domain:tracingwoodgrains.com
Even assuming that this is true, could they really have done it without support or at least acquiescence+aftercare from the US?
yes
in similar way as they blow up long-range bombers in airfields deep in Russia
The way the adjacent Baltic states froze Germany out of the investigation and conclusions seems implausible if it was a Ukrainian solo gig that they were not appraised
why Baltic states would need USA pressuring them to approve of Nord Stream being destroyed?
Poland and/or Baltic states outright running "lets blow up Nord Stream" is relatively reasonable, happy obstruction of German investigation is my default expectation here.
I expect that Poland was not running/helping outright but I would not be surprised if operation was detected and deliberately ignored.
Or maybe they had so low opinion of Germany that they forwarded warning expecting that Germany will fail to stop it anyway.
(or was not detected at ll by them)
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
11hr ago
Nah, there's plenty of more modern stuff the kids like too. Every singer at that concert I took her to was under 30. The kids at her school are into country, of all things, but she likes singers like Megan Maroney, who is also late 20's. And then there's the wierd crossover ones, like Yung Gravy, a 20-something white rapper known for sampling old songs.
And that's without even getting into all the limpid, easy listening rap they know will just make me start ranting about DMX.
In my day our rappers were all hardened criminals, I tell you what.
wayfarer
11hr ago
I assure that not only communists have reason to fear if people in power can execute/imprison random people with "they were communists" excuse
In the same way not only anti-communists or capitalists had reason to fear communists - they executed some actual communists under one pretext or another. Or how not all people accused of rape, murder, antisemitism or racism actually were guilty.
(if people in power can execute/imprison people under some pretext, then you WILL get some people going "this woman is pretty, I will tell her to fuck me and threaten to execute her family under $PRETEXT if she refuses" or doing some other kind of abuse, which reasonable people will try to escape)
If you expect that all people are guilty of what they got accused - are you a Japanese judge?
guajalote
11hr ago
She has a three plus hour video series where she goes over what she considers to be the "evidence" in favor of her claim. She has "checked" and is convinced by the "evidence."
oats_son
11hr ago
I had an argument (I'd guess this is what spurs many top level comments) about tattoos, and how much you're allowed to judge people for them.
My argument was that I think tattoos are a sign of distasteful character and went something like
- First and foremost, they're ugly and I don't like them
- They indicate a higher level of criminality proportional to how many visible tattoos they have, along with other negative associations like substance abuse, domestic violence, and general "roughness"
- Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way
- Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent
- They betray a significant deviation from my values (likes tattoos vs dislikes tattoos) and thus give me an "other" signifier for that person
These, I think, give me plenty of room to be wary of strangers with tattoos, especially where I am located in a pretty methed up rural area. The beautiful thing is that it's not a protected characteristic, so you can actually judge it as much as you like!
The other party's argument was
- It's just a superficial fashion choice that doesn't mean anything so it's wrong to judge people for it
I actually don't think I could agree with that, ever! While it is more true the more "normal" people get tattoos, it is still a fact that pretty much any mugshot I see of any likely violent incarcerated individual is going to have a ton of them. They are also something you have to go out of your way to get, and thus, they make a decent indicator that you shouldn't trust someone if they're in the Venn diagram of "has tattoos".
But now I'm curious what is acceptable to judge people about. Let's say you're walking to your workplace or your university class or your school and you see, purposely avoiding anything like a bumper sticker or T-shirt that makes any more clearly identifiable statement or symbol:
- A man or woman with dyed blue hair
- A man or woman with a mohawk
- A man or woman with a septum piercing
- A man wearing suspenders
- A man wearing no suspenders, no belt, and wearing tight pants (this was me in high school)
- A woman wearing suspenders
- A man wearing sagging pants that show his underwear
- A man with golden teeth
- A white man or woman with dreadlocks
- A man chewing tobacco
- A woman chewing tobacco
Or perhaps we could change the context of how you're seeing this person. Let's say you work at a gas station or other commonly-visited public-facing third-place and you see people
- Walking a significant distance to and from the location
- Walking with bad posture
- Visiting the location multiple times in one night
- Visiting the location alone
- Visiting the location with their wife and all 7 of their kids
- Buying lots
- Buying little
- Talking a lot
- Talking very little
- Making good eye contact
- Making little eye contact
- Slurring their words
- Having proper diction
- Talking to other coincidental visitors (strangers to you) at the location
The stance of the refuses-to-judge-on-tattoos individual is a little perplexing to me. I'm certain that I am similarly perplexing to him. But for me, pretty much all of these, plus other considerations like height, sex, and age add up to an impression of the character and of the threat level of said individual. Personally, I think everyone has this kind of unconscious thinking, even if they don't know it or if they have suppressed it significantly. My guess is that people left of center tend to be uncomfortable with associating behaviors like that with anything negative, even though they are not protected characteristics, and even though they almost certainly do it themselves for various things, like word choice (do you say gay people or do you say queer people?), vehicle choice (drives a truck...), or sex and likely choice of gender.
How much should you judge people? On what should you judge them by? Is there something you think it's wrong to judge people for?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11hr ago
Your approach isn't bad. If I had to make a suggestion: have the universe be a simulation itself, and sufficiently-advanced ASI poses an unacceptable risk of breaking out of the sandbox or requiring too much in the way of computational resources. The Simulation Hypothesis plays a more explicit role in my own novel, but at the end of the day, it's perfectly fine to have even the AI gods sit around and moan about how they can't have it all.
But that's already the case! The whole scenario is simulated using the extremely limited bandwith of my own head, and I obviously cannot simulate what an extremely advanced and large AI will do. Introduce one or two layers of narrative, and I have cults and social trends offering different ways of dealing with the fact that their universe has no organic history, could end at any moment, and all of them are figments of someone's imagination.
Alright, yeah, downside of the whole scenario being me indulging myself with no external aspirations is that there's no pressure to separate worldbuilding from commentary. The whole universe-is-a-simulation aspect is minor and pretty much just me having fun, so it's not all there is to it, but I admit I spend quite some time toying with the idea.
The bigger problem is that people actually said they'd lead discussion groups at the leftist commune, but nobody actually said that under a right wing government, they'd be a warlord. The whole thing is someone guessing what the right wing equivalent would be--no right wing person really said it.
As leftism is about changing society and being right wing isn't, I suspect that this is not the answer you'd get, and you'd get something more like "Job under a right wing government? Nothing any government can do about that. Maybe I'd make some more money and live in a better place if the economy is better."
wayfarer
11hr ago
Ukraine may have had single digits of people with the right expertise to dive 100m down in a strong current
I suspect that country at war may be quite motivated to locate or otherwise obtain experts on relevant topics - even if you have just few of them
or just train them
after all, how many experts were at start of war in Ukraine with expertise at thing like counter-drone drones, long range torpedoes (often called naval drones) or F-16 pilots?
also, someone claiming stuff with poetry/tall-tales like
The Americans have these small unmanned submarines that can solve any task
should not be overly trusted about their accuracy
there were some ships with switched-off radio
are these supposed ships visible on satellite images taken at that time? or is there at least curious stop in coverage at that time from USA-controlled suppliers or any other confirmation of that story, such as logs of rescue service going to ships with switched-off radios? BTW, how these ships with switched-off radio were supposed to be detected?
Tanista
11hr ago
They could, however, be called "Egyptians" with no major disruption to that polity
They have been accepted into other Arab countries. I don't think it went with "no major disruption".
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
11hr ago
Yes, I’d say there are definitely people like this — though, as @IGI-111 points out, not in the symmetric way you pose; I’ve gotten that “you support monarchy/aristocracy/reaction only because you think you’d be king/a lord” bit before, and when I turn it back on them — is the only reason you hold your political views because you expect to personally benefit? — it does indeed seem to be projection/typical-minding.
And beyond endorsing both IGI-111 and @Stellula’s replies, I’ll note that I, as a reactionary, have repeatedly responded to the “you think you’ll be king” arguments with acknowledgement that, no, I’ll be dead. As I’ve said more than once, my ideal society would probably have me executed.
I’m well aware that the liberal modernity I oppose is the only thing keeping me alive at all, let alone giving me the lifestyle I currently have, and that come any serious reactionary victory, my life will most likely end (and become massively worse in the case it doesn’t)… and yet I still want that liberal modernity destroyed.
(Has anyone here seen the movie Serenity — the Firefly sequel/conclusion movie? If so, do any of you remember the speech by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s nameless “Operative” character — the “there's no place for me there” one?)
what's your job on the leftist commune?
How about what do you spend all of your time on after you have successfully amassed $10 million in capital and can live comfortably on the growth and dividends taking $400,000/year safe withdrawal rate? It's basically the same question, but without having to invent a bullshit job to justify that you're contributing something in exchange for taking communal resources.
MFW even my exploitative baron would still at least defend his castle from being invaded by foreigners. So it goes! I'm not a reactionary by any means, but Gregory Clark in The Son Also Rises has interesting analysis claiming similar degrees of social mobility during feudalism as the modern era, as well as stickiness in high-class surnames within the high-class pointing to real genetic differentiation between classes.
aldomilyar
11hr ago
People keep welcoming White South Africans various places despite being anti-apartheid, though I guess it's been a few decades.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11hr ago
I was under the impression that it was never part of psychology, but was developed by two housewives for some popular magazine or something. Like 4bpp the claims of it being like a horoscope feel like cope. If psychology has a better test, fair enough, but I'm gonna need an RCT betwwen M&B and Big Five or whatever, before I actually believe it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
11hr ago
Someone reported this:
REDACTED: Creep post sexualising minors.
Really? Are the mods now expected to moderate the male gaze? "Late teens" presumably includes 18 and 19. It seems to me that half the porn industry runs off barely legal teens, which, I am told, are still legal.
I just took one of these online tests and got INTP. Not the first time I've taken it; I tend to oscillate between INTP (Ti-Ne-Si-Fe) and ISTP (Ti-Se-Ni-Fe), though a far larger amount of the time I score as the former. Even as a participant it's pretty apparent just how low the test-retest reliability of Myers-Briggs is. Introverted thinking as my dominant function and extraverted feeling as my inferior function seems to be a consistent characteristic though.
JarJarJedi
11hr ago
Do we really need a complex explanation of why a young woman appears attractive to an aging man?
The reactionary equivalent is "this is what they took from us", usually in the context of a picture of a hottie. In the defense of that meme, the pictures of beaches and cities in California where everyone is white look pretty nice and they did indeed take that from us.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
11hr ago
Yes. Because mainstream psychology abandoned it ages ago in favor of the Big Five/OCEAN.
JarJarJedi
11hr ago
I think it is better than a horoscope or tarot, because it's based on the actual individual patterns of behavior, instead of something that has no relationship to the actual person. But of course attempting to reduce the infinite human diversity to a handful of broad classes would be very imprecise and frequently misleading. That said, there are people that can be described as "phlegmatic" or "sanguine", and that's not entirely wrong, even though nobody believes in the humoral theory anymore. It's clear that there are some patterns in people's behavior, and those can be to some measure classified. My type on MBTI comes out as INTJ and it's roughly matching my behavior and is probably useful to a certain measure - you wouldn't know everything about me, you won't probably know any of the important things about me as a person, but you would understand roughly how my thinking and approach to things works. I think that is useful, though one must always understand that this is very imprecise and not to put too much into it like "I know how you think now, you're totally transparent to me". No classification system is ever going to do that.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
11hr ago
INTP. You are aware that MB is a load of shit, so if you want horoscopes but actually rigorous (standing up to a factor analysis), then OCEAN is the one for you.
2D3D
11hr ago
Best anime for anime watchers is Cromartie High. It is near perfect in pacing, absurdity and meta-jokes about anime as a medium to begin with. The english dub is actually better than the sub simply because the ridiculousness of the voiceover heightens the comedy, even when relatively subtle wordplay (rare) is involved. Konosuba achieves largely the same and is a good rip on the extremely tired Isekai power fantasy genre.
Otherwise for seriousness I found Gundam Witch From Mercury one of the best examples of longterm psychological manipulation presented in any medium, all while wrapped in an enjoyable high school drama with good action and decent worldbuilding. Last 2 episodes compressed a season into 2 episodes which is nuts but otherwise it was pretty excellent. A good lighthearted series is Dungeon Meishi which makes an attempt at internal consistency and logical subversion/adherence to fantasy tropes, so its a good time there.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11hr ago
No, not every state roots itself in biological instinct to the same degree. “Ranked choice voting” and “representatives based on population” are examples of procedures unrooted in biological instinct. These procedures require the use of intellect to conclude that the procedure is ultimately in our best interest; when instinct rears its head and says “I wish my leader continued longer than the term allows”, it is quelched by a sense of logic insisting that it’s for the greater good. Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler obtained power through force (or the threat thereof) without much interest in procedure. That’s biological: you could see that happen in humans 100k years ago, or in primate groups.
Epithumia and Logos are too broad as concepts to know in what sense you mean that they are “biological”. Logos, as a construct of wisdom, is surely non-biological.
I don’t believe that humans actually come with “individualistic self-interest”; they come with a self-interest mediated by social cooperation and tribal allegiance. Purely individualistic self-interest is… how old? Not very old at all. It’s like 20th century new. In any other period, someone who pursued ruthless self-interest at the expense of the collective would be (rightfully) purged, his genes being defective.
Garibaldi
Probably because of his heroic and glorious military career in pursuit of securing territory for a people, his subservience of selfish ambition to nationalist aspirations. Or because “he is not a man; he is a symbol, a form; he is the Italian soul”. His hero worship is precisely because he mirrors fascism. If he were simply a bureaucrat politician with some ideas, no one would worship him. And indeed, I don’t think anyone worships him for his view of democratic republicanism (he fought for the monarchists for the sake of unification). Fascism is about Garibaldimaxxing, to the fullest extent, so that men have a lot of passionate feelings about the nation, which can only occur through marrying it to biological instinct.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
Extremely long Cummings substack piece: https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/a-talk-on-regime-change
If you had to read one part, read the speech he gave at Oxford, skip to: Text, Oxford, 19 June 2025
It's staggering. I'm one of the biggest Cummings-trusters and I thought he was overdoing it when it comes to the Civil Service on rotations. I check it and it's true. It's the most retarded idea I've heard for some time.
And the insane HR system means that everybody changes jobs every two years, roughly. So if you’re sitting in No. 10, you have a series of meetings with someone in charge of, for example, Chinese cyber operations. And you talk to them and you talk to them. You have meeting after meeting, and then suddenly this person vanishes completely and some new person arrives in No. 10 and you say: ‘Oh, hello, who are you?’. And they say: ‘Oh, I’m so-and-so’. And you say: ‘Oh, right. Okay. Um, so what are you doing?’. ‘Oh, I’ve been in charge of special educational needs for the last two years’. ‘Oh, right. Okay. You’re now in charge of Chinese cyber operations?’. ‘Yeah’.
So much from his anecdotes (always the best parts of Cummings, otherwise he just repeats his main themes) reads like it came out of Yes Minister. The power of the Cabinet Secretary and impotence of the PM, Ministers just reading out their briefs, cabinet decisions made in advance by the official who drafts the minutes, everyone desperately beholden to the media. There's that bit about a lack of individual accountability for projects, straight out of the 1980s: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-pQcNKFoIDE
Sir Arnold from the show: "We already move our officials around every two or three years to stop this personal responsibility nonsense, if this scheme passes we'll be reposting them once a fortnight!'
Well, you might inherit, if you're lucky enough to have been born first (or be the eldest surviving son).
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