domain:cafeamericainmag.com
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7hr ago
It's not just grandstanding, the administration has done remarkable things like detaining and attempting to deport students who committed no crimes for simply criticizing Israel.
"Students". A guy who has spent more than 10 years as an undergraduate, mostly stirring up shit on campuses. A better description than "student" might be "foreign agent",
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7hr ago
It's the old established areas of Europe that have an allergy (or ideological objection) to A/C, not the ex-communist countries.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7hr ago
Those economies were a pittance compared to the world of today
Irrelevant even if true (and I'm not sure a meaningful measurement is possible).
Slavery and other similar rent seeking behavior is less of a detriment in a weak economy with weak competition than a global one with more competition.
There was plenty of competition in Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea... but slavery still persisted.
But personally unproductive leeches are a drain on society whether they be a slave owner or a union worker demanding busy work.
Being a slave owner doesn't make you a personally unproductive leech, any more than being a factory owner does.
Supah_Schmendrick
7hr ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
Err, the west covers for sex trafficking kids all the time, and you don't need to be rich and powerful to get away with it (though it helps). Popular entertainers get away with it. Politicians cover massive-scale abuse - far beyond what Epstein is accused of - up and journalists look the other way to avoid having their foreign policies outed as idiotic, avoid having to be on the same side as icky migration restrictionists, or to avoid being called racist.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7hr ago
It's anti-international trade.
2rafa
8hr ago
In a civilized society
So your contention is that there has never been a civilized society?
Tractatus
8hr ago
Nicolae Ceaușescu would dispute this. So would Stalin, for that matter; unless we're going to reduce the claim to a tautology, that the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible.
The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on, and who stay loyal so long as they have faith that backing the elite is a better deal than the alternative. No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if and when they decide "hey, why do we need all these lessers around," or elite incompetence erodes the secuirty apparatus' faith in the elite.
NunoSempere
8hr ago
Positive states of being are psychologically healthy
you can only be altruistic by improving yourself to be more than self-sufficient, so it's a kind of inverse parasitism.
mmmh!! top points, thanks
NunoSempere
8hr ago
I mean, we want people to be prosocial, provide public goods, play cooperative games, coordinate around positive outcomes. But you don't want this to be suicidal. Not sure if that's just a restatement. of what you are saying.
Skulldrinker
8hr ago
What's currently the most cost-effective and practical method of getting ahold of Ozempic/whatever weight-loss drug in the US without a diabetes diagnosis?
Also, is it worth messing with oral delivery, or are they flat-out less effective than the injection method?
I'm tired of people lying to me that I'm not fat when I observe the differences in the way the world treats me vs other people every day.
MollieTheMare
8hr ago
Honestly, it might be for the best for you personally. The conversion rate from in a Ph.D. program to tenured physics professor is laughably small. Even if you make it to the tenure golden land, you will have given up what will probably be the most productive years of your career in opportunity cost to make the starting salary of a quant at a B-tier fund. You'll also have to move a zillion times anyway for a very likely postdoc grind.
I don't know what the state of the art is in fusion research, but if you can manage to crank out even one marginal paper applying ML/RL techniques, call it AI on your CV and you should be able to get into the interview pipeline at some big tech or quant finance firms. Crush the coding interviews with leetcode grinding. Practice not doing anything too weird in the face to face. If you update your linkedin and are at a top 30 program, you should have recruiters contacting you regularly. They will provide interview prep. If you are not at a top 30 physics program you are never making it to the tenure golden land anyway, it doesn't matter how good you are. Something like 70% of the faculty in R1 research institutions have at some point attended one of something like 10 schools. Of the remaining, something like 90% come from a pool of the next 20. (US based, there's a paper about it somewhere on I think the arxiv)
Once you have your foot in the door, join the line of people hoping to jump to the next unicorn, or rest and vest.
TwiceHuman
9hr ago
I think that pure altruism is only impossible under the one definition that also renders "selfless behaviour" trivially impossible. You choose your own actions, so you naturally choose the ones you like the best, even if what you like the best is something like "to mistreat myself for the sake of others".
But let's talk psychology: Our mental states exist in a high-dimensional space, and one of the dimensions seems to be poverty-abundance. This is easy to miss if you haven't experienced the extremes of both. Do you know insecure people who are like black holes for compliments, affection and reassurance? That's the minus pole. But the plus pole also exists - a state where it becomes uncomfortable not to give. You'll usually have to be on drugs or to spend years doing spiritual practices in order to reach this state, but it's very real and basically a pure altruistic mindset.
And I have a reason to think that this behaviour will not disappear: It benefits the invidual, even when they do not do it for the sake of benefits. Positive states of being are psychologically healthy for the same reason that negative states of being are associated with dying earlier. And while altruism seems dangerous in that it's reverse eugenics, you can only be altruistic by improving yourself to be more than self-sufficient, so it's a kind of inverse parasitism.
On a negative note: I think it's literally impossible to protect society against exploitation without ruining every pleasant part of it. What follows from this is scary: Rules are bad. They're literally symptoms of problems rather than solutions to them. You cannot fix every loophole - you can only get rid of the type of person who would exploit a loophole.
Actually, I just realized a series of things - The way we're trying to reduce suffering is destroying all human experience. The way we're trying to minimize crime will result in the minimization of human freeedom. The way we're trying to model everything is destroying all mystery and wonder. Our attempts of reducing mistakes to zero is reducing meaningful actions taken to zero. You cannot solve all problems without killing all innovation. You cannot destroy competition without destroying growth. Many things are rotting because we refuse to let them die. I believe these are in the category of 'Complementarity Principles'.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
9hr ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
In a civilized society, that kind of behavior gets you executed, and not because you know too much.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Feral dogs are mostly a problem in places that don’t have wild boar(Americas, Australia). Mustangs have not outcompeted native wild horses for the simple reason that America doesn’t have any. And coyotes and wolves both outcompete feral dogs.
Theres interesting things going on with the evolution of feral cats, but in Australia and deserted islands, not the USA(which has bobcats).
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
These people will have South Korean tier fertility and they will not, actually, produce a race of super geniuses. They’ll produce photogenic phlegmatic types because that is what kids as luxury goods fill the need for. Docile and looks like a teddy bear.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
This isn’t an ‘act of desperation’, this is an act of smiting an enemy when you hold the rod. Thé DOJ likely has standing orders to go after any left winger they can.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
That has nothing to do with the Freon, that’s energy saving stuff.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Propane runs at normal Freon pressures. The government limits the amount that goes in a system for neurotic safety reasons(it’s flammable), which restricts its use to refrigerators and smaller air conditioners. But it works very well in those things.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Am HVAC tech. Modern refrigerants are generally ok mechanically. Your theory is widely believed in the field but R410 is a fine refrigerant- it’s high pressure so there’s more leaks but it works just fine when it isn’t leaking. Propane would be even better but neurotic safety regulations the manufacturers oppose means it’s a good while before it’s going to be legal to fill a whole unit with it.
The reason new A/C units suck is because of energy efficiency stuff thats sometimes government environmental regulations and sometimes the factories trying to make it more expensive. Lots of the time it’s bypassed in practice.
Don't know, don't want to know, and don't think its even the same league as the excellence that may only be provided in smaller amounts. Things like 4bpp's post on masculine restraint on the potential for violence, or WhiningCoil's post on the sort of envy/jealousy/loss of feeling 'raised wrong,' are all the better for being distinctly personal in ways I probably never will try to.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Finally, note that the inverse of that statement, "a system with five lazy layabouts who still get paid and one person who does the actual work", is an accurate characterization of unionized workplaces.
Unionized companies spend more on salaries and the like, but do you have evidence for a productivity difference between unionized and non union blue collar workplaces? While there’s surely a profitability difference actual productivity doesn’t seem to differ that much.
She's not like other bargirls, bro. You're definitely not just another John to her, bro. Plus, sex workers would never lie to their clients, bro.
You went all the way to the Philippines to spend your time with a single-mother prostitute? The Hock would sound like a better use of time to me.
And then you nutted inside her. Are you intentionally speed-running the cardinal list of "things not to do" as a Western man in Southeast Asia?
I understand the thought of having an out-of-wedlock child with a single-mother prostitute is rather unpalatable, to say the least. Especially a potential daughter, who would almost certainly follow in her mother's footsteps.
An expected value calculation is tough: while the severity might be high (she's pregnant and the baby is yours), the probability is low. Here are three possible avenues to consider:
- Do nothing, don't send her money. Ignore or block her. Chances are she's lying about being pregnant and if she isn't, it being yours. Even if she's pregnant and it's yours, there's no guarantee she'll abort instead of having the baby and sticking you with two decades of financial support for her, the baby, and her two others kids. Or if she's pregnant and it's not yours, pretending to you and her other Johns that it's each of yours, potentially earning up to two decades of financial support from each of you—a diversified portfolio of passive income from her scrotation.
- Send her the money for the abortion pills. Might be worth it for peace of mind. However, then be ready for escalations in the guilt-tripping and sob stories, saying how she loved you too much to go through with the abortion, and now needs even more money for pre-natal care and to make ends meet (especially since the pregnancy is or will soon be interfering with her job performance).
- Play a reverse uno card. Use her own spells against her. Love-bomb and smother her. Say you can't wait to be a family together, that you already quit your job in preparing to move to the Philippines so you, her, the baby, and her two kids can live happily ever after. You're stoked to be a dad to three; you wouldn't be a stepfather, but the one who stepped up. You knew it was destiny from the moment you saw her in that club. However, funds are tight now that you're out of work. Before she starts showing, can she pick-up some extra shifts at the club to help out with your plane ticket? You two can do a paternity test together after you move in with her, just a lame formality that your paranoid lawyer best friend insists upon while the fairytale continues. See if she breaks the sound barrier in getting an increased ick and blocking you from everywhere possible.
(edit... should I just move to the Philippines and raise a family there? the living there is really cheap so i could afford it. But there's really not much to do there except drink, fuck, and pray)
You're telling on yourself with that problematic remark about there being nothing to do in the Philippines except drink, fuck, and pray. It betrays a reductionist, colonialist attitude toward a country with a rich history, a diverse region with a stunning variety of cultural and geographical beauty. After all, what kind of sick fuck prays?
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Put the factory workers in the same union to demand the right to preassemble and hole drill. Make two wrongs make a right.
Real civilization has never been tried.
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