domain:forecasting.substack.com
hydroacetylene
14m ago
Right I don’t expect anyone to check census data. What are the common not-majority languages near you?
Onystri
22m ago
It just feels like an excuse for FromSoftware to develop crazy anime-jumping-all-across-the-arena bosses with crazy moves. "Oh no, the player has so many bullshit combinations now, we need to create more bullshit bosses to combat this." And that way we have dlc with bosses dancing all over the floor, goddamn sunflower. The worst part of course is that even with the stakes of Marika you will spend 2 minutes buffing yourself and after a certain point I started to despise this cycle.
FtttG
26m ago
Finished Nell Zink's Doxology on Friday.
Easily the most consistently annoyed I've felt reading a book this year. Have you ever been at a standup comedy gig and the comedian tells a joke which doesn't land, and there's just this awkward silence? Doxology is that in literary form. There were so many attempts at humour which simply fell flat. While reading it, I found myself constantly rolling my eyes at some of the really lame attempts at humour. Zink seems incredibly smug and pleased with herself for some reason beyond my capacity to divine — her attempts at humour are neither funny nor even clever enough that she gets brownie points for being obscurantist. For some reason, I pictured Zink making this expression the entire time she was sitting in front of her computer typing. There's one point where one of the characters tells her husband that she's looking for a collaborator (i.e. in a business startup), and her husband "quips" back something like "You mean you're going to shave my head?" And then the narration adds a parenthetical literally explaining the joke, that the husband was referring to the French women who dated Wehrmacht soldiers during the occupation. I'm not saying the joke would have been funny to begin with, but explaining it didn't help any and just made me feel annoyed in addition to not laughing.
Awhile back, someone on this forum complained that, when writing fiction, Scott suffers from "MCU disease", in which he's unable to stop himself from cracking jokes even when it's inappropriate, thereby puncturing the dramatic tension. I agree that this is a bad strategy, and the chapters in Unsong where he's able to restrain himself are some of the strongest, showing that he's perfectly capable of generating real dramatic tension and power when he wants to. But in Scott's defense, at least a lot of his jokes actually work. The only thing worse than disrupting the tension of a dramatic scene with an actually clever joke is disrupting with a joke which isn't funny and which just annoys the reader.
Nell Zink is attempting an ambitious family drama charting three generations of a family. But with half of an exception, all of the characters (regardless of age, sex, which state they grew up in, which state they live in, their political affiliations, profession, education etc.) sound exactly the same. If one of the characters makes a reference to some obscure hardcore punk musician from the 1980s, the other characters will always understand without any explanation required. In written fiction, dialogue is the primary means of making characters feel like distinct entities, and Zink completely fucking whiffs it. Dialogues in this book sound like two chatbots with identical training data talking to one another. Because none of the characters feel like real people, all of the melodramatic soapy efforts at generating emotional torque (corporal punishment! sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll! 9/11! death by OD! family reconciliation! May-December romance! infidelity! indeterminate paternity!) go nowhere. A character must feel real before we can feel affected by their travails, and none of these do, because they're a league of interchangeable sock puppets.
And my God, the politics. This is some of the most sophomoric, Boomerlib, TDS-brained "political commentary" I've ever read. In the final third of the book or so, it's 2016, immediately prior to the election, and one of the characters decides to become a political activist travelling to various purple states canvassing for Jill Stein. Of course Trump gets elected and all of the characters are devastated. Zink is not even the least bit interested in honest speculation as to the nature of Trump's appeal: in her view, it does really seem to boil down to "Trump is evil and full of hate, and half of America voted for him because they're so hateful and evil". In Pennsylvania, immediately after the results are announced, the narration observes a man driving around in a pickup truck and speculates that he's "probably looking for some black people to shoot", a goal in which he's bound to be frustrated because Pennsylvania is 98% white. Oh, please.
In a particularly outrageous act of historical revisionism, Zink even has the nerve to more or less directly argue the reason Hillary lost was because her campaign was too positive. One of the characters is a political campaign advisor who strongly encourages the DNC to go hard on attacking Trump sooner rather than later, but they ignore his advice in favour of a campaign founded on hope and optimism. "When they go low, we go high" etc. The clear implication is that if the DNC had followed this character's advice, Hillary would have won. With respect, Zink — are you fucking kidding me? Have you completely forgotten about the basket of deplorables? The "grab them by the pussy" tape? "America's Bully"? Mirrors? I don't know how anyone could possibly claim in all seriousness that the reason Hillary lost was because she was too positive and hopeful, and didn't spend enough time attacking her opponent. This kind of self-serving cope might be excusable if Zink was Hillary's campaign advisor trying to keep her career afloat after a shocking upset — but no, there's nothing for Zink in this, this seems to be what she really believes. (For clarity: I'm not saying I found the book annoying because of its politics. The plot arc involving the 2016 election only appears in the final ~third of the book or so, and my goodwill had been more or less exhausted well before that point.)
I donated it to a charity shop this afternoon. Probably my fastest ever turnaround time between finishing reading a book and disposing of it.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
48m ago
Do you have a second example? I keep seeing just that one.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
50m ago
...what.
- A white supremacist would consider politics in a multiracial polity as a proxy race war.
- A white supremacist is by definition committed to the idea of their race deserving to reign supreme, so your criterion absolutely applies.
- To a white supremacist, white vs non-white is the most important division in politics, of course they do!
- ???
- Have you ever been exposed to any white supremacist memes? They talk a lot about "racial awakening" and "the Saxon learning to hate"—invoking passion is their primary form of praxis!
- ??????
- Refer to #2.
- Insofar as George Soros is a stand-in for influential actors/groups who promote anti-white causes, absolutely. What do you think they mean when they blame everything on (((them)))?
- ????????!?!
- This one isn't particularly characteristic of "conflict theory" at all, it can be framed from either a mistake (we just need to restrict lobbying more) or conflict (the rich will always have disproportionate influence in a democracy) perspective.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
52m ago
with a good deal of physical courage.
What makes you say that? The main thing we know about Trump's physical courage or lack thereof is that he dodged the draft.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1hr ago
The Nutmeg of Consolation.
Its hard to read these books, knowing the series is coming to an end. Where do I go from here?
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
But they don't compete. They blend. Her grandpa hated the Jews and she hates the Jews. His grandpa knew the country can be only saved if certain troublesome groups are eliminated and the political debate is curtailed - and he knows the same. It's not a competition, it's an evolution.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Well Japanese but it's everyone else's first language. In places like Namba (a heavily touristed enclave of Osaka) probably Chinese and Korean, not necessarily in that order. I've also met down there Germans and French and one Italian couple. Not as many English speakers around as there seem to have been in previous years, though English is probably the second language go-to for most Japanese. I also hear spatterings of Vietnamese and occasional Urdu (?) as there's a Pakistani extended family around town.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
Nassim Taleb's books.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1hr ago
Book of the Dead 3: Masquerade by RinoZ. Pretty confident that #4 will be up next on my reading list.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
"Due to the federal shutdown", data.census.gov is not responding to queries. You may want to ask again when the shutdown has ended.
felipec
unbelief
2hr ago
This sounds a lot like "any snow flake is free to slide down the mountain, it is the avalanches that are the problem".
Snow flakes are not susceptible to social contagion.
Suppose there is a baker who runs an "Aryan Bakery" with a swastika in the logo, which is something which is very permissible from a freedom of speech point of view.
By making that claim you are proving my point.
An Aryan Bakery has nothing to do with Open Ideas, because there's no idea being expressed or defended.
Therefore it has nothing to do with the reasoning behind freedom of speech, which was all about ideas that could potentially benefit society.
The fact that you believe an Aryan Bakery has anything to do with actual freedom of speech shows the need for Open Ideas.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
2hr ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act.
It seems strange that a Rabbi would proclaim himself agnostic and have his first sermon be about how Adam ought to have eaten the whole fruit of knowledge and not just part of it, but I have to agree with the introduction that there is an authenticity to it. Beerman, if he is to be believed, was inspired by the Spinozan God-as-nature idea, and argued that authentic doubt can be a religious stance.
The tropes fit perfectly into today's leftism: social justice, activism, inequality, racism, oppression, but these things must have made a different impression before Current Year. Various dubious aspects pepper the narrative, like support for the Rosenbergs. If there's one thing I've taken away from it, it is the reminder that I'm not exactly a church-goer myself, and that perhaps a renewed study of my relation to God is in order.
felipec
unbelief
2hr ago
white supremacists are generally conflict theorists as well.
Let's look at some criteria and see how many apply to white supremacists:
- Conflict theorists treat politics as war. I don't see how that applies to white supremacists.
- Conflict theorists view debate as having a minor clarifying role at best. Doesn't apply.
- Conflict theorists treat the asymmetry of sides as their first and most important principle. Irrelevant.
- Conflict theorists think this is more often a convenient excuse than a real problem. Nothing to do with white supremacists.
- Conflict theorists think you can save the world by increasing passion. Nope.
- For a conflict theorist, intelligence is inadequate or even suspect. Definitely not.
- Conflict theorists think of free speech and open debate about the same way a 1950s Bircher would treat avowed Soviet agents coming into neighborhoods and trying to convince people of the merits of Communism. No.
- Conflict theorists think that stopping George Soros / the Koch brothers is the most important thing in the world. Nope.
- Conflict theorists think racism is a conflict between races. Ironically, no.
- When conflict theorists criticize democracy, it’s because it doesn’t give enough power to the average person – special interests can buy elections, or convince representatives to betray campaign promises in exchange for cash. No.
So the claim that "white supremacists are generally conflict theorists" doesn't seem to hold any water.
Your mistake is that you assumed "conflict theory vs. mistake theory" was isomorphic to the two sides of the culture war; it's not.
That's definitely a claim, but you have not substantiated it.
felipec
unbelief
2hr ago
They can try, and they might temporarily succeed, but eventually they'll lose, because truth always wins in the long run.
That's precisely what most freedom of speech thinkers argued.
Also, it's not 2020, in 2025 social justice warriors are losing the culture war. The newer generations are not buying their propaganda any more.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3hr ago
There was a former Nazi official serving as the Bundeskanzler at one point.
Turniper
3hr ago
At the end of the day, getting married is a leap of trust. Some people figure out they are aligned in values and take the plunge early, trusting in mutual commitment to make it work. Others move as slowly as my fiancee and I did, and the official commitment is just recognition of a trust and commitment that already exists. At the end of the day, all you need to figure out is when you reach the point that you believe the two of you are on the same page about what a life together should look like, and how much you are willing to work and compromise in order to bring that dream into reality. The appropriate timeline for you will be greatly dependent on the potential spouse you are considering. Don't think about when you need to leap into bed as an answer you need to have worked out, but as a chance to build or test that level of trust and communication you need to develop to make a marriage work. If you wait too long and she dips because of it without giving you a chance to fix the issue, well, marriage wouldn't have worked out anyway.
ChickenOverlord
4hr ago
All good bro, thanks for all you do to run this place!
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
4hr ago
This is true, but it makes no difference. The suppression of their views was thorough enought hat whatever secret views they might have held in the back of their minds could not compete with the decidedly un-suppressed leftist tendencies of German society.
pigeonburger
4hr ago
English is #2, and my gut feeling us #3 is Arabic, though the dated info I find puts Italian slightly ahead of it.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
What are the most common second and third languages around you?
Where I'm at Spanish is obviously #2, but Vietnamese is #3. I think Arabic is probably the fourth- the various dialects of India are too... various to bump either of those.
JarJarJedi
4hr ago
Post-war Germany adopted this, at the Allies' command, and went full hog
Yes, but. Initially, the former Nazis were hard suppressed. Then, they were softly and quietly let back into the normal life. Of course, no openly proclaiming their views allowed ever, but you could be, e.g., ex-Nazi - especially if it's low level position - and hold a government job. Even be a lawyer or a judge. I assume most of them are dead by now, but how ironic would it be if an ex-Nazi judge would imprison a Jew under the censorship laws meant to prevent the recurrence of Nazi atrocities?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Root for the Eagles today, I'm at the linc. If any of our Philly bros are in attendance hit me up for a beer. Go birds.
Thanks. Could be worse: you could be South Korean government IT.
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