domain:parrhesia.substack.com
naraburns
nihil supernum
23m ago
A classic, to my mind. Honestly it's a rare case of the movie being even better than the source material, and the source material isn't bad! Sadly, the sequel didn't really do it for me, and it's a high water mark for Chloe Grace Moretz on film (though she has done some solid voice work since).
I was reading through some of The Dread Jim's archives, and I saw that he recommended a film called Kick-Ass. So I took a look, and... where has this movie been all my life?
Everything is great. The writing is great. The action is great. The music is great. This is the best Hollywood action movie I have seen since The Matrix.
The film is bold and unapologetic, working hard to earn its R rating; characters get shot, stabbed, crushed, and burned. The dialogue pulls no punches, mixing wit and profanity without ever coming across as overly edgy or performative.
My new waifu, Hit-Girl, is easily the best character in the movie; watching her mow down a hallway full of mooks to the tune of "Bad Reputation" is a delight (and that's after she infiltrates the bad guy's base by dressing up like a loli schoolgirl; I had not realized that Americans could be this cultured!)
The only problem is that the MC, Kick-Ass, is not nearly as awesome as Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, but that's alright; he can be the Ishmael to the latter's Ahab. And, unlike so many spineless MCs, he continually grows as a character; by the end of the film, he has gradudated from using a "gay looking taser", as Hit-Girl rightly calls it, to dual-wielding miniguns while flying on a jetpack.
I just don't understand why Roger Ebert didn't like it.
Tree
43m ago
Interesting. I really want to argue with your points, but since I don’t have any experience doing this (not in the US), I’ll cede the field.
Yeah, possibly the biggest barrier is the need for some seed capital and the willingness to take some counterparty risk on it. The guy seemed like he was juggling/transferring thousands of dollars per day to take advantage of the credit card bonuses and the cheap tokens. You’d probably need like 20-50k starting capital you’re ready to lose (although I think the risk is not that big), and, like you say, a considerable time investment, before you can earn his full one hour a day salary.
Anyway, if it's a hassle, or less lucrative than advertised, it's probably better to do something less zero sum.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
44m ago
Might have a Muslim father but still have been raised as at least a nominal Christian. It happens in the Balkans, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was raised as a nominal Catholic despite having "Ibrahim" in last name.
Ali is also a name in various non-Islamic cultures, generally short for Alexander.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
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While searching a drug dealer's house in accordance with a search warrant, police officers find the suspect's cell phone lying face up in his bedroom. The phone lights up by itself, displaying a text message from "Shana" in plain view of the officers. The officers know from their prior investigation that a person named Shana has been working with the suspect in his drug dealing, so they take a photograph of the text message and use it as the basis of a new warrant for a search of the phone.
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At trial, the defendant moves to suppress as the fruit of an illegal search all evidence obtained from the phone. He argues: The last notification received by the phone occurred six hours before the officers searched the house. Therefore, the phone cannot have "lit up by itself" while the officers were there. In reality, the officers must have activated the phone's screen themselves in an illegal warrantless search and then lied on the application for the second warrant. The trial judge agrees with the defendant's reasoning and suppresses the evidence obtained from the phone. The appeals panel affirms.
Note:
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There's a bunch of other evidence on which the defendant definitely still will be convicted of drug dealing.
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The author of the appeals panel's opinion autistically changed nearly every quoted instance of "cell phone" to "cell[ular tele]phone".
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A man is in jail, with pending criminal charges for abusing his romantic partner. In January 2024, the woman additionally requests a protection-from-abuse order, which is granted.
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In May 2024, the man is charged with criminal contempt for having contacted or attempted to contact the woman from jail 343 times in 24 days. In June, he is charged with another fifty instances of the same wrongdoing, circumventing the jail's efforts to prevent him from doing so. In August, he is charged with eight more instances.
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The trial judge finds the man guilty of all 401 counts of criminal contempt. Each count carries a jail term of two days (with the possibility of parole after one day) and a fine of one dollar, for a total of 802 days and 401 dollars. The appeals panel affirms.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
Hmm. Alright. Thanks for replying.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
2hr ago
Maybe that's the issue. A 12 year old girl can feign vulnerability and get in close for knifework.
But my mental model of a median 12 year old says I'd be more likely to accidentally hurt her trying to disarm her than to be seriously injured in the process.
You see, she doesn't even have to feign vulnerability, the biggest danger to you is your own desire to minimize the amount of violence. It's the American cop problem in reverse.
If you memorize the rule that you don't go for the weapon even if your opponent is a child, then defeating a knife-wielding 12-year-old girl in a fight is easy. Trip her or knock her down.
FtttG
2hr ago
Nah, way before that there was Fallon Fox, an actual transgender, rather than male with DSD like Khalif, literally cracking an opponents skull.
True. I suspect it's because MMA is a comparatively niche sport compared to the Olympics, female MMA even more so. A cursory Google suggests that as many as 5 billion people watched at least some of the 2024 Olympics: if even 1% of those watched the Khelif vs. Carini match, that's 50 million people around the world watching a presumably male person punching a female. I'd surprised if as many as 10 million people watched the Fox vs. Brents match.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Imane Khelif, however, seemed to have really redpilled a lot of people. The sight of an obviously male person punching a female person and being rewarded for doing so triggers an intense emotional reaction which probably has a long standing evolutionary basis.
Nah, way before that there was Fallon Fox, an actual transgender, rather than male with DSD like Khalif, literally cracking an opponents skull.
You're not going to find a neat explanation, why this incident and not another. They just ran out of mana.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
If extremely illiberal Muslims are supposed to be in our ingroup
That's not what western progressive leftists believe, though. To them, the Muslims aren't actually illiberal themselves but simply conditioned to illiberal habits by the illiberal societies that oppressed them, and having escaped to the liberal West, they are sure to adopt liberal norms if not swiftly then at least certainly over enough time (and any failure to do so is because our own Western societies have too much residual illiberalism).
The temporarily embarassed liberal muslim is supposed to be our ingroup.
who isn't?
The Nazis.
Obviously.
(Where "The Nazis" is anyone who actively rejects the leftist agenda.)
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Let's be frank here - Lola and Ruby sound like straight-up hooker names.
FtttG
2hr ago
I think this is addressed in the OP. The absurd beliefs of today (there is no difference in peak athletic performance between males and females, and all observable differences are the product of socialisation) are an overcorrection to the absurd beliefs of yesterday (men are physically superior to women on every axis, and women are so physically weak that they cannot even safely compete in long-distance running events). We're now belatedly arriving at a Hegelian synthesis, in which we acknowledge that men are stronger and faster than women for reasons that have nothing to do with socialisation, while still recognising that women can be plenty strong and fast on their own terms. While "the establishment" was once pushing the "men and women are the same" angle and are now pushing the Hegelian synthesis, the use of the collective noun disguises what a hard-fought battle it was to get them to sit up and take notice. Gender-critical activists spent innumerable thankless years trying to draw attention to the higher rate of injury when male athletes were permitted to compete in female sporting events, and were rewarded for it by being harassed, doxxed and called bigoted and even racist (?). It's only very recently that the Hegelian synthesis has undergone a respectability cascade and the establishment is starting to recognise just how absurd the "men and women are the same" framework is. It'd be curious to see what the catalyst was - I think Lia Thomas started to make a lot of people sit up and take notice, but "swimming speed" is too abstract a metric for a lot of people to care about. Imane Khelif, however, seemed to have really redpilled a lot of people. The sight of an obviously male person punching a female person and being rewarded for doing so triggers an intense emotional reaction which probably has a long standing evolutionary basis.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
But then why is his name Ali? The world makes no sense.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Somewhere in between the progressive girlboss stereotype and the evopsych illustration described by OP there's a reasonable middle place in which women do fulfill their biological role and still live respectable lives in which they make their own decisions. I think there's quite a few modern women who do inhabit that place, though they are doubtless under much pressure to go elsewhere. Historically I think we've been to that middle place sometime in the latter half of the 20th century...but then again, by that time there was also significant movement to the girlboss place. So maybe western society was closer in earlier times. Early 20th century maybe?
Idle musings. Anyways. Do you disagree with any specific points of OPs reasoning, or do you just find the depiction of women distasteful?
Blueberry
3hr ago
Where is the muslim info coming from? In the first picture here he has a big cross as a tattoo. Gangster or not, a muslim wouldn’t have that:
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/15276040/man-behind-dundee-knife-video-gypsy-gangster/
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
3hr ago
I don't think she's commenting on some averaged measure of QoL, or at least it's not the true substrate of her objection.
Throughout this post and the last, you've described the increased evolutionary pressure males have gone through to secure mates, in the process honing their intellects, physical skills, and cooperative acumen. Meanwhile, the females' dependence on the males has given them little incentive to develop their physical or mental constitutions, and what pressures they are subjected to is directed towards making them even more pathetic (to use your term) in a zero-sum struggle for male providence. From the picture you're painting, it's not hard to conclude that the masculine condition is fundamentally nobler, closer to the Imago Dei, than the feminine condition. Like with how you describe women's evolutionarily adaptive tendency to embrace their conquerors, the thought of such perfidy being engrained into the female psyche naturally lowers one's perception of them as a group and might justifiably invoke self-loathing of the type exhibited above.
Actually, this reminds me of something. I'm working on (for a very loose definition of "working") a post detailing my thoughts on the psychosocial consequences of HBD on the members of genetically disadvantaged races (spoiler: pretty devastating), and why the usual refrain of "you're [one of the good ones], why do you care?" is utterly ignorant. Your use of the terms "genetically inferior/superior" suggests that your thoughts on this matter might be more similar to mine than the median Mottizen, so I think you're better primed than most to empathize with HereAndGone's lament.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
In all my years on themotte, the most valuable lesson I've learned is that checking your interlocutor's sources is a superpower. Nobody else will do it, and there's a fair chance he hasn't.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3hr ago
Okay, but is the possible hanging of Mike Pence, a man I last heard of described as an enemy of modernity and progress and all that is good and moral, really what the left and polite society are so up in arms against?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3hr ago
[Unimportant details] german-descended immigrants [Even less important details].
I rest my case.
This year, the difference between the men’s and women’s winners in Boston was less than fifteen minutes in a total time of just over two hours.
True, but they were both Kenyan, who are so far removed from the average in long-distance running it hardly seems like a fair comparison. I would love to see the average difference in finishing times between male and female competitors.
The famed tennis Battle of the Sexes is often derided today, don’t you know that he was out of shape and old, that Serena and Venus in their primes couldn’t take some minor league nobody in tennis, etc. What this ignores is that the Uncle Roys of the world really believed that Billy Jean King didn’t stand a chance, that any professional male would slaughter her. The result was genuinely shocking to a great many people at the time.
To the best of my knowledge, Billie Jean King is the only case of a female tennis player defeating a male, and even in this case there's a credible theory that Bobby Riggs deliberately threw the match in order to get out of a gambling debt.
As to whether people believed that no woman could beat any man - I'm sure people in the 1970s would have conceded that a female tennis player could beat a man who was a literal invalid. Even if Riggs didn't throw the match, he was twenty-six years older than King. I ask you whether "several decades past his prime" is closer to the "able-bodied woman vs. male invalid" end of the spectrum than to the "evenly matched competitors" end.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
Shades of the Judge. I agree almost entirely, but I'm compelled to point out that Isandlwana was essentially campaign-ending, in that the British had to completely withdraw from Zululand and plan a second, more competent invasion. Bad planning, sure, but it was also a perfect storm scenario for an African force to defeat European riflemen - a large part of the area the Zulus charged over was dead ground from the perspective of the British lines, and the British were undersupplied and had little space to fall back into. A Roman legion would have whipped the British there.
FistfullOfCrows
3hr ago
Well, from what I remember he was gleeful about 9/11 or maybe its been too long.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3hr ago
men from these countries do have at least one very important physical attribute working in their favor, relative to the world at large.
Statistically, maybe. I grumble.
Happy birthday to the Motte! If nothing else, it is a good time to remind myself that I am bad at predictions and should never play the prediction markets, because I didn't think we'd last this long. But here were are today, entering year four!
Just like last year, I will point out that the server costs continue to be borne by about 25 patrons, making us the Internet's leading (possibly only?) independent user-funded (ad-free!) open political speech forum.
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