domain:alethios.substack.com
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
20hr ago
Trans women are a tiny presence for all the noise they make, and if surveys say 3% of heterosexual men would consider dating a trans woman, I'd bet the number who really would date a trans woman is <1%.
Given the fraction of men who participate in machismo-based homosexuality in places where it is socially acceptable (American prisons, non-Taliban Afghanistan, ancient Greece etc.) or the demand for ladyboys as sex workers in cultures like Thailand where that is the normative way of being a trans woman, I would say that 3% is on the low side for "What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.
Men don't want AGPs and AGPs don't want cishet men, so if AGPs are more visible than ladyboys (and in the West they are) then surveys are going to underestimate willingness to date transwomen.
FarmReadyElephants
20hr ago
Obviously I think the culture here is much higher quality than .win would be
The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy.
If so, I don't really think any answers to this question (your broader one) are really indicative of much because there is one glaring confounding factor in the metric you're using. Most megafaunal extinctions did not occur during the transition to industrial modernity; rather they occurred when all modern humans were still firmly in the hunter-gatherer stage. The giant ground sloths in South America, the mammoths and mastodon in North America, as well as Diprotodon and the marsupial lion in Australia were all driven extinct via a combination of human pressure + environmental shifts during the late Pleistocene. 65% of megafaunal species went extinct during this period, and when it came to animals above 1000 kg, 80% of them disappeared.
What really does this metric in is that this loss of megafauna wasn't exactly evenly distributed throughout the world, it was particularly severe in the Americas and Australia, whereas Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia were less affected. And the worst Pleistocene megafaunal die-offs occurred in regions which happen to correlate with first-world-ness today. Long before any human societies became recognisably first-world the distribution of megafauna globally was already very skewed, and relative megafaunal diversity in any region has a whole lot to do with whatever happened during the late Pleistocene and not quite so much to do with industrialisation.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
20hr ago
1.) 20mi / 32km
2.) 20mi / 32km
3.) If you count horses, or wine grapes, less than 5mi / 12km. Otherwise like double that, I have lots of produce, hay, corn, soybeans in the area.
4.) 12mi / 20km
5.) 12mi / 20km
6.) 12mi / 20km
The place I live is suburban but right on the edge of a rural & agricultural area.
TowardsPanna
20hr ago
Oh. Balls. Guess I wasted those runes then.
So Faith is the way to go for combining physical with magic?
Assembling Google, as a glorified directory, is not knowledge work, even if you consider the slightly more complex algorithms that go into its modern iterations. Full stop.
The Russel conjugation lives. Sneerers in the other direction call LLMs things like "a blurry JPEG of the internet". These sneers are not helpful, and I notice that you've now abandoned any speak of a test in terms of economic value.
"LLMs display jagged intelligence" or "spiky intelligence" or something of that nature.
Does Google Web Search display jagged/spiky intelligence? Clearly, it is not generally applicable and has major failure states and such.
Anyways, no real test needed
Then yeah, probably no response really needed from me to you. You don't seem to have much other than vibes. That which can be asserted without justification and all.
RenOS
something is wrong
20hr ago
You need a catalyst to use spells. For sorceries that would be glintstone staffs or that one sword. But afaik sorceries always scale only with INT, so it's a difficult choice for mixed builds.
RenOS
something is wrong
20hr ago
Just looked it up, my build in ER was a str/fth hybrid with golden halberd + clawmark seal as the main hand weapons. Buffing, manaless short range, mana-dependent long range all in one neat package that scales with both attributes. Thanks to str I can use large shields in the offhand. Especially on higher lvls you can also branch into other seals/incantations for other dmg types.
But it's just one example, there's plenty of viable mixed builds.
TowardsPanna
20hr ago
I need to walk the line between clowning around aimlessly, and looking up too much info and taking the mystery and challenge out of the game. Giving myself some direction so that I might actually finish the game and not abandon it, without making it a paint by numbers affair.
Right now I don't know if I should head for that Castle that seems to be the main quest thing to do, or level up and get more equipment first. I've got some cool spirit summons but haven't applied any war ashes yet, don't think I have any worth using. I will not be using online mode btw.
I'm using the armors I started the game with, a sword that's a tiny tiny bit better than the default one, and I've got a flail (increased my dex to 18 to be able to wield it) for whatever situation might require blunt/strike damage.
I found Sellen(?) the Sorceress under the waypoint ruin in Limgrave (after beating the boss there), and bought a cheap spell that can send a glimstone projectile or something. I increased INT from 9 to 10 to be able to use it, and added the spell to a memorized slot, but it's still greyed out on the up-arrow and I don't seem to have a button for throwing magic...?
Noted! And I'll try to get my hp flask's effectiveness upgraded too. It heals less than half my hp currently.
kky
20hr ago
All of them are within about 15 miles. The farm is regular produce for bourgeois consumption.
hydroacetylene
20hr ago
The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy. ‘Marginal’ and ‘wealthiest’ are turning out to be more relevant questions than I thought.
Texas ranchers have a few big antelopes, but I don’t know that it makes much difference- bison are native to Texas anyways. I guess free ranging gemsbok makes a difference if you’re specific to big antelopes.
Reticulated pythons in Florida probably matters, though.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
21hr ago
You're allowed to judge people. The reasonable and equanimous thing to do is to determine whether your judgment is actually rational or merely a prejudice.
At one time, a prejudice against tattoos was rational because it really was only criminals and prostitutes and peripatetic sailors and vagabonds and the like who got them, let alone displayed them brazenly. So it was reasonable to assume a tattoo signified someone you likely did not want to associate with.
Nowadays, it's increasingly becoming a default fashion accessory of the young. So it really doesn't tell you much except "This person is of a generation that finds this acceptable." You can still be prejudiced against it because you don't like it and you grew up disliking tattoos, but you can't reasonably make much of a moral judgment about them (you can't even really predict anymore from tattoos alone whether or not someone is a conservative Christian, for example).
Arguably tattoos are permanent markings on your body that indicate short time preference and poor aesthetic taste, but I think this is pretty weak when you're talking about something that is widely accepted by society. You can dislike that society has changed, but then you're just judging someone for not resisting social change in exactly the way you want them to.
Most of your other examples are either aesthetic judgments (you can think chewing tobacco is gross, and it's certainly a gross and unhealthy and unfeminine habit) though some probably do signal a certain culture or mindset (blue hair, septum piercings, mohawks).
People are allowed to make superficial aesthetic judgments. I just think you shouldn't try to rationalize it with some reason why actually this is a very reliable predictor of whether or not someone is a good or smart person or even politically aligned with you.
Stats fall into two categories: generalist stats that can help most characters, and build-specific stats. Literally any build can benefit from more health and stamina, but faith is effectively a wasted point if you never use it.
This adds up because of how level rune requirements increase. You generally want to invest as little as possible in more offensively/build-oriented stats (strength, dex, int, faith, luck) that you are not using. The ones you do use are among the highest priorities. Each stat has their own benefits and shortcomings - probably pretty self-explanatory. The way I generally build my characters in these games is they pick one or two of these offensive stats to specialize in. You can go up to 3 comfortably in Elden Ring (eg a strength + dex + faith build). Some combinations (i.e. the worthwhile ones) have unique benefits (like int+faith spells), but spreading your offensive stats out is a choice between versatility and high performance. Simple answer: allocate levels based on whichever gives you the stat requirements you need to use a weapon you like, then level as needed to make that weapon's damage go up the most. If you get a very high offensive stat level, focus on the weapon's scaling damage over base damage if seeking new weapons.
My general suggestion is that vigor is your first priority, followed by your favored offensive stats. Add to the rest of the generalist stats as you need them, but try to only do so when you actually need to (eg "I think being able to attack more would help more than extra damage therefore more stamina") Note that most stats softcap around 40 or so (varies) which means diminishing returns, which makes other stats take priority.
Tips: Weapon upgrades are far more important than character level, though both are important. Be sure not to infuse your weapon with a modifier that reduces damage output.
Also, it you press start, you can choose items to quick select on the right side of the screen. Definitely put the horse on one of those slots.
Corvos
21hr ago
I think I agree with the replies here that the broad themes are essentially correct (I liked the interview with the ‘Nicola’ politician, I think that sounds exactly right) but that the language and to a lesser extent the social dynamics that struck me as being off really are off, and a reflection of a fairly weird period in British TV writing.
Omnishambles on the other hand is a fantastic word, with such broad applicability!
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
21hr ago
This got reported for your gratuitous shoehorning of an anti-immigration rant into the thread. While you are allowed to rant about immigration, you should do it in a thread where that's actually the topic, rather than derailing some other discussion so you can rant about your thing.
Hazuki
21hr ago
Consequently, refusing to make any kind of outward appearance choice in favour of following the herd and doing the most unobjectionable thing possible at all times is also a choice that enables judgement of people.
I would've thought that people aorund these parts might see the value in not just doing whatever is most acceptable to everyone around you at all times.
cjet79
21hr ago
Not sure how you are doing wealth comparisons is it per capita? Total GDP? Median or average?
Norway has a higher median Wealth than the US but loses in total and on average. So big Canines might also be US again with wolves living there. But Norway also has brown bears and polar bears. So if they win the wealth game for canines they'd win it for bears too.
Same issue with eagles.
I'm also not sure if Singapore should win anything. Depending on how much work "non-marginal" is doing for the population counts. There might be more large snakes in zoos and private collections in the US then there are in Singapore.
That also brings up the invasive species issue. Florida has a bunch of large snakes. They are not native to the area, so do they count?
Also we could add crocodiles to megafauna. Florida/US probably wins that.
Wild horses is another potential category. They are large grazers, but it feels like they are pretty different from bison. There is a wild population of them in North America in Virginia and Maryland, and maybe out west still. But they are also an invasive species in North America.
The invasive species issue is more important than you might think. Texas ranchers have a surprisingly large number of large game animals for hunting purposes. Some of those ranch animal populations actually outnumber the estimated wild populations for those animals.
Hogs might also be megafauna. They are bigger than wolves, and certainly bigger than Eagles. America wins that depending again on the invasive species question.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
21hr ago
If all you have to post is a low-effort snarl, put some more thought into it or just keep it to yourself.
Hazuki
21hr ago
You just...you don't do that!
Yes... you do. I do. Almost everyone I know does. My 71 year old mother is getting a tattoo next month.
That's your skin! It's not a piece of paper!
No, it's a far more appropriate venue to express yourself than a piece of paper. It's for things that mean enough to you to have them etched physically onto you semi-permanently. You are a blank canvas, when you could be a work of art encompassing all of your being expressed visually. Not customising your body is like never changing the default desktop background on your PC. It speaks to a terribly boring person.
Do you want to look like the kind of person who gets tattoos?!
Interesting and attractive? Yes, actually.
Frankly, if you've never made any change to your body, no non-ear piercings, no tattoos, never dyed your hair, if you are a totally stock out-of-box generic human-brand-human, I'm just going to assume you're a dull as dishwater person. That you've never felt anything in your life strongly enough to wish to express it openly. You desire conformity, to fly under the radar, to get your head down and get on and never make waves.
This level of pearl clutching, in addition, suggests to me that you might be fairly repressed or sheltered.
FtttG
21hr ago
Their CEO had actually floated the idea of coin-operated toilets a while back, but was stymied by airline regulations.
Michael O'Leary is famous for playing the media machine like a fiddle, making outrageous announcements for Ryanair's latest cost-cutting measure which he has no intention of enacting but which get the company's name in the papers for a press cycle.
Tollund_Man4
21hr ago
- 1.5km
- 1.2km
- 6km for what looks like a vineyard in the suburbs and 9km for the really large farms.
- 5km for the nearest train (not tram) station.
- I don't think we have an equivalent in Europe but there's a supermarket 400m away and some bigger ones 2-3km away.
- 11km
FtttG
21hr ago
I've heard it's considered such an accurate representation of UK politics that some of its phrasings have entered the vernacular e.g. "omnishambles".
I have a few thoughts.
Bears: I'm going to throw in a vote for the US. Black bears, brown bears, and grizzlies are all common. Russia might be in the running too.
Big cats: are you only including panthera, or "cats that are big"? The US might come back into the running with mountain lions if it's the latter.
Canines: the US probably wins here hands down if you include the larger eastern coyote. If you don't, it gets a lot murkier.
Big snakes: this might be the US these days. The Burmese python population is out of control in Florida, and they get enormous.
You might want to include a few more categories as well.
"Large browsers" are different from "large grazers". The US and Canada have moose and elk. Several countries in Africa have giraffe.
"Crocodilians" have representatives in the US, China, India, multiple South American countries, and at least Egypt. This probably goes to the US or China
"Aquatic mammals" is another interesting one, with freshwater dolphins (India, China, South America), manatees, and dugongs. This probably goes to the US, unless the dugong is more common in the Taiwan straight than I thought.
I'm not sure what the technical term is, but "giant honkin' birds" would be tricky. You have ostriches, and emus, but a few other that might fit as well. This gets complicated by the fact that the big two have been exported and farmed all over the world.n Australia probably wins here?
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