talking about the casualties killed during current war.

I'm most interested in any claims of war crimes. I understand Israel claims they are not collectively punishing Palestinians but are actually targetting military targets, but what I'm most unsure about is what is the actual evidence we have about how much they might have deviated from that.

By the way, these debates always remind how bad most people's epistemic habits are. She told me I had fallen for Israeli propaganda and that she was actually very well informed on the subject and had read a lot about it. You see, she had friends who were personally affected (they live in Canada but have family from there or something) and she cared a lot about it, which meant she was not biased. Whereas for me, it was just something fun to debate and I was thinking about it too coldly to form a correct opinion. This from someone who had never heard of Mandatory Palestine and didn't know what a pogrom was, and seemed to know little of even post-1948 Israeli/Palestinian history. She also thought it was the deadliest current conflict and was deadlier than the Iraq War.

EDIT: The purpose of this question wasn't just to get more unsubstantiated claims. If people could provide sources supporting their claims, that would be helpful.

My condolences. I can tell you that, re civilian deaths, the mere fact that Israel is not targeting civilians does not necessarily absolve them of war crimes, because "attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof and that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" are also barred. How that might be determined by third parties is not clear to me.

On war crimes, I feel like people forget that hostage taking is a war crime, and it is undeniable that Hamas has captured hostages. And then you have the complimentary war crimes of Hamas using human shields, and Israel killing "excessive" civilians because of the human shields.

I'm pretty sure Hamas does operate out of hospitals. Here is an article from a few years ago, but I'm just a guy, I can't speak for the veracity.

It wouldn't surprise me if thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Gaza claims 20,000 deaths just from this current war. Even if that's a 10x overestimate, it's still thousands.

Sorry, the part about Palestinian deaths wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to war casualties but to deliberate killings of innocent civilians by the IDF in the occupied territories during peacetime.

If she's referring to massacres, I'm pretty sure that's not true. But the IDF has actually killed lots of unarmed civilians in the occupied west bank, some with poor or no justification. Thousands might be a stretch but Palestinians in the west bank complaining about IDF brutality definitely have the bodies to back it up.

Yes, I know. It's the high number that I wanted to confirm.

In order but unsourced:

Israel has dropped white phosphorus on Gaza. Yes, but it's not unique. White phosphorous is too useful to not drop; everybody be dropping white phosphorous. If it lands on you you will die one of the worst deaths imaginable; but armies generally don't directly try to land it on people.

No babies were killed. The video evidence was faked or actually of things done to Palestinians. Maybe. Most of the claims of Jr. getting Wopper'ed. have been retracted; but there is no way to know for sure and such things have happened before on both sides of this conflict.

Israel is bombing Northern Gaza indiscriminately. Yes. Any 2000lb dumb bomb on a dense city is definitionally indiscriminate; and they are going fucking crazy on the city with dumb munitions.

Hamas is has not been proven to be operating out of any hospitals. Yes and no: hamas has operated in those areas before and there is infrastructure there; but every hospital shut down or destroyed by Isreal durring this round of conflict has had +/- 0 Hammas command centers under it, and only PDWs stored in the actual hospital. That doesn't mean they weren't there before, however.

Israel has cut off all food, water, electricity aide (I know there was some of this, but has it continued and are they completely blockading it?) Kinda. They are doing as much as they can, but it's more like "throttled as much as is practical" than "Cut off totally". This might have changed since I last looked at it, though.

Israel killed the Palestinians when they tried to leave Northern Gaza. She denied there was any evidence Hamas actually did this. True. Israel has bombed sufferal safe evacuation corridors and the areas the told people to evacuate too, fairly consistently over several missions. It is basically impossible this isn't at least willfully negligent on their part.

Israel bombed Palestinians as they left to go to Egypt. True; but misleading. They weren't at the border crossing. That said, they have had at least one fragment from a tank shell hit someone standing in egypt, so they are being pretty frisky there.

The UK and the US were allied with Israel from the beginning and supported the establishment of the country. True (kinda). Part of the founding of Israel is the balfour declaration; and it was less allied at the beginning than standing aside and letting it happen. They were firmly US allies REALLY quickly after ww2 though; as a capitalist white-enough outpost in the middle east.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israelis during the occupation. Ten(s of?) thousand(s?) at least; many of them by small arms at close range; cluding at least a couple hundred on the west bank where hammas doesn't exist. This is not in doubt, and is not surprising to anyone. If you want to ruin your day and your brain you can go look at the pictures, but I don't recommend it.

no babies killed

I think a few babies were killed? This article says "Partial data by Hebrew media covering the civilians — killed by thousands of invading terrorists and by some of the thousands of rockets fired that day at Israeli cities — reveals that they include two infants, 12 other children under the age of 10, 36 civilians aged 10-19, and 25 elderly people over the age of 80, accounting for 75 of the 764 civilians.". It's true that no babies were 'beheaded' though, afaik.

Israel turned most of the water back on a while ago.

The formatting to that comment was confusing; the poster maybe should have used colons, or used ">" to make it a quote. "No babies were killed" was a repetition of a claim he was evaluating, not an assertion of his own.

That said, that's good information.

Source?

Israel has dropped white phosphorus on Gaza. Yes, but it's not unique. White phosphorous is too useful to not drop; everybody be dropping white phosphorous. If it lands on you you will die one of the worst deaths imaginable; but armies generally don't directly try to land it on people.

My understanding of WP is that the "warcrimeness" is based entirely on if its being used (nominally) for smokescreens/illumination/whatnot, or if its being used as an offensive burning weapon against enemy forces in a civilian area - the latter being Bad and the former being Eh, Fine Enough.

She told me I had fallen for Israeli propaganda and that she was actually very well informed on the subject and had read a lot about it. You see, she had friends who were personally affected (they live in Canada but have family from there or something) and she cared a lot about it, which meant she was not biased. Whereas for me, it was just something fun to debate and I was thinking about it too coldly to form a correct opinion.

Jesus christ, that's so backwards it's scary. You aren't passionate enough to form a correct opinion?! In what universe does that logic make sense? Surely she must see that the overwhelming majority of advances we have made - in virtually every arena, but most certainly geopolitics - have been through cold calculation, not the fire of passion? Should we hold a contest for the most hysterical and histrionic lunatic on the planet and run all policy decisions past her?

Logic/reason versus emotion/rhetoric is, for most of the West, a Star Trek fan thing, not a real philosophical dilemma they have to face themselves. For such people, the more you care, the more right you are, and it’s the unresponsive non-empathetic logicians who cause all the bad in the world.

Americans are inundated with pro-Israel propaganda.

There is a massive lobby operating in plain sight called AIPAC that basically controls the outcomes of all elections.

Huge organizations like Ivy League colleges that you'd expect to be insulated from foreign influence thanks to their humongous cash reserves are still under great pressure by deep-pocketed activists. If anything, it seems that American politicians are more likely to be impeached for not submitting to Israeli influence.

It seems to me that it takes a certain level of passion to overcome the constant drumbeat that Israel has a right to drop bombs on women and children and that American taxpayers should feel privileged to contribute to that war effort.

And who can blame passionate Americans in 2023?

How many conspiracy theories need to be fact-checked as 'mixture' by Snopes before the 'listen to the experts' poindexters learn to sit down and listen when Qanon Karen is talking?

Maybe that passion is misplaced, I've seen commenters here make convoluted arguments to still support Israel despite all the civilian casualties, ethno-nationalism, apartheid politics, genocidal statements... And perhaps they are right, and to be fair you need to have a very high IQ to understand the true moral righteousness of Israel's war on hospitals and apartment buildings.

I don't disagree that hysteria is bad. I do believe that there is little value in listening to what women are concerned about in matters of politics.

The sister is not getting drafted to fight a war on behalf of Israel, or say, on behalf of the children of Gaza (unlikely lol), so she has little stake in that story anyway.

If she does pay more taxes than she takes, then she may be allowed to air grievances regarding which children American taxmoney is slaughtering this week.

Is Israeli treatment of the Palestinians much worse then the treatment of religious minorities across the Islamic world? It seems odd to complain about "civilian casualties, ethno-nationalism, apartheid politics, genocidal statements" when the muslims are so happy to impose them on others. The hysteria is one sided.

What is one-sided?

When deep state members decide that one country needs to be bombed, then we find out that the muslims there have been committing all kinds of crimes, gassing civilians, repressing protests, jailing political opponents... The hysteria was very much one-sided while it was Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria...

Meanwhile billions of dollars of American taxpayer money were flowing into Israel.

Compare the press coverage of 2 wars :

[Underdog leader:] [Opponent's] bombing of maternity and children’s hospital an ‘atrocity

[Neutral observer:] The devastating [location] hospital blast is shrouded in uncertainty. Here’s what we know, and what we don’t

Can you guess which war is which?

...

You were right! The first one is about the crimes committed by the evil Russians.

Russia’s bombing of maternity and children’s hospital an ‘atrocity,’ Zelensky says

The devastating Gaza hospital blast is shrouded in uncertainty. Here’s what we know, and what we don’t

Why are the Russians evil? Oh yes, because they jail their political opponents, they have nationalist rhetoric, they target minorities and attack their neighbors...

Kind of like an Israel of Central Asia, but bad.

On one hand, we must spend billions of dollars to make sure that Israel remains an ethnostate

ADL proudly supports the right of the Jewish people, like other peoples, to self-determination. In the case of the Jews, this translates to the right to live in a Jewish, democratic state in their ancient homeland, Israel.

Jewish Democratic? What if the majority decides the state not to be Jewish?

Now what does the ADL think of white Americans' right to self-affirmation?

In a recent Facebook post, Ray Myers wrote, “I’m a WHITE NATIONALIST and very Proud of it.” Mr. Myers later attempted to clarify his post by stating, “I am Anglo and I’m very proud of it, just like black people and brown people are proud of their race. I am a patriot. I am very proud of my country … And white nationalist, all that means is America first. That’s exactly what that means. … I mean, just like Black Lives Matter, white lives matter, too … We’re all in the same melting pot. Now why can’t we say, as Anglos, that we’re proud?”

White nationalism is a term that originated among white supremacists as a euphemism for white supremacy. The implications of Mr. Myers’ statements appear to be that America is a white nation and patriotism is synonymous with white nationalism.

ADL emphasized that “the post and comments are reason alone for removal of Mr. Myers from any leadership position with the Texas GOP.”

I see, ethno-nationalism for me but not for thee.

Who should I support?

The guy who wants the right to defend himself from his neighbors he doesn't like

Or

The guy who wants the right to defend himself from his neighbors he doesn't like

with my money

while lobbying to get me jailed if I say I want the right to defend myself from my neighbors.

I don't really disagree with any of this. But this isn't what motivates your average normie (like this guys sister) or your average muslim.

Your average pro-palestine protester isn't motivated by anti-white bias, you would probably find it difficult to find one who had anything positive to say about whites.

Well the average normie only sees what the media shows them.

While a lot of Middle-Eastern countries could fit into the 'bad' category of repressing sexual or religious minorities, there are 2 cases from a Western media point of view.

There's the good Middle-Easterner, who oppresses minorities, but he's an ally of the deep state like Egypt or the UAE, so the media goes soft on them to get resources or military support from them.

And then there's the bad Middle-Easterner, who oppresses minorities, but he's not an ally of the deep state, like Iran or Syria, so the media highlights the bad stuff to create support for ongoing or future military actions against them.

Then of course if we're talking to a leftist activist, they might not straight up believe all the propaganda of the State department.

In their case I could see different ways that they can justify ongoing oppressions of minorities that they actually like.

Yes I do love the gays and islamists are throwing them down buildings, but this is a result of Western oppression. The radicals are now in power because the 'nice guy' approach did not work

There is a logic to that, supposedly Hamas is currently in power in Gaza partly thanks to the work of Israeli operatives undermining more Western-friendly alternatives...

Likewise, the Arab Spring took out authoritarian governments in Tunisia in Libya only to make room for islamists, and similar developments in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS...

There is a strong tension between the two main elements taught in American colleges :

  • some identities should be privileged due to history (ie brown > white, woman > man, muslim > secular > christian...)
  • the ends justify the means (America dindu nothing in Dresden and Hiroshima and the rest of the deep state's actions up to this point) - in order to get a job in corporate America

It's no surprise that people combining these 2 ideologies together would believe that the cause of 'liberating brown muslims' is worth using such means as 'killing some oppressor-coded civilians'.

This post and this one are a bit too far into "rant" territory. While each has its merits, it's presented in such a blistering way as to drown the light in heat. Snappy rhetorical questions, pithy comparisons, passionate appeals, none of these things are forbidden, exactly, it's just that you've turned the rhetoric dial too high. Please dial it back.

Huge organizations like Ivy League colleges that you'd expect to be insulated from foreign influence thanks to their humongous cash reserves are still under great pressure by deep-pocketed activists.

Qatar and the Saudis have been giving major funding to anti-Israeli academics for the past 30 years. Jewish donors not so much, they considered it more of a fringe issue and didn't push much until they saw how crazy things had gotten after the October 7th attacks.

I'm sure she believes she does have reason and is using it to the correct ends that passion gives her insight into. As well as all notable heroes of history who had something they believed in and something they were passionate about that drove them. Meanwhile OP doesn't have any goal besides idly amusing himself with rhetoric and all of his logic will never lead him to the truth, only to "owning the libs".

Meanwhile OP doesn't have any goal besides idly amusing himself with rhetoric and all of his logic will never lead him to the truth, only to "owning the libs".

This is all heat and no light. Don't post like this please.

I should have made it more clear that this is how I assume OP's sister thinks.

This is nothing new, and, in fact, has been deemed as the correct way of thinking for at least a decade now. This is the entire basis of the whole "lived experience" thing; that the people with direct, often emotional, stakes in something are the most trustworthy for getting a meaningfully accurate reading of the situation and also for figuring out a prognosis to help the situation.

Scott described how easily people can slip between "this doesn't affect me so I can assess it objectively" and "this does affect me so I'm better informed about it than you and my opinion carries more weight". I would not be remotely surprised if @Glassnoser's sister reverts to the former when it suits her.

You reckon? That's more what I'm used to, people arguing whichever way is expedient, but usually when people do that they just handwave away concerns about bias, and usually self correct towards reason. Outright claiming something oxymoronic like "I care too much to be biased" seems like an escalation to me, but now that I think about it I don't argue with a lot of young people irl.

Now for something out of left field - I was bitching about this to my girlfriend and she reminded me of this excellent old Mitchell and Webb sketch on the topic - Train Safety

Brilliant skit. And it makes me sad to think that both Mitchell and Webb were probably fully onboard the lockdown train.

I can’t imagine David Mitchell needs too much of an excuse not to leave the house.

I do remember one of Mitchell's columns was about how he thought it was dumb that covid positions were dictated by political persuasion, and I've always seen him as centre left so I remain hopeful, but Webb has been a disappointment to me since he sided with the cops re dankula even though out of the two only dankula never wore a nazi uniform or did blackface.

Edit: no wonder I couldn't find the column, it was an opinion piece in The Guardian.

I stand corrected, Mitchell is more principled than I gave him credit for.

This article persuaded me that Israel was accurate in its assessment that Hamas were using the Al-Shifa hospital as a base of operations.

Reposting in the new thread, guess I posted too late on the previous one. Will take the hint and not repost further if this gets no engagement.

I want to stop relying on 4chan for the latest AI news, currently searching for some better sources. I’m a long-time reader of Zvi and followed him to substack, and his summaries on AI are still excellent and information-dense, but (hedging) either his and my own points of view on AI drifted too far apart which colors my perception, or (honest opinion) the latest kerfuffle with Altman’s firing, reinstatement and everything in between finally broke his mind, and he is no longer able to keep back his obvious doomer bias, which is infecting his every post since. I still respect him and appreciate his writing, but disentangling the actual news from the incessant doom attached to them is quickly becoming tedious.

Are there any other substacks or blogs which post on anything AI/LLM related in a similar manner? I’m mostly looking for technical insights and distillations of the current zeitgeist, I dropped out around the Altman incident due to RL things and am trying to get back in the saddle. Sources unaffiliated with the Yud cathedral are preferable but not necessary, I’m more or less a brainlet but I can read when I put my mind to it.

Where shall Israeli Jews go?

Let's assume Palestinians win in the end. Maybe it's the BDS movement that succeeds, maybe it's incessant terrorist attacks, but at some point everyone realizes that a single-state solution is the only option that is viable long-term. And this single state (from the river to the sea) is going to democratically become an Islamic state. A state that is unwilling to prosecute any hate crimes against its Jewish citizens (or non-citizen residents, a la Estonia and Latvia).

Will any other country agree to cede some of their land to a sovereign Jewish state? Something incredibly depopulated (to avoid another conflict with the natives), but still suitable for human habitation and with access to the sea.

Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia? Gascoyne in Western Australia (just 9000 people, you could just buy them off)? The Antarctic Peninsula?

How likely do you think it that Jews with a desire for an actual state would be willing to settle for territory that has nothing to do with their holy land?

I suggest here. This is mostly federal land at present, there's something poetic about getting the West Bank of Great Salt Lake, and if you can't even get along with the Mormons, I wash myself and my country of any further obligation to help.

Latin American genericstan just gives them an autonomous territory with a flat tax rate? They move to Canada and Australia en masse? The Antarctic peninsula is probably too cold for large scale human habitation even under a climate maximalist scenario.

Maximally offensive version: StarCraft-style base trade. They capture Mecca and/or Medina.

Slightly less contentious version: they plop down in a no-man’s land somewhere between the Donbas and the Dnieper to act as a buffer between two countries that both hate them less than they do each other.

Maximally lazy version: they capture a chunk of Cyprus. It’s close by, and if Turkey can do it, why not them?

Maximally lazy version: they capture a chunk of Cyprus. It’s close by, and if Turkey can do it, why not them?

Where will gay Israelis get married if they capture Cyprus?

Lesbos, obviously.

A big chunk of the world.

Maybe Bir Tawil, the unclaimed land between Sudan and Egypt?

Maximally lazy version: they capture a chunk of Cyprus. It’s close by, and if Turkey can do it, why not them?

That was the approach taken by Isreal in Dean Ing's novel Systemic Shock, book one of the Quantrell trilogy: when World War IV [1] broke out, America was too busy with other concerns to worry about helping defending Israel from its neighbors, and Israel eventually ended up doing a hurried evacuation to Cyprus as temporary residence while they prepared their ultimate destination colonies at the L-5 points.

[1] What about World War III? Well, that was in somebody else's book,,,

Judging by the amount of Hebrew real estate ads I see every time I come to Cyprus (often) nowadays that process already started

Nowhere. Any such situation will only lead to civil war, again - i.e a repeat of ‘47 but with a better armed and trained Jewish population, and a less willing Arab world.

If we’re doing hypothetical scenarios I’m voting for Mars. We will eventually build human civilization there, and since nothing else has worked, why not. Either they’ll build a paradise on Mars or not. No one gives up their land, so nobody is put out. The land is nearly infinite as compared to Israel which is pretty small.

I don't think your scenario is remotely likely, mostly because the more the Palestinians actually start winning, the more support Israel would have. The only reason Palestine has so much support in the West, and even in the Muslim world, is because they're underdogs getting their teeth kicked in. If Israel started getting its teeth kicked in, a lot of international support would swing back them. But for the hypothetical, lets say America and Europe go hyper-isolationist and refuse to do anything remotely military aid related outside their borders no matter how much harm it would avert. Israel is left on its own, and the Muslim world takes the opportunity to all gang up on Israel. I don't think the Israelis would all move to anyone in particular together, they would just be refugees like Syrians or Ukrainians or any other ethnic group in humanitarian trouble. They'd be a bit different because normally such groups would go to their neighbors, but in this case all their neighbors would be participating in ethnic cleansing them. They'd probably end up mostly going to European Mediterranean countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, and a large portion also going to the US and Canada who usually tend to accept lots of refugees/immigrants.

At present Israel could take the rest of the Arab world by itself with little difficulty. It's no longer 1970; they've far outstripped their immediate contemporaries in ways they did not expect. If they had anticipated the economic state of their rivals they would not have ceded all the land they did for peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, etc.

I agree that it's pretty unlikely that the Arab world would commit to the sort of total war and mobilization that it'd take to beat Israel, but there are about 100x more Arabs than Israelis. If they were truly committed, they'd win. Just another thing that makes the scenario OP posited unrealistic though.

This doesn’t sound realistic without nuclear weapons. Israel has much superior technology but relies on America for it almost entirely as senior idf personnel openly and frequently admit. But then they do have nukes (although Iran might have them soon too)

I don't understand why, rather than doing some weird moral transference where the Holocaust conveyed a free pass to colonise and gradually displace an unrelated people, they didn't just give them a slice of Germany after WWII instead. It's not too late for that either, if all the German politicians and civil society personalities that want to insert oaths to Israel in citizenship tests and wax poetic about how its survival and well-being is part of Germany's "state raison d'être" ("Staatsräson") put their money where their mouths are. I'd vote for using a chunk of the Southwest for it, say everything starting from Stuttgart; it's maximally far from the capital, there is nothing too important there and it's strategically situated in a corner next to Switzerland and France, at least one of which is unlikely to have any of it if Germany were to somehow try the Hitler thing again. I'd expect such a move to have greatly positive EV for our gastronomy, too.

If the Berliners want to sacrifice any of Germany for a foreign people, they can damn well do so with their own benighted corner of our country.

I think giving them MVP and perhaps part of Brandenburg would be a fine choice too, if they would actually take that benighted corner. It would even be close to the ancestral-ish lands of many Ashkenazim.

Aren't their ancestral-ish lands located closer to your original suggestion, in Rhineland?

Shapiro means from Speyer, Dreyfus means from Trier, Galperin/Halperin means from Heilbronn, I don't know the names for Mainz and Worms, but they were important centers of Ashkenazim culture as well.

If it ever occurred to one of them, I could see an AfD member making a similar proposal. Offer to let them have East Prussia and Danzig (the true East Germany) as the new Jewish homeland. It would be a pretty bit of trolling.

Those territories has been now longer under the jurisdiction of Poland (78 years), than a part of modern Germany (united in 1871), so calling them the true East Germany is a bit of overstatement.

I was referring to the minor brouhaha that developed earlier this summer when a prominent AfD leader was accused of referring to East Germany as “Central Germany,” thus implying that East Prussia was the real East Germany. As far as I can tell, this was a smear job, and she was actually using “Central Germany” in its usual, uncontroversial sense. Still, if they’re regularly accused of being revanchist Nazis anyway, why not lean to it and troll? Tacitly accept the revanchist accusation and use it to deflect the Nazi accusation.

Christmassy semi-culture-war question for Americans: is the Grinchification of Christmas true?

It seems really funny because the Grinch is one of the American culture things, alongside with the rest of Dr. Seuss' oeuvre, which hasn't ever taken root here. They did show the Grinch movie with Jim Carrey and the later animated one in the theaters, but I'm not too sure anyone remembers them as anything else than basic streaming fare if there's nothing else to watch. Even though he's a children's character, supposedly, The Grinch doesn't even have his name translated to Finnish.

Of course one would be expected to know the rough details of who the Grinch is through cultural osmosis from Family Guy etc., but that sort of stuff is still not enough to make him a part of our culture, unlike with Santa, who still features the most heavily in local Christmas imagery (alongside with the Christian meaning of Christmas, of course).

The character's definitely recognizable, and there's a certain faction that promotes him more than Santa (or does weirder stuff). But at least as far as I've seen (admittedly, away from the coasts), he's more a minor part of the season, rather than a full replacement for Santa -- you'll see a lot of Five Below or Hot Topic grinch-themed stuff, but you're not going to see a bunch of kids lining up to have photos taken in the Grinch's lap. Even among the anti-christmas set, you're more likely to run into Jack Skellington as a symbol.

The 2000 live action and 2018 3d-animated ones got mixed receptions: Jim Carrey in particular sometimes was memeable but too exaggerated (for a Seuss character!), while the 3d-animated one felt too bland. Making a full movie out of the story just requires too much padding. Most recognition today will still reflect the 1966 version, which was really well-executed for its time and played pretty often on television during the Christmas season. If that one was never common fare for your area, that would definitely explain the different awareness.

Our public school did celebrate Grinch day and elf on a shelf as the main preChristmas characters. But I haven’t seen too much of the Grinch around here otherwise.

Yeah, this is definitely a real trend. I wouldn't say The Grinch is more popular than Santa yet, but he seems more popular than minor Christmas characters like Rudolph and Frosty, who were big deals back when I was a kid.

The grinch is definitely a trend, but he's nowhere near as popular as Santa. I think it's a young blue triber thing to really emphasize the grinch; the median person sees him as a negative figure regardless of how the story ends. "He's a grinch" would normally refer to someone like Ebenezer Scrooge(also notably not a figure seen very positively despite the ending of the story)- selfish, anti-Christmas, meanspirited, whatever.

As a counterpoint, the store chain with the big Grinch merchandise deal is, well, Hobby Lobby, and I wouldn't say the clientele of Hobby Lobby is young blue tribers. Also, my girlfriend loves the Grinch, has for a long time, and she's from about as red tribe a background as possible; she grew up watching the Jim Carrey Grinch as a big tradition with her rural red tribe family and they all love that version of the story.

I think he's seen as a negative figure, but I also think there's a thing where people like to think of him after his big transformation; he's still a cranky grump, but he's more open to Christmas. They're not idealizing his pre-heart-growth stage, they like the grumpy guy who loves Christmas.

The Grinch doesn't even have his name translated to Finnish.

I dunno how you'd actually translate 'Grinch' -- it's, like -- totally not a word. I can't even really think of anything etymologically nearby those sounds, so leaving it as "Grinch" in internationalized versions is probably fine.

It should be at least "grinchi" to fulfill stereotypes of suomization.

Anecdotally, in the very-red very-religious state I’m staying at, I haven’t seen any grinches but plenty of nativity scenes, some Santas and Reindeer. I do stay away from the blue core, though, so maybe there it’s more frequent.

Now that you mention it, I have seen a lot of the Grinch. I'm not sure if he's outright more popular than Santa, in no small part because Santa isn't anyone's intellectual property so he can appear on generic gift wrap and cards, and in malls as a mall Santa. But the Grinch is definitely appearing in a lot of bigger corporate ads.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Christmas is fully Grinchified, but I would say there's been a shrinkage of Santa. what's the point in Santa for people without children? For that matter, what's the point of a Christmas Day gathering when there aren't any nieces, nephews, or grandkids?

I think the grinch is a sort of unconscious thought of how over the top a lot of the trappings of Christmas have gotten. When I was a kid, decorating the outside of your house was a simple thing — a couple strings of lights on the gutters. Good. Done. A tree in the front room. Good. Done. Now you are pressured into huge displays (often including blow up props, lights on every tree and bush, etc.) and indoor displays (villages, Santa figures, evergreen stuff). Then there are the presents that get ever more expensive and include an ever increasing number of people, multiple parties as both host and guest, elaborate meals for not only Christmas, but the before parties and for a few days after. And of course several dozen fancy cookies.

It’s not really surprising that the culture would embrace a message that Christmas isn’t about big elaborate parties, displays, and presents, simply because it’s exhausting to try to reasonably do what the culture demands. The grinch isn’t saying “Christmas sucks” the entire message is that Christmas is about people and coming together and would still come even without all the trouble that goes into it.


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