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thejdizzler
4hr ago
Drove my roommate to the airport and will be picking him up tonight. Wrote a training plan for a friend for the Baltimore marathon.
So what are you reading? I just finished The Children of Men by P.D. James, review below. Also working on Way of Kings, Capital, and some Kant.
Didn't realize that the author of this was THE P.D. James, of thriller writing fame. I guess there is something about British authors who abbreviate there first and middle names and pulling surprisingly deep science fiction commentary that has stood the test of time (thinking of you E.M. Forster).
The Children of Men is a book about a world with ultra-low fertility, in other words, an extreme version of a world that we already live in. I had a friend's birthday party at the park a couple weeks ago (I'm getting close to 30 unfortunately), and I noticed that out of the 20 or so couples there, only one had a child. And I think this is becoming increasingly true over the whole entire world. Many of the downstream aspects of this fact also seem to be shared between James' novel and reality: the prevalence of pet parents, the lack of interest in the future of society (but a fixation on the past), and an obsession with health and safety at all costs.
Beyond the social commentary, the actual plot of the novel is a little lackluster. It centers on an Oxford Professor of History, Theo, who happens to be the cousin of the dictator of England. Theo lives a pretty unremarkable and utterly selfish life (even before the "Omega" where most men suddenly become infertile), until he becomes involved with a rebel group that wants to enact some minor changes in the governmental system, but more importantly, is sheltering a woman who happens to be pregnant. Theo's time with this group changes his inner and outer lives almost completely: it's amazing what hope for the future does to an individual, although I was left wondering at the end how much would really change in England after the birth of this child.
Having children is no basis for a moral system in of itself (this was Chesterton's critique of H.G. Wells), but it sure as hell makes constructing a society a hell of a lot easier. Unfortunately I think our world is headed to a future more similar to what James envisioned in the 1990s. People simply aren't having children: I'm guilty of this too: it's not like I'm close to being married even. And that, I think, means that this society isn't very long for this world.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
4hr ago
Unsounded is great. Alderode is a ethnat police state with strict castes, Cresce is a child-sacrificing horror communist monarchy, and Sharteshane is the worst of Dickesian Victorian capitalist apathy.
How can you care for anyone, in such a soul crushing world?
Without spoiling anything, I think Cope answers that question quite well.
C. S. Lewis doesn't count; that was back when everyone was Christian, or at least Jewish. Even Jerry Pournelle was towards the tail-end of that era. A science fiction author being Christian doesn't really become remarkable until after the New Atheism of the 2000's.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
4hr ago
The best depiction of the heroine's journey is, unironically, the schlocky Princess Diary movie, which plays it so straight that it is practically canonical. A awkward but virtuous heroine discovers her inner beauty and refinement and prevails over circumstances to end up with a good man. She overcomes her own insecurities and the judgements of others to become a princess in heart as well as in fact.
And this is an internal journey, for the most part: complementary to the masculine hero. If you watch media that women genuinely like to consume (like magical girl anime and Disney princess movies) the fighting and bluster is largely secondary to the dramatic arcs of feminine self-realization.
The perversion happens when you combine the superficial aspects of the masculine journey with the contemplating-one-navel nature of the feminine one. If you're a supercompetent girlboss you have no virtues to realize in the feminine sense or to learn in the masculine sense. Stagnancy. The only arc that is possible is 'the world doesn't recognize how awesome I am, and so it must suffer'. This narcissistic plot is utterly repugnant and is rejected by all but the most hidebound ideologues.
Skulldrinker
4hr ago
I'm more trying to make a point that stories about women/by women have been written that can be enjoyed by humans of whatever gender, this isn't utterly uncharted territory where artists have to build everything from scratch.
erwgv3g34
4hr ago
Mormon cosmology might have something to do with it.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
4hr ago
I also loved those books. (Alan Garner was my favourite contemporary fantasy writer growing up in England, but Cooper was a close second). The Dark is Rising is written by a woman, but it isn't a "girl" story - Will, Bran and Merriman are all standard male heroic archetypes played straight.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
4hr ago
Hunger Games was a hit with a mostly female audience - I think it counts as a "girl" story. I also think it counts as a refreshing new take on the obnoxious romance/girlboss tropeset - see this three part vivisection by the Last Psychiatrist, which I fully endorse on this point.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
4hr ago
Ursula le Guin was a woke feminist, but she wrote stories that didn't feature romances or girlbosses (partly because she did her best work before the girlboss trope crystallised). I'm not sure whether you count her as writing "girl" stories.
Adunai
5hr ago
Era of total intel agency control (CIA over America)? [schizo warning]
I'm a follower of one Russian youtuber whose ideas are apparently like this. In the feudal age, the elite was changing itself in constantly bloodletting of civil strife. In the absolutist age, the remaining nobility could still kill the king/emperor, and eventually in the French and Russian revolutions the entire class was exterminated. This has led to what is today a democratic system where the president and ministers are superficially interchangeable but decide nothing because they're all controlled by intel services from behind the scenes with pedophile porn blackmail on every statesman.
What would your thoughts be on such a model? For the evidence, he points to how brutal the war in the Ukraine is, but Putin and Trump are both chums with each other. And how Russia could easily destroy the Dnieper bridges in the Ukraine, but chooses not to - apparently forbidden by the CIA/KGB intel service to disarm Russia for a NATO invasion.
Other cases of collusion between different statesmen for the sole purpose of advancing the interests of the compromised and cancer-ridden American state would be:
- Yugoslavia's Miloshevich who signed the Dayton agreement in 1995 leading to a surrender in 1999;
- Syria's Assad with the Astana accords in 2021 with deescalation zones for the rebels which allowed them to regroup and strike back in 2024;
- Iran's ayatollah who allowed both the Hamas and Hezbollah to be destroyed peacemeal without helping them;
- Russia's Putin who has only ever attacked in the only fortified region of the front for 3.5 years and is now trying to sign another rotten peace deal.
I'm likely sounding really silly right now, I'm downgrading myself to the Russian parts of my brain when talking about this. In English, it would likely be called "conspiracy theory"? But isn't the role of the CIA kinda common knowledge these days? And my question is about how WIAH never ever mentions it. Of course, there's another question as to how much any elite can control (and/or engineer?) a society without it breaking apart. According to some, the fall of the USSR was a controlled demolition, too.
Another aspect of his ideas is that America infected with the CIA finds China its enemy because China lacks the intelligence agencies and mercilessly culls its elite preventing corruption and is thus impervious to being infected itself. This is why America needs to start a nuclear war with China, but before that destroy the Russian nuclear arsenal - which is exactly what Putin is doing (alongside useless projects such as Poseidon, Avangard and Oreshnik or nuclear icebreakers).
Another blogger whom I follow has said that the Krokus terror attack involved a Russian policeman cutting off a terrorist's ear, and that it happened on Purim where cookies are baked in the form of ears (oznei haman), thus linking to a ritualistic significance. This line of thinking would view the Ukraine war not as disarming Russia but more in the way of religious slaughter (because again, destroying the Dnieper bridges or going around Donbass are never even considered by the Russians).
Again, apologies for copious schizo, but nothing of this can even be found in the Anglosphere. All you have is either the liberals saying Trump is Putin's slave, or the Z-anon bloggers such as MacGregor, Ritter, Napolitano, Mearsheimer or Jeffrey Sachs claiming Putin is playing 4D chess. Russians overall are at least diverse in their views, but I don't see any critique of their models.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5hr ago
Are we pretending government employees are hyper competent now?
Trump obviously thinks HE is.
TK-421
5hr ago
Why not buy units in private equity funds then? Much better returns than Intel lmao
Not to speak for The_Nybbler, but I think the intent is to both exercise control and make money. You could conceive of a similar bailout not concerned with making money off the deal that's solely about protecting jobs / paying off unions / encouraging local investment even if it turns out net negative.
Buying into private equity funds would simply result in the government getting better returns while the investment goes to foreign countries / companies if that's the most efficient way to get returns. Buying directly into a company like this with these restrictions is certainly a market distortion but the idea is that it should still be financially net positive, just less so than in the most economically efficient world possible, and help support (their idea of) national interests.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5hr ago
Painting rooms in fun colors seems like something the kids would enjoy a lot. Though you might want to be careful about making it very clear that them being able to put their mark on the wall is not an every day thing, lol.
Dean
Flairless
6hr ago
Japan has its own demonstrations of the trope. Not as often as the leading main character, since those tend towards being crouching moron-hidden badass tropes. The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is about the only one I can loosely remember that played the 'could actually be incompetent' card... mostly straight?
Still, the 'incompetent but presumed hypercomptent' is a bit more common in supporting cast characters. One of the most famous examples is Hercule Satan from Dragonball Z. An actual legitimate world-class martial arts champion... who is hopeless in the context of the super-human saiyan power scaling. (And yet, is also the only person to survive fighting both of the end-game DBZ arc villains.)
Tanista
6hr ago
The original Mary Sue was a a parody of Star Trek female self-inserts, interestingly enough. Apparently so many people were sending in this sort of work to a Star Trek fan magazine they wrote Mary Sue to parody the phenomenon.
She wrote a vampire romance story where the main characters waited until marriage. In fact the entire story seems to be built on top of resisting the temptation to sleep together before then; Edward's bloodlust an obvious metaphor for actual lust.
The entire vampire baby plotline (where the choice is between aborting a fetus eating the main character from the inside out or...to let that happen and let her give birth and likely die) is basically an extended pro-life parable. It might be the most successful version ever really.
Characters explicitly refuse to call it a fetus and demand their opponents use the b word.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Star Trek invented fan fiction. This is, uh, not a male hobby.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6hr ago
Many elements in the stories do tick the GIRLPOWERR box. (Nearly every female character in the series is excellent superstrong martial arts fighter, justified by magitech).
...And yet, they don't actually crowd out the male characters, who are likewise super-strong martial arts fighters, again justified by magitech, unless they're just magitech wizards or some other variety of superbeing. Klaus Wolfenbach in particular is portrayed from the outset as more or less omnicompetent, universally feared and respected, and a massive threat to the main characters and their plans, escapable only due to the unwieldy nature of his empire. Othar, Gil, the Jaegers generally, all are portrayed as prime hero material, and frequently enjoy genuine spotlight time.
I'd argue it's the advantage of true belief; in the world of Girl Genius, men and women are equal, in every way that counts; muscle and bone mass and psychological proclivities are eclipsed utterly by the power of the Spark.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
I can't think of parents who have a consistent hard ban on disney, unless it's a generic no screens policy. But I also can't think of parents who allow the new stuff from them. Granted, filter bubble effects- but my filter bubble is probably at least as biased towards including parents vs genpop as it is to being conservative vs genpop.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6hr ago
Well then you'll get the same outcome as French Dirigisme: a very nice infrastructure and industrial base slowly rotting under the weight of uncertainty as all your competitors catch up and loot it until it can no longer support its own weight.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Mormons also actively check up on adherence to minimum religious practice. The Catholic church does this only on an ad hoc basis.
Bartender_Venator
6hr ago
Not terribly often, but sometimes. Just helped a friend move last weekend (though I did get some old books and a sweet radio that I will likely never use any more than he did). I've probably done bigger good deeds than this one but it sticks with me: I was staying at my aunt's place in a third-world country where she rents out flats. Some elderly regulars were visiting, and the man was in very poor health, clearly not going to be around to come back next year. One day I'm walking out of the vestibule as he's walking in, and he suddenly starts to collapse, I'm in arms reach to dart in and prop him up. He's a big, portly guy but I'm strong enough to hold him up, my brother gets in on the other side and we slowly walk him over to a stair where we can sit him down safely. At that age, in that poor health, and with the issues of the local hospitals, a bad fall would likely either have killed him or meant the end of his mobile life. There's also something particularly satisfying about being able to help somebody just by being there and being physically strong/quick, primal male stuff.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Mormons also have people checking up on their religious adherence.
The thing is, regardless of whether the government buys specifically stocks, the government will allocate capital anyways. Currently that goes toward treasuries and direct subsidies. The government buying stocks instead is pretty much a direct improvement.
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