domain:sotonye.substack.com
do_something
7m ago
Though with extremely rare exceptions it was "this ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc is subhuman", not "All Slavs are subhuman".
do_something
12m ago
The Germans wanting to exterminate everyone who isn't German trope simply isn't true either.
Well, they wanted to also enslave Slavs that were not planned to be exterminated. And assimilate some of them (Volksdeutsche, Goralvolk etc).
And they were not planning to expand German empire worldwide, they had no plans to invade and conquer say Japan AFAIK. They were not so delusional to plan extermination of USA population on grounds of not being German.
Not that it would make things for Poles/Ukrainians/Russians/etc better if Germans would win WW II.
The Germans weren't uniquely evil or brutal.
Large part of that is more-or-less hidden dual standards. Like with Russia right now large part of anger stems "but in Europe you are not allowed to do that".
(insert that 4chan post about toilet and kitchen here)
Also, there was vision that after WW I we learned better and we will have peace in Europe. France dropping bombs on Lisbon in September 2024 and killing 200 people would not be uniquely evil or brutal either. But I expect that outcry would be massive and far larger than what is triggered by far worse things in Africa. Mostly due to higher expectations.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
15m ago
The first season anyway; IMHO it took a big step down when Jennifer Coolidge joined the show, though a lot of that may be that I find Coolidge so unattractive I don't want to see her on my screen.
Botond173
15m ago
It bears mentioning here that the Nazis did in fact incorporate two Slavic nation states, namely Croatia and Slovakia, into the Axis alliance.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
21m ago
... or maybe they'll take the edgelord route. Homelander goes off the deep end and wipes every Arab nation (plus Iran) off the map. Fade to black, silent credit-crawl.
Thoroughlygruntled
24m ago
Yeah, there's certainly something to be said about the frugal lifestyle as an excellent PR strategy. I wonder how many billions in business Warren Buffett has gotten out of the fact that he lives in an ordinary house.
If you think about it that way, the whole opportunity cost of frugality argument completely flips on its head. A reputation for ostentatious personal frugality and self-restraint is a very valuable asset for a man who manages other people's money for a living, while a few extra bedrooms and an infinity pool seem like trivial frivolities in comparison.
quiet_NaN
38m ago
Another day, another Guardian hit job.
The title reads "Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back"
Take a moment to form a hypothesis about what kind of group this could be. The KKK? Some fringe right-wingers? An Israeli lobby group?
Turns out their target of the day is Lightcone Infrastructure. Lightcone is running lesswrong, which is a grandparent of themotte.
I personally have only heard of lightcone in context of TracingWoodgrains' writings on the Nonlinear investigation conducted by Ben Pace and Oliver Habryka. (TIL that this is a name different from the handle of a former motte mod. In my defense, I did not read a lot from either of them. Blame my racist brain.)
Of course Trace's critique could not be more different from what the Guardian writes about lightcone.
They start off by linking the NYT article on Scott Alexander. I think it is the one where they tried to doxx him. Apparently the NYT does not like my adblocker or something, the only think I get (besides a picture which indicates that the NYT designers have way too much time on their hand) is the text "Silicon Valley’s Safe Space -- Slate Star Codex was a window into the psyche of many tech leaders building our collective future. Then it disappeared." -- I guess that is one way to phrase it. Of course, the Guardian gleefully doxxes Scott again, not that anyone cares (but it's the thought that counts).
Robin Hanson is apparently misogynistic. From the linked article, I would say it is either being tone-deaf or intentionally courting controversy. He even has sympathy for incels. The nerve of that man!
Apparently they found no dirt on Eliezer, which to me seems like a failure of investigative journalism. EY has written a lot more than the six lines Cardinal Richelieu would have required.
Then they come to the "extreme figures" present at Manifest 2024.
Jonathan Anomaly is apparently pro eugenics. Never heard of him. However, given that anything from "select embryos which do not have a genetic disease" to "encourage smart and successful people to have kids" can be called eugenics, and given that the article would cite the most damning quotation, I will assume that he is not a Nazi.
Razib Khan is a journalist who got kicked out of the NYT because he wrote for some "paleoconservative" magazine. This matters only if you think that failing the NYT ideological purity test is some kind of fatal character flaw.
I vaguely recall Stephen Hsu being discussed on slatestarcodex and from what I remember my conclusion was that he got cancelled for a lack of ideological purity -- calling for research into increasing human intelligence is not acceptable, and talking about race differences is even less acceptable.
Brian Chau is apparently an e/acc and thus probably the most controversial person from my personal point of view. But then, engaging in honest discussion with advocates of other positions is generally a good thing, so if Lighthaven is more inclusive than Aella's birthday party, I am kinda fine with it.
Of course, the narrative would not be complete without the specter of antisemitism, here in the form of a quote "[Hsu is] often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people [...]". I think the rationalist community is a bad place for antisemites for the same reason why the marathon Olympics are a bad place for white supremacists.
In the end, the plug for this story -- lightcone having received money from SBF -- has no bearing on the bulk of the article, which is about how icky these ratsphere nerds are. It does not matter if SBF donated to the Save Drowning Puppies Foundation or to the Feed Puppies to Alligators Alliance -- either the donations can be kept or not.
freemcflurry
48m ago
Imo they get played up in fiction because it's more exciting if the good guys might lose, so people get the impression that it was an evenly matched fight even though it wasn't.
Thoroughlygruntled
54m ago
Must be all those hard r's Romney's been slinging that give him that jawline. #cancelmitt
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
57m ago
I've already irrevocably sprinkled hundreds of tidbits of personally identifiable information on the internet, forgive me for not putting something that could literally be used for picking me out of a crowd there too haha.
But if you can get it in 3 guesses without cheating by being exceedingly vague, I'll reward your efforts by DMing you the answer ;)
In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.
But that just isn’t true. Tons of normal men have girlfriends of the same class, social status and hotness. The average 23 year old woman in a relationship is dating a man her age or perhaps one or two years older. He’s unlikely to be particularly rich or successful; he is probably about as hot as she is. What is unbalanced about that?
Most young women aren’t interested in dating a 35 year old guy at 23. They’re interested in dating a 23-25 year old guy at 23, who likely doesn’t have a great deal of money, and who is probably pretty similar to them on all the usual axes. If you missed the boat because you were a loser at 23 that’s sad, but no moreso than a woman who missed the boat and might now deal with infertility or the greater difficulty of finding a good husband in her thirties. That’s life.
I remain entirely unconvinced that it is hugely difficult for an average young man to find a girlfriend that is looks matched (which in America usually means fat) and of approximately the same social status (we can include relative chastity here) and class. I think the obesity crisis has made most people ugly, such that fat people aren’t attracted to each other, and that many people think they deserve more than they can get.
in the futile hope that he will commit.
At 29, most women I know married or are soon to marry the boyfriend they had in their early/mid 20s. The minor improvement in income/wealth from marrying an ugly older dude with means just isn’t worth it for most young women.
I think AAA vidya simply mirror the gradual enshittification that has already set in their siblings in other creative media like blockbuster movies or popular comics, e.g. Modern Warfare 2 was the last Call of Duty game I ever played and I'm okay with letting it stay that way. The increasing penetration of DEI/political bullshit didn't help too although in my opinion it's not the main driver, the real culprit seems to be either filthy casuals settling into the hobby or people legitimately becoming allergic to difficulty - at some point challenge in vidya became something you seek out in specific niches (insert dank souls meme here) instead of being the default waterline of competence videogames expect from the player.
Lest I be too cranky, there are definitely some "casual" quality of life features I really can't imagine games without nowadays (I'm too used to autosaves/automaps and really don't miss undocumented features/mechanics, I try not be a google gamer) so the influence is not entirely negative, but it's a thin line to walk, one man's welcome challenge is another man's carpal tunnel syndrome. The winning move imo is to present a wide "range" of challenge within a single game to cast as wide a net as possible, but that's understandably a pretty big ask and few games pull that off - mainly rogueli[k|t]es which often have a flexible difficulty system, or sprawling autism simulators like Path of Exile that are huge enough to accommodate many different playstyles (make goofy ahh builds and shit items actually work, renounce sleep and push uber pinnacles within 2 days of league start, literally just sit in your hideout and trade all day until you can steamroll the game through sheer economic power, etc.)
Personally I hope think AAA gaming is a lost cause, take the indiepill or go full weeb, you won't regret it either way. You might have to do basic research with indies though, since those seem to be either absolutely neutral without a whiff of idpol or entirely woke and wearing it proudly on its sleeve, there's like no in-between.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I would agree that that is also my experience. It's hard to tell though. There's no secret handshake as far as I know that says "I am not a progressive" but I do know people will withhold.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Gonna leave it a mystery are we? I can keep guessing....
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1hr ago
Nope. Though I suppose that is a justified stereotype, given that I was/am seriously considering getting a tat that has one in it. Though I've ended up leaning a different way again, I'm not one to get a tattoo done unless it speaks to me, and I'm confident I want it for life (being dark skinned makes laser tattoo removal a no-go).
For what it's worth, I don't know any doctors with Caduceus tats, though to be fair we ought to be using the Staff of Asclepius instead. Then again, that war for the public consciousness was lost a while back.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Interesting. I hate tats but it's a personal thing and I hesitate to make grand generalizations. Or, I don't hesitate, I make them, but I realize that's what they are.
Let me guess: Caduceus?
You put a lot of effort into this reply and he ghosted you because he got bored of trolling. So he won, and you lost because you allowed him to troll you... Again. For what, the 7th year running now?
No he won't, you only want him here to troll people you don't like, which is why you'll keep him around forever.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
I guess that’s where I disagree. We’ve done a lot to try to remedy disparate treatment. In fact we have de facto discrimination in favor of blacks.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
2hr ago
Rishi Sunak for example has a face that looks very British to me in a way I can't fully articulate, despite his ethnic background.
British or British public school in particular?
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2hr ago
Face tattoos signify a rather fundamental disengagement with the norms of greater society such that I can't imagine becoming great buddies with anyone who has one. This is true to a lesser degree of full sleeves, etc. This is true in or out of Japan.
I know two perfectly respectable doctors with full sleeve tats, one working in the ER and the other as a surgeon. I'd say maybe 30% of the doctors I know (+- 5 years older or younger than me) have some tattoos on them (at least visible to me) including yours truly, though mine isn't really on display until the shirt comes off.
Then again, I've lacking the inclination to ink up all of my skin, and as an eventual psychiatrist, I'm expected to be the model of sobriety and decorum, though no doubt going for a more outré aesthetic probably appeals greatly to some of the regulars.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
Something even 80% as good as PD sounds awesome to me
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
France isn't Germany or the USA; the law of the sword is a lot closer to the surface there - remember, they've had a constitution fail and get replaced within living memory, and French history for the last few centuries is mostly just one bloodbath after another (this is the French Fifth Republic).
Defying the mob there is not a safe proposition.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
I was secretly looking forward to being celebrated an extra 1 day a year - a doubling, since for white males you really only get your birthday.
But I totally blew mother's day (a vacation during it was said to "count" but that's a polite white lie from my wife) so in exchange I requested nothing be done for it. My kids are too young to give a shit.
For both parent's days I think we'll probably settle into a day off from parenting, a higher probability of great sex, and a nice meal. Her an afternoon shopping and me an 8 hour cycling sufferfest as outings.
not only there (or in fiction broadly defined) - glorious victory is always more glorious if enemy was strong and you can explain more excesses if enemy is stronger
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