domain:gurwinder.substack.com
OliveTapenade
5hr ago
To clarify - 'them' in the last sentence means West Africans? Politically empowered West Africans means a bloated and corrupt government, you think?
Do you think the US should aim to disempower West Africans? What would that mean? Banning them from running for office? Banning them from voting?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
5hr ago
There may be some actions being taken that contribute to affirming the success of West African immigrants, over and above similar things for other groups, especially since they are not held back by ADOS culture.
That being said, urban Whites are cooked, this has been a reactionary belief for a while.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
5hr ago
If were talking about the effect of a ~one time experience, then comedowns arent necessarily relevant. We might imagine for example someone seeing "Wow, its possible to be happy" and that giving him hope in life. That hope might point down the abyss, but thats only measurable when you get there.
I think it's been quite reasonably established that the particular drugs you've mentioned so far aren't generally beneficial for depression, be it for a once off dose or on the regular.
There are limited circumstances where stimulants might help, such as in ADHD, where they provide mood benefits and increase functioning. That is not equivalent to endorsing cocaine for depression, it's a shitty choice in that regard. Too euphoric and addictive, wears off too quickly.
Yes, thats the point. The value of the cliche depends on not thinking you can outsmart it.
Are you aware of what doctors generally do? There's an endless list of substances that, if used recklessly or without sufficient knowledge, lead to harm. There's a drastic difference between giving someone opioids to someone in severe pain after a surgery and taking oxy to get high.
I feel no need to belabour that point, you go to a medical professional to get guided, targeted advice even for risky substances.
Why do you think apparently different drugs work in such similar ways here?
That would entail a full lecture on pharmacokinetics, receptor binding, neurotransmitters and so on.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
5hr ago
But the women who have this preference do not subjectively experience it as "I enjoy looking pretty for men." They experience it as a kind of endogenous preference for a certain mode of dress or appearance.
If this is a statement of your interiority, I value your anecdote because I think off-the-cuff anecdotes are often much more valuable than any amount of social “science.”
But if it’s not a description if your interior experience, on what are you basing this statement?
My experience is that women will be generally pretty willing to admit privately, to the right man, that they do enjoy looking pretty not for “men” in general (and perhaps that differentiation between “men” and “some men” is the whole sticking point), but for the sort of man they want to attract. The fact that this generally parses out to her looking pretty to a large majority of men is just one of those things that she mentally glides over.
However, it also seems to be a fairly recent turn of events that there is some mysterious source of social pressure that causes a significant number of women, as a class, to then turn around and publicly deny that they are trying to look pretty for any man at all.
I have personally been in relationships with women who were quite capable of holding both these thoughts in their head and didn’t see them as conflicting, which feels like it’s a point both for and against the vibes-based interiority you are describing. Another point against it might be that women 40, 50, 70 years ago seemed to be much more willing to say that they wanted to look good for a man or their man. Discounting for the moment the idea that women of either era are lying, it seems strange that internal understanding would regress to vibes.
To use a spear counterpart example, men who become absolute freak beasts at the gym are very willing to admit that they are doing it to compete with other men, out of a desire to move up a hierarchical ladder. Past a certain point, looking attractive to women becomes secondary to them. But they are not experiencing an endogenous preference, they are very clear about their actions being driven by a desire to exceed the men they see as their competitors.
TIRM
5hr ago
This is quite overstated. n=1 doesn't give us a lesson or trend. You can't generalize dating advice based on one billionaire's recent choice.
And do we know Bezos blew up his marriage for this or was his marriage already on its way out already and he pivoted to his next choice?
aceventura
5hr ago
West African immigrants to the US are quite successful.
Black New Yorkers voted against Mamdani. Whites and Asians, especially zoomers, elected him.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Men can be great cooks. It’s just there’s a certain domestic… well, something when your woman is running a space.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6hr ago
As always these arguments confuse reasons and causes.
It may very well be that there are evolutionary forces such that women who have a certain kind of preference for appearance that is pleasing to men experience more reproductive success. That seems to me a very plausible hypothesis. But the women who have this preference do not subjectively experience it as "I enjoy looking pretty for men." They experience it as a kind of endogenous preference for a certain mode of dress or appearance. When you are discussing with women why they prefer dressing certain ways they are not giving you a description of the biological or evolutionary causes that may give rise to this preference, they are giving you their subjective reasons for that preference.
I think political solutions can encourage personal/political virtue. Imagine a really intense anti-corruption campaign, where high ranking people were actually given long prison sentences or executed for corruption? Wouldn't that work on the simple, clear level of 'cant commit crime if dead'? China has become less corrupt since the mid 2000s after pursuing this approach.
How does a culture become virtuous in the first place if not severe punishment crushing the bad elements? If the bottom-up anti-corruption from virtue angle isn't working, then one may as well try top-down. In the US this kind of approach is complicated because there are certain groups that are innately clannish and corrupt or so inclined in that direction that it's nigh-impossible to correct. I don't know why anyone expects West Africans to perform well in anything. You can look at West Africans in West Africa and uniformly it's a mess, regardless of history or laws (Liberia stands out here). You can look at West Africans in Haiti - standard West African demographics and outcomes but in the Western Hemisphere instead. And you can look at West Africans with a non-trivial amount of white admixture in the US, plus a constant inflow of white money - much less of a mess but still a mess. Certain parts of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, even areas of Washington DC... these are not places one wants to be!
If you don't want a bloated, grossly inefficient, corrupt government, don't let them have any political power.
DradisPing
6hr ago
I've been musing an effortpost about this, but I think that law and order has been an incredibly negative influence. It completely messes with peoples sense of how common things are in society and what the problems are with the justice system.
A crime and law drama that conformed better with the realities on the ground would be a good thing.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6hr ago
We've picked a plan off of a builder's site that we liked.
Note that architectural plans are copyrighted, so if you want to use that plan you have to also use that builder, unless the same plan has been licensed by multiple builders from a separate architect.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
Having big muscles does change people's perceptions of you. I doubt he would've gotten this banger song made about him if he looked like a nerd: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vTyeZjo7n_M
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
He has a space program, I don't believe it's beyond his power to get someone to manage dinner parties easily, or at least more easily than a massive 80 million dollar wedding. If anyone is elite human capital, it's bezos. He can learn!
Nobody goes that far as a matter of convenience. Bezos is not marrying out of convenience, there must be some deeper reason.
chooky
7hr ago
Hard to say without the quote, but it wouldnt be surprising if Levine is just making fun of Elizabeth Holmes.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
7hr ago
· Edited 7hr ago
I think this is actually sort of analogous to women allegedly preferring "dad bods". I don't think any woman genuinely finds a dad bod more sexually thrilling in isolation, but for a woman self-conscious about her own weight the idea of a man that lives at the gym and eats a stricter diet than a supermodel just sounds intimidating and miserable. I think 4chan NEETs are not necessarily attracted to a NEET girl so much as they just imagine that she will be attainable and have low standards in men and make their own failure less humiliating.
Why is whatever this boils down to as a notion of attraction less legitimate than the "in isolation" notion, though? People choose partners on complex criteria, which tend to include some reflexive components like "can I convince myself that the other person in fact desires me" and "how will society judge us as a pair". This is not just a strategic cope to make up for an organic preference that can not be realised - as I see it, for most people, the realisation where you see a happy future for yourself with another is attraction, butterflies and everything! (No judgement intended about respectability - the happy-future fantasy could be anything from "we'll fuck like rabbits in a public toilet" to "we will grow old discussing philosophy until one of us closes their eyes, never to complete their final thought")
I don't see why attraction based on this compound metric should be written off as less legitimate than attraction based on what the man might choose to beat his meat to while completely derealised at the tail end of a gooning all-nighter, or the woman's equally derealised fantasies after drifting off to trashy romance novel la-la land. In fact there seems to be a certain kind of essentialism that bitter people in all sorts of domains converge upon, where some very specific and often even irrelevant metric is elevated to Ground Biological Truth and everything else is ultimately seen as fakery and pretense - "he might say he likes me but Science says that he ultimately would prefer someone with balloon tits and a hourglass figure. We don't make the rules", or "she might claim to like nice guys but Science says that women only really get off on rape and dominance, she may deny it but I'm sure it will come out eventually", or "I might seemingly be performing about as well as everyone else, but Science says that people of my sex/ethnicity are not good at my research area". Every such belief conveniently has the nature of those delusional parasite infections which compel the patient to scratch at them until they actually bleed and get infected.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
7hr ago
Always Windows 98 of course. Check my flare.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
7hr ago
When is the best time to go where there aren’t other people?
jkf
7hr ago
I can fit your stated requirements into 1301 ft2. Use your imagination!
Congratulations, you just invented the double-wide trailer!
We could all technically live, Gilded Age–style, in a single room, but I don't want that. I'd want a living room and a space for a dinner table.
Clarification: That big central room is a combination living/dining room, as permitted under IPMC § 404.5.2. (I was just too lazy to label it.) A width of 7 feet may seem small, but under IRC § R312.2 it is permissible, and Architectural Graphic Standards for Residential Construction fig. 2.24 indicates that it is sufficient for a dining table to fit, as long as everybody sits on the same side. (If I'd had the book in front of me when I made the drawing, I would have made the living/dining room 8 feet wide, so that people could face each other across the dining table. With that mild augmentation, the area rises to 1347 ft2 + 94.5 in2.)
I'm also trying to do a 2-floor build.
Note that the IRC's prescriptive design assumes that the second floor will contain only bedrooms and implicitly bathrooms. (Compare table R403.1(1) note b with table R301.5.) If you ignore that assumption, you may have to pay extra for an engineer's services, since the architect will not be able to just copy-and-paste from the IRC's tables.
Here's a design that meets your new criteria. (I'm assuming a detached garage, and not bothering to draw it.) (Whoops—swap the office and the kitchen.)
After this thread I think I need to hire an architect.
Come up with your own original design first, before letting an architect mess stuff up. Doodling random floor plans is fun!
Also, I think you should go straight to a homebuilder (which will have an in-house architect), not to an architect. I tried hiring several architects, and did manage to get one to help me pick a lot, but they generally didn't seem very interested in me. Presumably they have bigger fish to fry, such as designing larger commercial, industrial, and apartment buildings.
jkf
7hr ago
"Roadside trash grass" is about the equivalent of the Jungle Juice you are talking about -- making any kind of decent alcohol at home takes a lot more effort than growing good weed -- which is basically just gardening with extra steps.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7hr ago
That's akin to borrowing happiness from tomorrow at a very high interest rate, it doesn't end well.
If were talking about the effect of a ~one time experience, then comedowns arent necessarily relevant. We might imagine for example someone seeing "Wow, its possible to be happy" and that giving him hope in life. That hope might point down the abyss, but thats only measurable when you get there.
But taking this at face value: do you think peoples lives are worse for alcohol? Theres a hangover there too, and in the narrow pleasure-pain accounting, youre not coming out ahead - yet there are many apprently non-addicted people who are using it a decent amount.
It's highly reductive to dismiss such advances as "Drugs can make you feel better when used responsibly".
Yes, thats the point. The value of the cliche depends on not thinking you can outsmart it.
Nobody has lost their job or family because they drink too much coffee.
I am well aware. The link is not directly related to my point here, and I was wondering more about the idea that shes better off for it.
It also remains fascinating, the way people will respond to every part of my comment but the main one. Why do you think apparently different drugs work in such similar ways here?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
It’s stupid because nobody really bothers to argue policy (and probably never really did, unless you’re a policy nerd), they’re arguing on the basis of propaganda and vibes. Tge West and especially America are absolutely soaked in propaganda all day everyday and don’t even realize it. Name any issue, and people will be able to quote various talking points for what they want to be true, but won’t understand it. Get them off into the woods where there are no talking points or standard arguments available and people will absolutely sputter trying to come up with any sort of argument or explanation of what they actually want or how the policies they say they want will get them there.
But until people actually see themselves as embedded in the machine they won’t even understand that they understand nothing about the world. So they argue about it and spend a lot of time trying to convince others they’re right. And each set of propaganda has the same feel good stuff in them. My side is the educated side and if the other side wasn’t so uneducated and stupid, they’d agree. My side is the moral side, they’re evil.
The problem with sheetrock(which 99.99% of new homes built nowadays use) when exposed to water is that it creeps. Even if you get a small amount of water in your home, you're probably going to have to rip out atleast 2 feet, if not more.
When I install wainscoting, what I'll do is put in water-resistant plywood, then ontop I'll use 1/8th plywood stained/painted the color I want, with the appropriate baseboard/edging that I chose. All screwed in. This does multi-duty - it looks nice, I can swap out the 1/8th plywood/trim later if I want to change the color up, and if I need quick access for whatever reason to the wall interior behind it, said access is fairly painless - just unscrew and do your work.
As a plus, you now don't have to worry about anything running into said wall and making dents in the sheetrock(it's solid wood), and you can screw in hooks/hangers/shelving as needed, should you choose to do so. And installing the sheetrock on the remaining 4 feet of wall is now piss-easy - you just put the sheetrock ontop of the plywood and screw it in.
From the sound of things, you probably won't have to worry about the above installation, hiring others to do the work, but this is just my experience doing all the above myself.
This is just my particular pet-peeve with the kitchen my father had installed in the family house - it's just small enough that when using it to clean dishes, water back-splashes everywhere, including behind the facet, making cleanup a pain. I'm not sure if there's a way around it in terms of sink/faucet combo, but when I finally get around to building my own kitchen, I fully intend to find out.
Generator system should be around... 16,000 or so? for propane, which I would suggest, given you'll be in the South. Foam installation - trust me, it's worth it. Just make sure you get someone you can trust to install it. Never priced shutters - that's just a wishlist item of mine that I've wanted to have on-hand SEVERAL times in the past.
The wainscoting above I did all myself when it was done, so I couldn't tell you off-hand what it would cost. Most builders nowadays would proably look at you funny if you request it, or do a 'faux' wainscot that's just pure looks/appearance. Any future home I build I plan on doing the interior myself, so I don't consider it to be something weird to do.
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