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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   4735 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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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! :)

A couple of months ago @2rafa made the following observation:

MeToo represents an organic rebellion by a lot of women against the excesses of the sexual revolution, whether they consciously realise it or not (and most, as you suggest, do not). Is it often misguided, does it often harm innocents, does it broadly fail to present viable alternatives, is it still trapped inside liberal ideology? Of course - it represents a dynamic rage, it is largely impotent, those supporting it have little understanding of the real material causes of their suffering.

Young women raised in a climate of total sexual liberalism are rebelling with the only words they have, in the only way they can. They’re not going to become “trad” overnight, they have no understanding of what that is, they were raised without religion, they are surrounded by a media environment that means they don’t have any real understanding of what reversing it would mean. Still, they know the present situation is untenable.

This got stuck in my mind, as it reminded me of that memorable scene from the original Conan movie ("Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it."). Still, it appears to me the issue isn't that the women pushing the #MeToo message (although this whole trend appears to be pretty much over) don't have the words to express their dynamic rage, it's that they're terrified of being branded as losers by other women. What is the implication here, after all? It's that what these women actually want to shout out is "I was duped into have crappy sex multiple times even though I didn't even want it". Or, in other words, "it's unfair that we women have to pretend that men are free to have technically consensual casual sex with us without offering anything in exchange". I'm reminded of laws in many Western countries, I guess most of them still officially on the books, specifically punishing false promises of marriage made for the purpose of sex. I guess these women would prefer some sort of this law to still be enforced.

In other words, while modern Western society claims to empower women and girls in various ways, it seems to actually disempower them completely in a crucial aspect.

Am I correct about this?

I think your correct and in the culture war thread I’d make a significantly bigger contribution, but the TDLR was that throughout history seducing a virgin was literally a crime in most societies, although penalties were sometimes waived if you married her, because teenage girls are stupid and believe that sex makes commitment.

That first point reminds me of the thesis of this article

For example, much of contemporary feminism actually reads like an attempt to hook the horse of the patriarchy up to the junker of gender egalitarianism. The patriarchy was bad, as the story goes, so we got rid of it and had the sexual revolution instead. Then the sexual revolution turned out to be a catastrophe of abuse, disgrace, and regret. By the time we realized it, however, “consent” was the only language of sexual ethics available to us at all, so these were problems that we largely had no name for.

[...]

Slowly, and probably unconsciously, we took the existing material of gender egalitarianism and cobbled together a jugaad patriarchy that pretends not to be one. The jugaad patriarchy is less efficient, less humane, and less conceptually coherent than the actual patriarchy it replaced. But if it affords us an atmosphere in which men are terrified of the consequences of sleeping with women they’re not married to, perhaps it’s better than nothing.

http://www.thetruthcounts.com/blogtraducciones/2018/11/14/jugaad-ethics/

Yes. I agree, and I think I get it - obviously no woman wants to be that sucker who openly says: "I was duped", "I never thought he'd dump me", "I didn't sign up for this", "the reason I agreed to have sex with him wasn't actually that I lusted after him" etc.

With respect to the article, I came across it once here already actually, and again I'd add that the entire argument hinges on a misunderstanding/falsehood. I explained it here.

I'm not sure I understand what's the specific power that you posit was lost - the ability to extract a legally enforced costly promise (marriage) as a condition for sex? Surely contract law would still allow for something in that class, if there were actually an appetite for it.

Surely contract law would still allow for something in that class, if there were actually an appetite for it.

I'd again point to Diosdado v. Diosdado as at least hinting that, no, contract law, as currently instituted, probably wouldn't allow for that sort of thing — much as the court disallowed the pre-nuptial contract due to it being contrary to the state's "compelling interest" in no-fault divorce.

much as the court disallowed the pre-nuptial contract

Can you explain this?

Diosdado v. Diosdado.

Well, actually, in that case, it wasn't a pre-nup, but a "Marital Settlement Agreement," but AIUI, it's been cited as precedent to rule various pre-nups invalid.

Donna then brought this action for breach of contract in February 2000, seeking to enforce the liquidated damages clause of the agreement. On the first day of trial, the trial court, on its own motion, granted a judgment on the pleadings in favor of Manuel. Donna appeals from the judgment.

…

[1a] The only question before this court is whether the agreement is enforceable. The trial court found that it was not because it was contrary to the public policy underlying California's no-fault divorce laws. That reasoning is sound.

In 1969, California enacted Civil Code section 4506 (now Fam. Code, § 2310), providing for dissolution of marriage based on irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage. This change was explained in In re Marriage of Walton (1972) 28 Cal. App. 3d 108, 119: "After thorough study, the Legislature, for reasons of social policy deemed compelling, has seen fit to change the grounds for termination of marriage from a fault basis to a marriage breakdown basis."

…

[1b] Contrary to the public policy underlying California's no-fault divorce laws, the agreement between Donna and Manuel attempts to impose just such a premium for the "emotional angst" caused by Manuel's breach of his promise of sexual fidelity. fn. 1 The agreement expressly states the parties' "mutual understanding that any such breach of fidelity by one party hereto may cause serious emotional, physical and financial injury to the other." The agreement then imposes a penalty on the breaching party, in the event either party chooses to terminate the marriage "because of said breach." This penalty includes "liquidated damages for said breach in the sum of $50,000," over and above any property settlement or support obligations imposed in the dissolution proceeding.

The family law court may not look to fault in dissolving the marriage, dividing property, or ordering support. Yet this agreement attempts to penalize the party who is at fault for having breached the obligation of sexual fidelity, and whose breach provided the basis for terminating the marriage. This penalty is in direct contravention of the public policy underlying no-fault divorce.

To be enforceable, a contract must have a "lawful object." (Civ. Code, § 1550, subd. (3).) A contract is unlawful if it is contrary to an express provision of law, contrary to the policy of express law, or otherwise contrary to good morals. (Civ. Code, § 1667.) Here, where the agreement attempts to impose a penalty on one of the parties as a result of that party's "fault" during the marriage, it is contrary to the public policy underlying the no-fault provisions for dissolution of marriage. (See Fam. Code, §§ 2310, 2335.) For that reason, the agreement is unenforceable.

IANAL, but the court seems to be saying quite plainly here that since the California legislature made divorce "no fault," any contract between spouses that would function as restoring "at fault" divorce is contrary to public policy and thus unenforceable.

Yes, basically.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why are people now Writing like This with Semi-Randomly capitalized Letters?

I thought it was Kulak trying to appeal to a boomer audience, who I associate with this kind of thing. I thought Kulak also had some kind of issue with typing, he was using text to speech or something which might cause this issue.

Given the happenings in Gaza I thought it would be a good time to deep dive the last time a major westernized technologically advanced Military took on an enemy tunnelled in under third world cities and Suburbs.

The Us at the time of the Vietnam war had A population of 200 million, the Combined north and South Vietnamese population was 41 million, 1/5th.

But OSINTDefender is also doing it on twitter: https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1713559468913340546

the Group of Hamas Terrorist appear to be walking through a Settlement as they are Ambushed and Liquidated by an Unknown Gunman.

Does anyone have an explanation or theory? I personally really dislike it, it's confusing and unnecessary since it doesn't seem to have any rhetorical function either. You can play games with capitalizing or decapitalizing words as some US newspapers do, capitalizing black but not white. But that's not what's happening here, there's no clear rule.

Kulak has previously stated that he does it deliberately to confuse present or hypothetical future stylometry, though this always seemed like the net usefulness would be dubious and the "aesthetic choice to look like grandpa's Facebook tirades" theory is quite plausible.

Also future AI stylometry will be based on much more deep context of stuff like word choice, sentence structure, which adjectives are overused, sentence length, rhythm and so on that are largely subconscious for most of us, including Kulak. This is like trying to fool an LLM by misspelling a prompt.

Ah, good point. It does still read like Kulak to my eyes, you can still sense a part of his soul in it.

I call this "constitutional writing". Only the capitalized verbs throw me off.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Very infrequent capitalization in English only for some proper nouns is very much a 20th century thing. Many 19th century texts capitalize many more words than we’d do today, earlier texts even moreso. The Wikipedia page on capitalization in English has some good examples, including the constitution, apparently it wasn’t until the very late 19th century that it really faded almost completely.

If Someone is capitalizing only Nouns, I usually assume it's a slightly-confused German.

I do occasionally capitalize things that are discrete concepts (The Powers That Be) or nouns of particular reverence (The Lord), but the examples you provided seem hastily written. Title case might be acceptable for a Tweet, though.

I see Scott Alexander do it occasionally to add emphasis to words, in a similar manner to italics or bolding, and I think it works to good effect when he does it. Nearly everyone else who does it, I do find it harder to read their writing as the capitals seem to be basically random and not actually based on emphasis.

I'm fairly certain Scott does it because Yudkowsky did, and it spread to a bunch of other people on LessWrong. Yud himself has done it since forever, e.g. here ("the Other Reality [...]") in 1997. No clue where he got it from however.

I'm not sure, but usually I'm either capitalizing for emphasis, or it's because I'm typing on something without a keyboard. My first guess would be a really dysfunctional spelling aid system on a device with no keyboard.

I used to work with a girl who wrote like this. We had to co-write reports once a month, and she was constantly talking about how "the Government decisions have made a major impact on the Company's ability to do business" or whatever. I was so relieved when she left the company and I could write the reports properly.

There's a certain species of midwit who seems to think that any Noun or Adjective which seems Important in some way must be capitalised.

Criticised in one of my favourite books How Not to Write a Novel (which was published in 2008, so obviously it was fairly common in unpublished fiction even then):

Similarly, some writers, displaying either an admirable knowledge of sixteenth-century English literature or a fondness for the German way of doing things, will Capitalize Important Nouns, or Anything Else that seems Significant. (This is not a reference to those writers participating in the current vogue for self-conscious Ironic Capitalization; we are speaking here to those writers who assume that Love and Honor deserve initial capitals because they are Eternally Important.)

Criticised in one of my favourite books How Not to Write a Novel (which was published in 2008, so obviously it was fairly common in unpublished fiction even then):

Great book. I remember liking it because however bad my writing might be, at least I don't write like that.

JK Rowling's capitalizations are particularly egregious (there used to be a Potterwords blog as an aid to fan fiction writers, because the things that were and were not capitalized in the Potterverse were so inconsistent).

Not even the most glaring of all of Rowling's stylistic quirks.

That one I chalk up to the fact that she's a fan of 19th and early 20th century British literature.

Stop being so hateful and condescending. Proper "improper" capitalization can actually improve clarity. There's a reason why people do it.

What is the purpose of this excessive reaction? Stop being so belligerent.

My response is fine. People should be kinder.

If you get a red modhat comment telling you not to post something, your comment is not fine.

You asked me a question. I responded with my reasoning. And my opinion is not going to change, red modhat comment or not.

That person called their coworker a midwit. Not in passing, but as a directed insult. This is rude and I don't like it.

No ruder than calling someone a "cuck", surely. Get off your high horse.

I do not personally know Tom Scott

More comments

It's not "hateful" to say that a particular writing style annoys you. Does finding it annoying when people misuse the word "literally" make you a bigot? Obviously not.

Proper "improper" capitalization can actually improve clarity.

Sure, it can. But is "the Government decisions have made a major impact on the Company's ability to do business" any more clear in meaning than "the government decisions have made a major impact on the company's ability to do business"? No, obviously not. It's an irritating stylistic quirk that doesn't aid in conveying one's meaning at all.

Sure, it can. But is "the Government decisions have made a major impact on the Company's ability to do business" any more clear in meaning than "the government decisions have made a major impact on the company's ability to do business"? No, obviously not. It's an irritating stylistic quirk that doesn't aid in conveying one's meaning at all.

Hard disagree. If this were some sort of essay or some excerpt from a book, I would agree with you completely. But if this is for some sort of report that's being written for work, then consistently capitalizing Government and Company like this would greatly aid in clarity and comprehension when reading the document. Now, if it's inconsistent or one-off, then yeah, that's strictly worse than just using proper capitalization. But if it's consistent, that aids in comprehension speed greatly in my experience.

To each their own, I suppose.

You called a person you Know a certain species of midwit. I think "midwit," even in the abstract, is not nice, but it's at least excusable.

I believe that capitalizing words improves readability. This is something I'm used to seeing in philosophy. Capitalized terms denote specific concepts or ideas that are different from the general meaning. For instance, when you capitalize "Company," it signifies your specific workplace. I find it clear. I mean, even Rationalists do this a lot too.

I think "midwit," even in the abstract, is not nice, but it's at least excusable.

Of course it's not nice, but it's not "hateful". If you'll read my original comment closely, you'll notice that I never said that this stylistic choice is never justifiable, only that it's often done to no good end by people who don't understand the purpose it's meant to be used for.

You're right, sorry.

@KulakRevolt

I think it’s a form of emphasis especially on Twitter where more traditional formatting options (like italics and bold type) aren’t available.

That's what asterisks are for.

In those examples I don't like it, I think it's poorly used. Rationalist types tend to do it better, or DFW, or Trump, for emphasis or to elevate the word or phrase.

I can only comment on its aesthetic qualities but it very much feels like a raising, a visual bump in the text that is not as grating as italics or bold but still noticable. Kind of like braille.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Source?

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

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.

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

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

It's on the list now, thanks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

Absolutely. They're awful now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

メリクリ!🎄

Does anyone know of any smart, young(ish) Christian thinkers with interesting perspectives? Been listening the This Cultural Moment, about being Christian in a post-Christian world. It's excellent, but I'm having trouble finding more.

How do the few motte Christians manage their faith? It's something I really struggle with. I had a religious experience where everything clicked, but my brain is not good at this sort of faith and I inevitably end up in doubt again. I hate it.

I struggle with faith as well, although I’m a new convert relatively speaking.

For me what I do is try to avoid intellectualizing faith too much. I’m convinced that the modern world is way over indexed on rational, intellectual thought as the means to guide our lives. Let your heart lead you, in other words.

Of course that doesn’t mean you stop using your intellect. Reason is an excellent servant but a terrible master.

How do the few motte Christians manage their faith? It's something I really struggle with. I had a religious experience where everything clicked, but my brain is not good at this sort of faith and I inevitably end up in doubt again.

I have moments where I doubt my faith, as does anyone. But I try to bear in mind that basically every holy figure in Christian history has been plagued with doubts at times. Thomas the apostle talked with Jesus, saw him do miracles, the whole nine yards... and he still doubted! And the Lord didn't hold it against him either - indeed, he praised him for believing (albeit he also said it's even more praiseworthy to believe without needing hard proof).

The way I see it is, if God didn't hold it against men like Thomas (and Moses, and other prophets, and various saints, etc) that they had moments of doubt, he isn't going to hold it against me. He knows that I'm human, and it just comes with this whole "human" thing.

I do have other things as well, but unfortunately they're kind of specific to my personal circumstances and I doubt they would help much. But if you want to hear anyways, I can share them in the hopes it will help.

The way I manage my faith and handle creeping doubt is two-fold. Some doubts require both solutions, some only require one.

  • "I could not have come to faith without God overriding my sin nature through grace and giving me a true free will choice to be saved. It would be perverse if He then would not extend the same grace to keep me in faith. God cannot lie, is not perverse and torturous, and it cost Him too much, too dearly, to buy me in the first place, therefore He will keep me in faith, sealed by the Holy Spirit, as He promised." Taking this as axiomatic helps me primarily with doubts which sneak up and try to tell me I've accidentally logically proven to myself God can't be real. (The section of HPMOR which shows Draco the genetic origin of magic is a cognitohazard for Christians. This is my antihazard, my Helmet Of Salvation, keeping me safe from such headshots.)
  • Taking each doubt one at a time, and ignoring atheist Gish gallops because I can assume they're lists the person found somewhere instead of generating themselves through logic and research. (Yes, I notice the irony.) For example, recognizing that a specific doubt/"disproof" came from reading someone else's solution to a theological cognitive dissonance I never knew existed until I saw their solution to it. Another one: looking for what is not said and what is assumed, such as assuming God is subject to time/sequence instead of its creator.

A lot of doubts were simply and cleanly handled by J.B. Phillips in his masterwork "Your God Is Too Small" (PDF link), and it's a book I return to less often than I'd like.

I was also recommended this series of classes on Faith And Reason, taught at a church in my city, and the teacher uploaded the worksheets for each class under Resources on each video. It's 68 addictive hours of practical theology and apologetics, and then he followed it up with another 30+ hours of Influencing and Engaging The Culture. A hundred hours of the most clean and incisive binge-worthy theology I've ever heard. (The class attendees are red-tribe in their responses, but the teacher is grey-tribe.)

Blake Giunta on YouTube (although much of his material is dated), Trent Horn, Br. Peter Diamond, Cameron Bertuzzi, Taylor Marshall, Return to Tradition, Timothy Gordon, Jay Dyer...

I'm not big into the newer crowd of Christian defenders. I'm still a fan of classic apologists like William Lane Craig, but the above has provided quite a bit of thought provoking entertainment.

Does anyone know of any smart, young(ish) Christian thinkers with interesting perspectives?

I like Gavin Ortlund's videos. He looks like he's maybe in his 40s, so I don't know if that counts as young to you or not.

Spencer Klavan and his podcast


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