domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
13m ago
I watched Sinners last night.
It’s a flick about 1930’s vampires set in the American bayou. It’s a black flick. It’s about blackness, being black, black music, black stuff. Very black.
I love black cinema. From Life with Eddie Murphy to exploitation like Sweet Sweetback’s to Don’t Be a Menace to Friday I dunno whatever, even Scary Movie maybe. I’ve seen several dozen of them. They’re all ‘ black ‘ and pretty watchable for anyone. Plus anyone with even a hint of social awareness can watch them just fine.
The movie I’d most compare this to (it’s where my mind went for some reason) is Idlewild - basically OutKast (the musical group) in Atlanta in the 30’s … also very black. I love this movie.
The black characters in all these films are … black. They seem like normal people, just black. Rich black. Poor black. Dumb black. Smart black. Teacher black. Funny black.
I was born in Poland so I e always watched (not enough) a bunch of Polish cinema. Same idea. The Polish characters are Polish characters in a myriad of ways and if you’re Polish then you get it, and if you’re not, you can still be entertained and understand.
Well with Sinners - and even before really over the last few years … it just seems like the blackness is performative. It’s not that I don’t believe Michael B Jordan isn’t black, or that the writer or director don’t know about being black, it’s that I think now they’re starting to act as a fictional black narrative.
Being a 1930’s black man is no longer believable on screen. It was believable in Idlewild. Friday is believable - it’s caricature of course, but believable! I believed Dr Dre … I don’t believe Kendrick Lamar. I believed The Wire … I don’t believe (basically any ‘ black ‘ show I’ve tried to get into lately). I haven’t watched the show Atlanta but I’ve heard good things but mostly from white people, and mostly the writer and actor falls into this land of unbelievability as well.
I think there’s this black (black American) malaise that I can’t describe or catch onto over the last decade or so that makes black entertainers over perform their blackness in a subtle way.
I’ve always felt black Americans are Americans, just black. More recently I feel like they’re trying to be in some way more so.
If I were a pessimist I would say this is part of the ‘ we were kings ‘ meme that has been overloaded into the cultural psyche - if I were an optimist, I’d say it’s a culture trying to find itself and strive for a cohesive core to begin to become something other than ‘ black Americans ‘.
I’m usually optimistic in all respects but I have a lot of negativity towards, in respect to this post, black entertainment. Or at black entertainment that attempts to be mainstream.
Skulldrinker
16m ago
I encounter a very specific problem in the messaging stage where I'll ask someone out, they'll say yes, then ghost the day of the date.
A few years ago, they'd cancel and reschedule repeatedly until I got the hint and stopped bothering them.
Speaking of, a few years ago, I actually got matches and occasionally received likes from women who were attractive enough. Now I live in an empty soul-crushing hell, despite having lost weight and gained muscle since then.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
17m ago
There's a lot of good advice in here, but I feel like misrepresenting your politics would cause more problems than it solves. If a girl is so hyper-liberal she will reject anyone who has the faintest whiff of being conservative (even to the point she will reject people who say they are moderate!), I think she's going to leave you as soon as she finds out you aren't the liberal you claimed you were. Maybe not if you're Chad Thundercock and she just can't bring herself to give up the good D, but I also doubt that such a Chad needs advice in the first place because he's swimming in women.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
25m ago
It's been a while since I've been on the dating market (10 years, yikes), but +1 to women love pets. My first profile pic on okcupid back in the day was a photo of me and my puppy the day I got her. It definitely helped me drum up interest that I don't think I would've gotten otherwise.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
34m ago
Many years ago, I read a Goosebumps book in which it was a plot point that the protagonist liked liver. (
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
36m ago
It’s great to see political realignment in action. A lot of folks here are extremely blackpilled about politics, but this to me seems a perfect example of how democracy is supposed to work.
The Democrats ignored a major issue for a long time, lost popularity massively from it, then pivoted. Love to see it.
hydroacetylene
41m ago
Ah, but medieval Europe was monogamous, and even if bastards clearly existed they probably had a much lower survival rate than legitimate children, and lower odds of reproducing even if they survived. The medieval European social structure tended to result in more eligible women than men in most social classes for long stretches at a time.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
43m ago
Very helpful, thanks!
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
45m ago
Note my trade is not at par for QALYs, it's at par for unadjusted LYs.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
49m ago
First I’ve heard of it.
You know what I have seen, recently? Broccoli.
If you search “kids hate broccoli,” you can find countless articles parroting this un-American talking point. Some even suggest that “science” has solved this classic mystery. They’re citing the same study from 2021 which something something enzymes something sulfur.
Is this a psy-op? Maybe a ploy by those regulators over in Brussels?
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
53m ago
Lauren Rosenhall, Soumya Karlamanga, and Adam Nagourney for the New York Times, "California Rolls Back Its Landmark Environmental Law" (archive) (Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California. Now also at theschism.) Other coverage is available from Eric Levitz at Vox, Henry Grabar at Slate, Ben Christopher at CalMatters, and Taryn Luna and Liam Dillon at the Los Angeles Times. Some of this work draws from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks' Select Committee on Permitting Reform, which issued its final report earlier this year.
In our last episode, there were three major reforms in play for this year's legislative season: zoning reform (SB 79), improving the CEQA exemption for infill housing (AB 609), and broad CEQA reform (SB 607). SB 79 is currently in the Assembly (it passed Assembly Housing 9-2, and now goes to Assembly Local Government, then the floor, then Senate concurrence, then the Governor's desk), but in a surprise move, Newsom, whose inaction I've previously complained about, pulled CEQA reform into this year's budget process, which essentially makes it a must-pass piece of legislation. There's some room for short negotiation, but it's fast-paced, and if the budget isn't passed, the legislators don't get paid until it is. (There is, as I understand it, no back pay, so it's a real penalty.)
CEQA is arguably the most significant non-zoning barrier to housing production (here's a short selection of shenaniganry, and I've covered it here and here); the CA YIMBY legislative director described this as "probably the most important thing California has done on housing in the present YIMBY moment" and explained how we got here.
The main opponents here were the usual Livable California NIMBYs, but also the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (the "Trades"). On first glance, environmental review doesn't seem connected to labor, but because CEQA provides an all-purpose method of delay (and delay costs money), it's used to extract concessions, like the use of union labor, in exchange for not delaying the project. Note that nearly 90% of the construction workforce is non-union; the Trades are, in effect, taking work away from a lot of construction workers in order to ensure much higher pay for the few union construction workers, who mostly work on government projects or subsidized housing which mandates union labor.
There was, during this process, an intense argument, occurring mostly behind-the-scenes, about what labor standards should look like. The expected proposal was that projects skipping environmental review would have to pay higher, but nowhere near union rate, wages; this would probably not have had a significant effect on the bill's usefulness, since the required wages were close to the median wage for construction workers. This did not mollify the Trades, who claimed that it "will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs"; their official opposition letter described it as "a bill that masquerades as housing reform while launching an all-out assault on the livelihoods, health, and dignity of California construction workers".
But a few days later, the wage stuff was completely removed; the expanded CEQA infill exemption simply exempts most infill projects from environmental review, period. (Projects above eighty-five feet, which do require union labor, generally use more-expensive Type I construction anyway.)
In a bit more detail, one of the components of the originally proposed reform was removing a lowered standard for demanding a full environmental impact statement. Under existing law, if an agency makes a negative declaration (i.e., "there isn't a meaningful environmental impact here"), they can be forced to reconsider that under a "fair argument" standard, which is much lower than a "reasonable person" standard; this incentivizes agencies to do unnecessary EIRs to avoid the chance that some crank will force them to do one anyway. This reform has been removed; the "fair argument" standard remains.
For more deep dives, see Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Senator Scott Wiener (the original authors of these reforms) being interviewed by David Roberts for Volts, "The fight to build faster in California", which is slightly outdated, as it was recorded before the final bill was passed; see also the same two legislators being interviewed by Derek Thompson for Plain English, "How Abundance Won in California". (For a contrast, see Roberts' 2023 interview with Johanna Bozuwa from the Climate and Community Project, "The progressive take on the permitting debate", which is a defense of complex, discretionary permitting.)
Thompson is, of course, Ezra Klein's coauthor on Abundance, as covered in the last installment, and Newsom, in the press conference announcing the signing, specifically gave a shout-out to the concept and to Klein (though not Thompson). (Note Senator Aisha Wahab, the Housing chair, at left wearing black, pulling some faces at that.) Newsom, understandably, made a meal of this; the full press conference is here.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
55m ago
Not the heroes we deserve, but the ones we need.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
57m ago
I disagree that it's hyperbole, I chose that for a reason. You can't know what's going on in a person's life. Maybe they have an asshole boss who hates them and is looking to fire them at the first opportunity. In that case, interrupting their sleep may well be endangering their livelihood through no fault of their own. Thus the comparison I made.
If one has talked to all of their neighbors within range of the fireworks and found that they aren't causing problems (commendable if so), then fine. But realistically the people who set off fireworks until 2 am aren't doing that, they are taking the stance of "I don't care about the impact to you, I want to have fun". That is selfish and not ok in my book. Heck, that doesn't even accomplish social cohesion like you are arguing for - it causes divides between neighbors (because one of them is being an asshole to the others), not brings them together.
sodiummuffin
57m ago
Note that "total blindness", "clinical depression", and "chronic pain" all involve average QALY estimates that still imply an above-zero value of life. There's a lot of people with those conditions who would gladly sign up for boring seminars if they eliminated their condition for the duration of the seminar. And of course history is full of people opting for unpleasant slave-labor over death. So if you're not joking your opinion seems non-representative.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
And you don't think the chain of assumption that results in a liberaltarian state being naturally diverse, and a libertarian state being locked into racism, is a tad convenient for you? If a libertarian says "I don't think bigger states are naturally more prone to diversity than small ones", how is his explanation worse than yours?
Huh? France and the Benelux states had already been democracies for a long time before WW2, and France was already a republic to boot.
Sorry, I phrased it poorly. "the way the term is being used nowadays" is carrying some weight in that statement, as that way involves ideas like "you're doing democracy wrong if you vote in the way we disapprove of".
Spain and Portugal joined NATO only after those dictatorships fell, which I think bears mentioning here.
The US had military bases in Spain with Franco still in power. Admittedly, I know less about Portugal.
The Baltics used to be ruled by German/Germanized nobles for a long time and thus have a shared legacy of Western orientation; that much is certainly relevant in this case.
Southkraut allready summed up what I think about the German democracy, but aside from that, If it worked like that, and if Poland's tradition was relevant (more on that later), Belarus should have been one of the better democratized nations.
The Poles have a bygone but long and cherished legacy of being a republic with a parliament which, for example
Similarly to what German democracy looked like in practice, Poland was an "elite state" through and through. The nobles may have organized themselves as a democracy, but they'd scoff idea of having the society ran as anything other than a class based hierarchy. There's a throwaway line in Game of Thrones where Sandor Clegane says it makes as much sense to give the vote to his horse as much as does to give it to a peasant, and given their affinity for horses, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if the line was first spoken in Poland.
Sure they have a democratic legacy that is both cherished and long, with the caveat that the part that's long isn't particularly cherished - they literally see it as the proximate cause of the collapse of their empire - and that part that is cherished - a last ditch attempt at reforming their system - lasted all 4 years.
It could have probably worked but nobody even tried.
Like I said, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's hard for me to tell what the world would look like if things panned out differently. Is a Germany where Eastern ideas were taken seriously one where Easterners don't vote AfD because their ideas don't resonate, or because AfD-ish / BSW-ish ideas are already incorporated into the mainstream?
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
1hr ago
it’s a loose indication of maturity
It's an indication of someone desperate to signal maturity. [Hence, soyjacks.]
some lower or working class people who never stopped wearing them so much
You generally need to be clean-shaven for a respirator, so it's a sign you don't [have to] work in a factory.
It helps that the new wave of beards are generally speaking a little more cared for than previously.
They're all just neckbeards to me.
iprayiam3
1hr ago
Not to dig in, but I can't let the hyperbole slide. A night of interrupted sleep on a national holiday, is not a threat to 'a person's livelihood'.
So whether livelihood is more important than a celebration (and it is), is an irrelevant point here.
Celebrating July 4th is a more important social tool than ensuring total sleep quality on a single night of the year.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
That doesn’t make a ton of sense.
You’d only get a selection pressure if love matches offered a competitive advantage to attractive/attractive couples over attractive/ugly or ugly/ugly ones. My understanding of male sexuality suggests that partner hotness was not actually the limiting factor. Ugly/ugly couples were and are definitely willing to pop out as many kids as they can afford.
Cred
Back when I was on the dating app roulette, I was told by female friends that I had a great profile. Other women have asked me 'how to find men like me' and I have been called a 'what a shame he's straight' by a gay man. I haven't been on the market for a couple of years, but the advice should still be valid.
Most important - Be recognizable
Women go through a million same looking profiles. The worst thing to be is unrecognizable and vanilla. Have at least 1 thing about you that stands out. Discussing dating profiles is a favorite past time for women. It is good be a certain type of guy. 'The chef', 'the fashionista', 'the salsa dancer'. If you're just 'a guy', you will fall through the cracks.
My dating profile photo checklist:
- I have friends -> group photo (Ideally mixed gender)
- I am in shape -> full body shot (clothed)
- I am not ugly -> face closeup front
- I can look like a fuck-boy like if you need me to
- I have a good heart. (opposite of fuck boy - pet photos, fun uncle, belly laughs, family photos)
- I do fitness stuff
- I do fun stuff & have hobbies
- I actually am 6 feet tall (I am 1 cm off but eh, close enough)
Cheat codes: Wield them as you see fit.
- Women love pets
- Women love men who cook
- Women love men who love therapy
- Women love men who are loved by women (sisters are okay)
Prompts:
- People aren't creative. All your photo captions and prompt answers should reveal something about you that leads to an obvious comment from the woman. For me it was my cooking and hiking photos.
- Have high coverage. Be concise, but signal different information each prompt.
- Don't be too humble. You can be self-deprecating to counter-signal if your photos already position you as high-status. Otherwise, be earnest about your achievements.
Dos and Donts:
- Avoid fishing photos. Just post a photo of you on a boat with friends instead. Same idea, different messaging.
- If you are posting sports photos make them active & outdoors. Cheering for you favorite team in a crowd or playing the game with a jersey. Don't post photos in full-kit from the sofa.
- Have a social presence. Instagram is ideal. Makes you look sociable. Be google searchable.
- Be strategic about having weird hobbies on your profile. I like anime, but wouldn't dare put that on my profile. I am transparent about like it when asked, but don't advertise for the first 2-ish dates.
- I have been told that doing standup and having a podcast are the 2 biggest icks for women.
- If you are on the heavier side, then wear layers. Don't fake edit your photos. There are ways to look look even if you're heavy. I'd prefer those.
- If you don't have good photos. Then pay to get good photos taken. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. YOU MUST HAVE GOOD PHOTOS.
- Hair - be bald or make your hair look good. Don't go around trying to embarrassingly rescue your impending baldness. Get a good haircut. Pay up 50-70$ for a good barber once.
- Facial hair - Be well groomed. I have the world's worst beard genes. I still managed to persevere through months of growing some density to maintain a #3 on my trimmer. Be clean shaven or grow a half-decent beard/stache. Do not post pubes on your face. Please.
- Have 1 suit photo - Suits are a man's bikini. Insanely flattering for all body types. Full suit please.
- Limit sunglasses and caps in your photos. Immediately raises flags for ugliness / baldness.
Useful reddit links:
Ethan
Quality assurance
1hr ago
I like dave green, but I felt similarly about the apparent similarities in breadtube physiognomy. I think the better indicator would be how often they pull the soy face.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1hr ago
Clear away the flammable shrubs
Ironically, my understanding from reading on the internet is that this is actually the problem. They DO clear away flammable stuff, at least the small stuff that's feasible to clear, which means regular small fires don't happen and so larger flammable stuff accumulates and accumulates so when a fire does break out it's super crazy bad. While if they allowed small fires to happen and eat whatever has accumulated then it would be more manageable.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1hr ago
Is anyone else test driving the Cosmic desktop experience from Pop! OS and if so, how do you like it? I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and as expected (being an alpha and all), it's been a mixed bag overall but it looks like they're moving in the right direction and it does fix some of the things that annoyed me about GNOME while introducing other minor annoyances, which goes back to the whole mixed bag, alpha release thing. Overall, I've been finding that while the look and feel of Cosmic is quite GNOME-like for the most part, the performance does seem snappier and it has some welcome additions as well. I look forward to seeing how it shapes up! Ironically, it also seems to be showing some long-term performance issues that I never saw with GNOME--my current desktop has session has been live for a little over a week and I'm starting to experience significant lag and stuttering, which was never a problem with GNOME.
Background: I bought a Beelink ultra-SFF a couple of years back and installed Pop! on it to run some old games that I told myself I'd try and play through at the time. The latter has turned out to be more like, I get the game running in Wine/Dosbox and then move on to another because I'm having more fun making them work than I am replaying them but still, Pop! turned out to be "good enough" for a DD for me to keep it.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
IRC § R306 (Flood-Resistant Construction):
Buildings and structures in non-coastal flood-hazard areas [i. e., with waves < 1.5 ft] shall have the lowest floors elevated to or above the base [100-year] flood elevation plus 1 foot.
Buildings and structures erected within coastal flood-hazard areas [with waves ∈ [1.5 ft, 3 ft]] and coastal high-hazard areas [with waves > 3 ft] shall be elevated so that the bottom of the lowest horizontal structural members supporting the lowest floor, with the exception of piling, pile caps, columns, grade beams, and bracing, is elevated to or above the base flood elevation plus 1 foot.
Buildings and structures erected within coastal flood-hazard areas and coastal high-hazard areas shall be supported on pilings or columns.
which ones? nothing obvious comes to my mind. Sanna Marin and Kaja Kallas were mentioned in other post - any more? Or is it all
Yes, underestimating enemy is idiotic (for latest local example see invasion of Ukraine, where it repeated multiple times in various fashion, starting from attempt to have a quick victorious invasion)
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