domain:anarchonomicon.substack.com
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2hr ago
My claim is that anyone who says "we should simply tell them to not have sex" as a method of preventing unwanted babies is being willfully ignorant of the fact it's been conclusively demonstrated not to work
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
This was in the fairly specific context of a society with a female-skewed prime-age population (due to the extreme and unusually battlefield-only lethality of WW1) and a strong monogamy norm. The trad Christian approach was to put the surplus women in all-female communities under religious supervision. The effective pro-natalist approach was to support the surplus women in single motherhood. Of course, under the actual trad rules of large-scale warfare, the surplus German women would have been second wives of the victorious British (if they were lucky) or French (if not) troops.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2hr ago
That does seem plausible, although a bit too narrow
But also humans like to have sex so if you tell them "don't have sex, that is all" then they won't listen to you and won't use birth control they're unaware exists
I tried skimming a few papers but figuring out which states the data came from was a pain in the ass so I gave up, happy to both walk away feeling like we're right
LateMechanic
2hr ago
10+ years ago I fully memorized some fun complex rap verses, maybe a dozen or so, from stuff like blackalicious. Rather than any kind of parlor trick (people actually find it more annoying than memorized poetry), it was more just out of curiosity of how hard it would be. Each verse took maybe a few hours of intentional repetition, then sleeping on it, and then correcting mistakes on day 2, and it's done.
And I'm surprised that they've all stuck in my brain forever, but in a particular way: I may have to look up the first line, if I can't remember it. But then it all works as a chain, where every line leads to the next automatically. So the only problem is if there are repeated lines of words in the piece, where you can jump to the wrong spot afterward if you're not putting in more effort to think ahead of time. I guess the other surprise was that speed doesn't matter, and that rapping it all faster is maybe even easier than letting it breathe in some pleasant recitation.
I agree, which is why I didn't raise the issue or make an argument based off it. Eliot did, and did so as part of a wave of next-day response posts to dismiss objectors. The 'I can tell your post didn't resonate with anyone else' only works as a dismissal if a lack of 'resonance' is indicative of quality.
I am quite happy to agree that voting is tangential to quality. I also agree with you that it is 100% indicative of agreement/disagreement. An exceptionally high degree of agreement is the evidence of 'resonance' that makes eliot's attempted engagement flex, well, eyebrow worthy.
After all, if there's one thing more cringe than a dude-bro conspicuously flexing how they can pick up heavy weights, it is someone trying to do the same with light weights. It is all of the same arrogance, but none of the capacity.
Doesn't Fang Yuan start beating up all his classmates for money somewhere in the first 50 chapters? That seems to go a bit beyond regular self-respect to me.
And an RPG where the maximum character level is 10 would be pretty good if the progression was appropriately paced, with tiers of power between those levels according to your gear, specialization, etc; with the highest level being not a guarantee but an achievement, something akin to beating Hades on maximum Heat. Dungeons and Dragons and the computer games derived from it have the maximum level 20, and in most IRL games, players only really reach level 10.
FWIW, if you think the progression is too simple I think, as much as I hate to resort to that webnovel trope, you haven't read far enough. It should be cleared up fairly soon how numerous the barriers towards maxing out are. But maybe I'm just not burned out on progression fantasy with 10 million billion power tiers.
satanistgoblin
2hr ago
Medicaid is for single mothers with small children who are just trying to make it. It's not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couch playing video games.
Single mom is much more likely to be a dem voter. Republicans doing the opposite of patronage.
sun_the_second
2hr ago
Which men are we talking about? The ones in government sinecures, sure. I don't feel any gender solidarity with those.
ControlsFreak
3hr ago
How is convincing western populations not to do this going?
You say this as if there is some consensus effort to try to convince them of this. The reality is that for quite a while now, the dominant consensus has been trying to accomplish the opposite. Unless you think this is just a fully-general argument against any sort of minority view. Like, communism must be wrong, not because it's conceptually wrong or anything, but because it hasn't convinced enough westerners to be communist, for example. This seems like a very strange claim.
RenOS
something is wrong
3hr ago
I've always interpreted the djinn concept in a slightly different way; Even if you wish for something mostly benign, or which at least can be trivially granted in a desirable way, such as getting lots of gold, they will frequently fuck you over anyway, by actively contriving the wish in such a way that it becomes undesirable. The lesson, to me, was thus more about how a servant who is genuinely, fundamentally more powerful than you - even if the master-servant relationship is magically enforced! - is never truly just subservient. Especially if they are also smarter than you and can thus find loopholes in almost any wish you formulate, no matter how carefully.
However, as you point out, having limitless ambition and no moral compass means there is simply no pleasant natural ending state. It's just a permanent struggle until you're dead, or everyone else is. So even without a malicious spirit, the latter is the most straightforward consequence of getting your wish granted.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3hr ago
Thanks dude, that means a lot coming from you. But yeah, I don't visit the motte when I'm sick, so you're only getting part of the picture. I can't go into it further without revealing more of my identity than I am comfortable with unfortunately.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
"Chopped" is apparently slang for "rough-looking."
I will say, this is a lot better than there being a (new) epidemic of men being chopped up or having their dicks chopped off. I suppose if you wanted to get particularly creative, a particularly disgusting case would be an epidemic of meat intended for eating being discovered as, well, "chopped man"!
TwiceHuman
4hr ago
Despite liking some Wuxia novels (some having over 2000 chapters, making them a little wordy and repetitive), I didn't like RI very much. I only read about 50 chapters, but it just felt lukewarm (does it get better?). The progression system was too simple (in the beginning we're told that there's 5 tiers of Gu, which is like buying a new RPG game to find out that the maximum character level is 10) My second reason will probably surprise some people - it's too tame. I didn't expect it to be described as brutal on the Motte (it's described as such on Reddit, but Reddit is filled with people who are afraid of disagreement, criticism, light discrimination, and displays of confidence).
Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but what the characters in the story describe as boldness and arrogance just seems like regular self-respect to me. In a world where you can give people mental breakdowns by suggesting that men are stronger than women, yeah, the story can be considered based (and fictional characters which aren't pathetic is a nice break from modern slop), but this is still a relative judgement rather than an absolute one. Go back 10-20 years and I don't think there's anything special about RI. I've spent most of my life being called things like soft, sensitive, kind and innocent, but Fang Yang cannot even compare to myself in the personality traits that I see him praised for having.
Seeing romance as a weakness seems like the surface-assessment of a 14-year-old. You should rather let yourself fall in love with somebody far out of your league - this would help you improve faster. Motivation comes from emotions, so killing all your emotions doesn't make you a perfect rational agent, it merely drains your life of meaning and reasons to go on. I'm quite confident that crazy people generally outperform rational people unless the latter is highly conscientious - "you must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star". The "Dao" that these cultivators build is literally a worldview/a personal path. Manga like "The world after the fall" show this concept well. People who are too rational cannot do this, they barely have their own opinions and values, they believe that things are either universally true or universally false, they do not have faith in subjective and personal things.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
Is their heart going to be more in it when it's their own homeland they're burning and shelling?
Probably, yes. Civil wars do tend to have a lot of massacres because both sides consider the other to be traitors and not a legitimate state actor to whom the laws of war apply. Remember, "The Blue Tribe has performed some kind of very impressive act of alchemy, and transmuted all of its outgroup hatred to the Red Tribe." That's a lot of hatred, although perhaps still less than that which the Red Tribe has for the Blue.
On reflection - and you're right, I was kinda repeating old arguments without sufficient reflection - I was basically assuming "tyrant has first move, has the armed forces in lockstep, and is willing to wage Vernichtungskrieg", which is the worst-case scenario for the militia. I will note that you are, in fact, still talking about a lot more than small arms here; mortars are far, far more effective than small arms, and are not something the Blue Tribe is currently trying to take away from private citizens (I'm... pretty sure there's nowhere in the USA where random people can walk into a store and buy a mortar? Something something, Federal Firearms Licence? So then, a militia that has them is specifically either one with illegal stockpiles, one that's basically pulled a fast one on the tyrannous government regarding having such licences, or one with improvised mortars constructed after the start of hostilities when the term "legal" becomes meaningless). And even then, I don't think that's enough to win the war. The peace, yes, I'll vaguely allude to that being a fairly-likely win. But not the war, not if the armed forces are united against you for reasons.
georgioz
4hr ago
Agreed. Actually the first link about Oprah contains another 22 celebrities promoting childless lifestyle. This push definitely exists.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
That largely captures my impression from the review - well, it was this plus "man, that prose is painful".
I just don't see much appeal in this kind of, for lack of a better way of putting it, rationalist fantasy. Symbol manipulation fantasy? Lawyer fantasy? The fantasy that the world or power or being can be reduced to an endless set of rules, which a clever individual (who is surely in no way a proxy for the author) can exploit to transcend over the sheepish masses.
It's not that it's juvenile, though it is that, but something worse. It's boring. Most of what I got from the review was that this is a story about a monster calculating his way to power. The review suggests that there are compelling characters, but names none of them, and that there are powerful themes, but names none of them, and I just don't know what I'm supposed to do with what's left. It mentions a few things that could be themes - the nature of mortality, whether ethics are context-dependent, and so on - but doesn't seem to go anywhere with them.
At a glance I see a lot of tropes of internet fiction. There's the isekai protagonist, the idea of 'looping' or New-Game-Plus-ing reality, power-scaling and tier lists, and a story that's basically about a smart nerd exploiting the game mechanics of reality, and this is all wrapped in the endless, self-indulgent length that is a common flaw of amateur authors who are a bit too in love with their own creation.
I'm glad that the OP enjoyed the story, but for me, that sounds like something I never want to read.
Tree
4hr ago
Trad christians pro-natality is a byproduct of their anti-sex mindset: every sex act must carry the maximum penalty, and a child is the last punishment available when they run out of stones and insults. By contrast, nazis are pro-natality first , and a ‘sex positive’ mindset is a natural consequence.
georgioz
4hr ago
I think this depends on what you view as "role model". Would you for instance say that Andrew Tate is a role model? Even if I disagree with his prescriptions, I would definitely agree that he is a role model for large number of young men, even though he is incessantly criticized from left and right, often more from especially socially conservative right. But in my eyes he is still a role model influencing millions of young men toward his vision of society, manhood and masculinity. It is the same here with what the OP talks about. A carefree hermit surfer/pineapple gatherer is in this case a role model for sizeable chunk of population despite the fact that people like you criticize it.
The key issue here is that it is hard to criticize any of this from the standpoint of prevailing culture that puts individual rights, personal and body autonomy on the pedestal. It is almost impossible to mount effective counteroffensive against these alternative lifestyles. What if somebody wants to work part time and pour his attention toward his hobbies and enjoying his life? He is just living his life and he can leverage the modern live and let live ehtos in the same way this ethos is used to defend all sorts of now normalize alternative lifestyles such as childlessness or DINK life.
Jiro
5hr ago
Is it? Most people don't behave as if marriages are transactions (in a nontrivial sense). For that matter, they don't behave as if children are property. People who do treat marriages as transactions and children as property are frowned on and considered disturbed and even criminal. You can in some literal sense use those terms but that ignores the emotional attachments people have to spouses and children, which massively affects behavior.
Also, some of your conclusions don't seem to match the real world. The average woman in favor of abortion isn't more likely to be progressive because they have the least to offer other than sex and children. Being progressive is associated with having the most to offer--they're likely to have university degrees, journalist positions, etc. Housewifes are more likely to oppose abortion.
You also seem to think that the belief about whether fetuses count as people is for all practical purposes completely downstream from other considerations. But it's obvious in the real world that religious belief in the personhood of the fetuses is a huge source of opposition to abortion, not the effect of it.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5hr ago
The OG Nazis, it should be remembered, strived to at least in theory to reduce the stigma of unwanted motherhood.
During this period an attempt was made to change views on illegitimate children. Adolf Hitler was quoted as saying that as long as there was an imbalance in the population of childbearing age, people "shall be forbidden to despise the child born out of wedlock". (33) According to Lisa Pine, the author of Nazi Family Policy (1997), the Nazi state no longer saw the single mother as "degenerate" and placed the single mother who had given a child life, higher than the woman who had "avoided having children in her marriage on egotistical grounds". (34)
It has been argued by the historian, Cate Haste, that in the 1930s "most European countries stigmatized unmarried mothers as a threat to the institution of marriage". In Nazi Germany, however, motherhood and procreation by women of "good blood" were so highly valued that steps were taken to "re-cast the image of the unmarried mother and illegitimate child". It was claimed the "bourgeois concept of marriage and morality was outmoded as far as Nazi population policy was concerned. (35) The Nazi campaign was "designed to confer parity of status as well as of public esteem on unmarried mothers and their offspring". (36)
Heinrich Himmler explained to his masseur, Felix Kersten: "Only a few years ago illegitimate children were considered a shameful matter. In defiance of the existing laws I have systematically influenced the SS to consider children, irrespective of illegality or otherwise, the most beautiful, and best thing there is. The results - today my men tell me with shining eyes that an illegitimate son has been born to them. Their girls consider it an honour, not a source of shame, in spite of existing legal circumstances." (37)
Thanks for the advice.
The pattern to watch out for is volatility. She will draw away, try to make you mad, try to make you jealous, and start a fight in some capacity. Then, after the fight, she will get much more clingy and attached.
Not gonna lie I am seeing something similar lately, but it wasn't really there before I don't think, so I chalk it up to approaching critical mass.
If she has concrete things she wants out of you, and providing them makes her happier, then you’re in a good spot.
This is mostly how I know what she wants, because (to damn with faint praise) she shows remarkable explicitness/honesty for a woman and has been pretty consistently patient with explaining things to my autistic ass, even during fights. It's actually a big part of why I want to salvage this because this uh... doesn't seem to be a common trait.
Basically I see my problem as, pardon the parlance, having to System 2 my way out of what is really a System 1 problem - my goal is to try and make "giving her what she wants" natural/instinctive instead of deliberative.
Also, love is not really best thought of as a natural expression of deep and abiding emotions. Save that for the chicks. Love is about day-to-day duties of caring for and about another human.
That's exactly how I see it to be fair, it's also why I asked whether my difficulty with it is a symptom of something else - like maybe if I actually cared or cared more, it would've been much easier to do.
not least because you’re not gay. (I think.)
Thankfully not heh, but I am unwillingly learning about the jo/y/s and tri/u/mphs of human relationships, although my last gf was a literal fujo so I have practice if nothing else.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
5hr ago
No, we haven't met (yet) but I'm lining up my autumn schedule or just getting fired soon.
high-maintenance
Funny you mention it because this specific word is as close as it gets to a trigger for her heh, I used it once in an unrelated context (describing another woman) and she never lived it down, even bringing it up during said fights occasionally. Not exactly a red flag but it stood out enough to nootice.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
5hr ago
All good advice, thanks. These are things I know I should do but aren't in the habit of actually doing them casually, will work on it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5hr ago
The basic answer is that this is just not a big or influential constituency. No ladder pulling required. Neolibs with a YIMBY flavor don't run for office, and when they do they tend to lose because boring technocratic policymaking isn't just boring, it also tends to slaughter a lot of sacred cows (one of the characteristics of this faction is a disdain for interest groups, which is not a great feature for endearing yourself to interest groups).
There's some hints of this changing, but most of the people who would fit this bill are still working at the state or municipal level. Buttigieg arguably lucked out, leveraging a failed presidential primary run to vault from mayor of a small city to cabinet secretary.
Their mortal enemies, the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi)
None of these people are neolibs (at least assuming that by 'neolib' you mean technocratically inclined center-left, as seems to be implied by earlier remarks) except maybe Blinken, who, rather prominently, is a career functionary rather than a politician. There's no particular reason for anyone of them to care about raising up the next generation of neolibs.
Likewise "less progressive" democrats tend to be almost the polar opposite of neoliberals: moderate to conservative-ish socially, economically populist.
You are insufficiently cynical here. You target the unsympathetic leeches publicly in order to maintain support, and then cut Medicaid for everyone in a bill you don't give your own backbenchers time to read. 29yo single guys playing COD don't consume a lot of expensive healthcare (and when they do it is an ER visit after a car crash - which will end up as an uncollected bill for the hospital if Medicaid doesn't pay) - there is no way you are getting the size of Medicaid cuts the GOP are looking for without taking healthcare away from people who are actually sick, and the people writing the legislation know this.
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