domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
Barfknuckle
27m ago
Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?
Yo I'm just gonna speak my deepest monkeybrain here and tell you that this little story about stealing a scarf is either gross or adorable depending upon how hot the girl was and what the vibe felt like. Like imagine it twice, once with like peak Wynona Ryder getting her crazy stealies on, and then once again with some ugly broad. Yeah you know what's up.
iprayiam3
28m ago
it'd be such a pleasant surprise for a girl to take the initiative to increase my comfort level instead of penalizing me for the gaffe of bringing it up
I mean sure in theory, yes. People don’t need to stick exactingly to red pill gender roles, but this anecdotes is so on the nose as a gender bent reversal of the cliche of all cliche examples of the ‘female comfort test’ with an outcome that digs into the gender reversal (he ends up with not just a scarf, but the “nicest” scarf), it has to be made up.
FtttG
38m ago
The Eurovision Song Contest was held this evening, which I haven't watched in about twenty years. A friend of mine suggested that we watch it, but was unsure if she'd be able to host, as her flatmate was insistent on boycotting it in light of Israel being "allowed" to participate. In the end her flatmate was out of the house so we were able to watch it in her flat.
I'd assumed that, given the absence of her anti-Zionist flatmate, we'd be able to enjoy the Eurovision as the trashy, campy experience that was intended, without politics intruding. I was mistaken: my friend, her boyfriend and one of her friends insisted on turning off the stream during Israel's performance and made innumerable derisive comments about them during the night. I'm a coward who wants to keep the peace so I held my tongue for the most part.
Israel received modest double-digit votes from the national juries, but after the audience vote rocketed up to first place with an astonishing 357 votes. In second place was Austria with 258 jury votes, and in the end Austria clinched it. (I honestly cannot say who deserved it more as, as previously mentioned, they turned off the stream during the Israeli performance. I found the Austrian one a little annoying, and if it had been up to me, based on the performances I actually saw, I would have given it to the Germans.)
I was rather dismayed with how quickly my friend retreated into semi-ironic conspiritorialism: saying that the Eurovision would have to investigate their voting procedures next year to ensure no ballot-stuffing was taking place, or attributing Israel's massive success among the audiences as the result of concerted, strategic voting efforts by "the right". The possibilities that a) normie Europeans legitimately liked Israel's performance on a musical level more than the other countries; or b) normie Europeans voted for Israel for political reasons because they're more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than the Palestinian - seem not to have occurred to her.
I am growing increasingly dismayed by the level of ambient nominally pro-Palestinian (but really anti-Israeli) sentiment in Ireland, but it's comforting to be reminded that it's quite the outlier among European countries.
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
46m ago
As @quiet_NaN said below, agency (that is, the ability to be an independent agent) is not necessarily correlated with asociality (that is, the tendency to devalue/neglect the collective good). While there's a degree of social conformity that's required to maintain the commons, a dearth of distributed agency/agentic elite causes a society to follow the path of least resistance, usually to its detriment. Some(well, most) societies are built to require less distributed agency/more social conformity (e.g. East Asia), but they tend to be outcompeted by more individualistic but still commonwealth-respecting societies (e.g. the West).
Quantumfreakonomics
49m ago
My first thought when I saw that was, “wouldn’t the higher-agency thing be not forgetting your scarf in a hotel room in the first place?” My brain couldn’t comprehend the concept of portraying dishonesty like this as a positive attribute.
What if there was no scarf? What if the cleaning lady was already on thin ice and then had to answer for allegedly stealing a scarf?
Goodguy
1hr ago
I wouldn't trust anything I read from an account on X, especially a high-profile account on X, to be real. 90% of them are engagement bait grifters, and some of these grifters are precisely in the business of crafting scissor statements to get maximum engagement. Even if the genesis of this particular story is a real-life situation, I wouldn't trust a high-profile X account to convey it accurately instead of conveying it in order to mine maximum engagement. The entire nature of the medium, with its short clippy posts (yeah you can pay to write long ones, but this comes off as geeky so is not used as much as one might think) and its monetization, makes it a melting pot of scammers, grifters, and con artists. I have tried many times to start genuine political/cultural discussion on X, and 95% of the time it doesn't work. The medium rewards cheap engagement bait vastly more than it rewards serious conversation.
The majority of high-profile, high-engagement X accounts who were not already famous before X are engagement bait grifters. It is a brutal Darwinian power struggle in which masters of scissor statements, controversy bait, and so on rise to the top.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Is it worth saving a child's life if the consequence is that it makes a murderer harder to convict? I don't think most people would have to think too hard about that one.
Yes. Worst case, the murderer walks free, but that baby is saved.
The expected value of murders a murderer will commit after being found innocent due to a procedural flaw is much lower than one plus the average number of murders he will commit if he is not caught at this chance.
Stellula
1hr ago
If you forgot a scarf at a hotel, would you really go back to the hotel, presumably in another city, to get it?
If I forget a scarf in a hotel, that scarf is community property now. I hope it gets used for something useful instead of just getting thrown away.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Depends a lot on the aims for the date, imho. If the main goal is to have sex with her, then being the perfect and tough guy who is of course not whining about the cold and will in fact lend miss little princess his jacket if she should feel cold could be the winning strategy.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a long term relationship and don't want to keep the princess/servant dynamic in the long term, you might want to show a bit of imperfection and vulnerability just to see how she will react. Will she ignore your plight? Will she be willing to go into a clothing store with you and let you pay for a scarf? Will she gift you a scarf? Will she do something completely unexpected, like conning a receptionist? Will she dump you on the spot?
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1hr ago
It's practically impossible to demand that Ukraine becomes officially Russian-aligned. This would require a complete takeover, and most countries would simply recognize the government in exile as the legitimate one.
Permanent neutrality leaves the door open for a future political realignment: Ukrainians are well known for throwing out the rulers they don't like.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
I think that agency is somewhat orthogonal to morality.
Low agency people (like myself, TBH) who do what all the others around them are doing are unlikely to stand out in either a good or bad way much. (They will still have a large overall impact which could be good or bad, though.)
Some high agency found EAs and try very hard to make the world a better place. Some high agency people try to rip off people to fund their underage sex islands. Some build successful companies producing dental drills. There is a much larger variety of ethical impact per person, but one can hardly say that they are all bad.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
2hr ago
that whole blog seems to be in the old genre of "everyone who disagrees with my tastes is falsifying their preferences or a degenerate, and here is some cherrypicked evidence"
Sure, but it's a bit different when it's an [ostensibly-straight] woman writing it, since the criterion of embarrassment would be satisfied in that case. I have no proof (other than hearsay on this very site) that is true in this case, but some of the other things on that blog make a lot more sense in that light (also, no man would claim garages are useless).
I think the sexual pattern matching function men operate on really is as simple as the article (and the stereotypes) make it out to be: big tits, big ass. Those that don't legitimately do have something wrong[1] with them- either they're running female pattern recognition software against male physical attraction patterns and the only socially-acceptable answer that function returns is "a woman with minimal secondary sexual characteristics", or they're running male pattern recognition software against standard female physical attraction patterns and the answers returned are all just "a man".
Now, I do expect some selection effect because the men who are willing to spend big bucks on a sex doll are also likely trying as hard as possible to pick a figure that maximizes "big tits, big ass" in a larger-than-life way... but that's also the assertion being made, that men who claim not to be concerned about it are not telling the truth for whatever reasons.
[1] In the sense that these conditions adversely affect reproductive fitness.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2hr ago
Permanent neutral status for Ukraine (like Austria)
Im still surprised by this. Our neutrality has always seemed to me like it gained the Soviets little. Anything to say about this from your end?
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
On one hand, it's worrisome if a chick is so blasé about lying—if she so casually lies to a hotel receptionist in a low stakes situation, what if she's similarly down to lie to me in a higher stakes situation?
For a lost item, the lying part is weighting much heavier than the stealing part.
Now don't get me wrong, I lie. Not for profit, and generally not to people close to me, but certainly to authorities to make interactions go smoothly. If I get into a traffic stop and I am asked if I take any medication, then I could be truthful and give them a list of drugs, and hope that they will eventually figure out that these drugs do not impair the ability to drive a car. Instead, I will simply lie to their face that I do not take any medication. But I generally do not seek out situations where I will lie.
Happily lying to a receptionist for shit and giggles and because you want a scarf is a whole other ballpark. Dark triad territory.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2hr ago
To the proponents of the "woke right" idea: have you seen any equivalent to "checking your privilege"? As far as I can tell, responses to Minority people participating range from "all hail the great based one", over not treating it any different, to "dont believe that niggerfaggot". But not any specific demands.
Id also like to see your best examples of struggle sessions. I expect this to be less objectively determinable than the above, but worth discussing.
ulyssessword
2hr ago
Name a eugenic intervention.
Maternity leave, lower taxes for filing as a couple, and accessible birth control (including abortion) seem to be eugenic interventions.
zoink
2hr ago
It doesn't necessarily ring that way for me. The kind of guy that will break into a campus building so you two can... "watch the stars" on the roof. Or the type of guy that goes backpacking for a few months in developing countries, street smart can adapt. Lying your way into a club or fancy party. All sorts of things that happen in rom-coms. There's a spectrum between goodie two shoes and felony lowlife.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
I think that a lot depends on the goals of the guy on the date. If he is looking to get laid, or for an accomplice in a bank robbery, her showing risk-taking behavior and a disregard for conventional morality is certainly increasing her value.
If he is looking for a long term relationship as a well-regarded member of society, that would indeed be a red flag. On the second date, people (I think) still bother to try to hide their flaws. If it does not occur that "I have a very loose morality around the subjects of property and (more importantly) truth" might be worth hiding, one might start to wonder what kind of flaws she might actually be hiding on top of that. Perhaps she is in a marriage she has not told you about, or works as a con artist or pickpocket.
Tree
2hr ago
According to not-the-gospels Pilate however, Jesus had done wrong and his blood was gladly taken on, as befits the role and dignity of a roman magistrate.
The Gospels' portrayal of Pilate is "widely assumed" to diverge greatly from that found in Josephus and Philo,[85] as Pilate is portrayed as reluctant to execute Jesus and pressured to do so by the crowd and Jewish authorities.
John P. Meier notes that in Josephus, by contrast, "Pilate alone [...] is said to condemn Jesus to the cross."[86] Some scholars believe that the Gospel accounts are completely untrustworthy: S. G. F. Brandon argued that in reality, rather than vacillating on condemning Jesus, Pilate unhesitatingly executed him as a rebel.[87]
Paul Winter explained the discrepancy between Pilate in other sources and Pilate in the gospels by arguing that Christians became more and more eager to portray Pontius Pilate as a witness to Jesus' innocence, as persecution of Christians by the Roman authorities increased.[88]
Bart Ehrman argues that the Gospel of Mark, the earliest one, shows the Jews and Pilate to be in agreement about executing Jesus (Mark 15:15), while the later gospels progressively reduce Pilate's culpability, culminating in Pilate allowing the Jews to crucify Jesus in John (John 19:16). He connects this change to increased "anti-Judaism". wiki
I've reached the (an?) ending of Blue Prince, a roguelike escape-the-room game. The premise is that you have to reach the final room of the manor your uncle left you in order to inherit it... except the layout is shuffled every day. In each run, you have a limited number of "steps" (spent by going from room to room) and explore the manor anew, drafting new rooms from a selection of three at every doorway.
Overall, it's likely the most fun I've ever had playing an escape-the-room game. There are many puzzles and threads to chase, and I haven't even discovered all room types, let alone solved everything there is in the game. The puzzles for the most part lack the infamous "moon logic" of puzzle games and the way to solve them is pretty intuitive - it's figuring out the mechanics and finding the solution across multiple randomized runs that's going to be hard.
The most glaring flaw is the lack of saving mid-run - if you want to close the game, you have to end the current delve. Also, some object interactions are downright sluggish and it's very frustrating when there's something routine you want to do with a terminal in a particular room but it still takes a literal "60 seconds" minute.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3hr ago
I would make the argument that Gramsci's tactics are, by their nature, apolitical: and they are successful enough that even his most hated ideological enemies have adopted them because they are effective and they work.
If the best methods for advancing your values are completely content-agnostic, then I think theres something wrong with your values. More commonly, people think its must be the best because theyre swimming in modernism, where everyone thinks this because to claim otherwise would be like the naturalistic fallacy. But if, like a christian nationalist presumably does, you actually believe youre in alignment with the natural order, shouldnt this manifest itself in some useable way in real social effects?
A) I don't think the impact is going to be very large. Scarfs are a commodity. Harm is small. Arguably it was going to get thrown out anyway. Maybe there's a small net benefit in the world where that scarf helps bolster a relationship.
B) That said... scarfs are a commodity. Wouldn't it be just as thoughtful/romantic to pop into the nearest store and buy one? Does the fact that she broke a mild social taboo make it a more meaningful act? Either one demonstrates 'agency.'
C) Its surely less bad than something like going around to all the hotels in the area and collecting nice scarfs to resell on Ebay, since she can at least claim altruistic motives. But then there's the question: if we 'approve' of her doing this one thing in this one instance, what precisely lets us object when someone else exploits this for more direct personal gain.
At any rate, my COMPLETELY UNWARRANTED speculation is that this is Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory. It was so TOTALLY RANDOM and it introduced some harmless spontaneous fun into his life which means he'll overlook the more troubling implications.
All the anime pictures I saw with a cursory look were AI-generated, though. You could make a more persuasive argument that people looking at anime-style erotic art in general have somewhat representative preferences in that department (though even there I would not be sure), but AI art is definitively only appreciated by a niche subgroup, with the modal anime erotica enjoyer being highly dismissive of it.
edit: I performed the most basic of experiments and searched danbooru with tags 1girl standing. The first page had several images that clearly belonged to series depicting the same character by the same artist, but the second page were all singletons. Of the 20 images there, 7 looked to be in the blog's "E cup or above" category, with the remaining ranging from flat to what looks like a realistic average.
What’s the cultural distance between Spain and Latin America compared to the USA (I assume this is where you are)? I speak both Japanese and Chinese but not Spanish (and have only ever visited the United States), so I may have a skewed view, but it seems like the cultural distance between the States and the East Asian countries is larger than the States and Spain or Latin America.
It might be worth learning the East Asian languages if you want to expose your child to a significantly different culture as part of a broad liberal-arts-ish education.
I know I used to entertain learning other languages to read their literature. Who knows, I might try to pick up another language even this late in life!
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