domain:gurwinder.substack.com
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2hr ago
There are many ways to promote pronatal attitudes & behaviors that do not rely on exposure to childcare. It is easy to imitate this with imitation like the “infant simulator programme” study I linked, and with media.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
Can you elaborate on this bit? I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
I'm far from a Puritan, but there's a certain tenant who recently moved into a rental house we own. They have a teenage daughter, she's thing and reasonably good looking, and she dresses in ways that make me want to avoid standing too close to her. Gossamer thin tank tops worn without a bra, which barely cover her stomach, and shorts so short I'd be arrested for wearing them.
I'm not aroused by her in any way that's above normal or disturbs me, nor am I particularly ashamed by any feeling of arousal I might have. But in any conversation beyond a few minutes, I'm filled with a sense that I don't want to be seen talking to her. Perhaps this is an overactive superego, a feminist or Catholic panopticon living in my brain, but I don't want to be seen chatting with a girl who looks like that. I have an inner sense that the image of me talking to a teenage girl dressed like that is inappropriate, and I'd prefer not be near her.
She's perfectly pleasant, if essentially uninteresting, to talk to; but immediately after I tell her whatever it is I need to tell her I cut the conversation short if no one else is present and go about some other business until her parents arrive, even if I have to invent some pretext to be inspecting or doing something else. I simply don't want to be seen by anyone to be chatting with a teenage girl dressed in that way, call it an extension to the Pence Rule.
GBRK
2hr ago
You are wasting so much time attacking my source in principle instead of just addressing it directly. Either put up or shut up. I'm not asking you for blind faith, I'm asking for you to put as much effort into a counterargument as I put into my argument. If the only method to mantain intellectual hygene is to dismiss opponents out of hand, then symmetrically I should do the exact same thing for any evidence conservatives propose to me-- including any evidence about institutional capture. But I don't believe in that, and I don't think you do either, because we are on a discussion forum. So, discuss!
mildly_obsolete
2hr ago
You can also make do with manual mod management on non-steam game installation, just need that workshop/forums access. Good enough if it's just one or two big mods you want to run, a bit of a pain otherwise, of course.
But looking into it now, apparently CreamAPI account risk is negligible. Huh.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2hr ago
Regarding 3/4/5, there has to be a name for this trope. No matter how alien or unusual the scifi or fantasy setting, somehow the main character is a Perfectly Modern Progressive with all the Correct Opinions on race/sex/religion/whatever, all the good guys share those opinions, and all the bad guys oppose them. It's not quite A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but along those lines.
erwgv3g34
2hr ago
Most of these don't seem specific to LitRPGs?
1 is just a low verbal IQ thing, which you see all the time in web fiction because it is not filtered and edited the way commercial fiction is; you are reading straight from the slush pile.
2 is something you regularly see in all fiction, including mainstream blockbusters and prime time dramas; if you want something that depicts intelligent and competent characters instead of taking cheap writing shortcuts, you need to specifically filter for rational fiction or similar (e.g. hard science fiction).
3 is a blue tribe shibboleth, which you also see all the time in commercial fiction. If anything, web fiction is more likely to depict genuine respect for religion, because it is less gatekept.
4 and 5 is just projecting modern values into past settings, which, again, happens all the fucking time in commercial fiction. As Eliezer Yudkowsky put it:
Movies that were made in say the 40s or 50s, seem much more alien—to me—than modern movies allegedly set hundreds of years in the future, or in different universes. Watch a movie from 1950 and you may see a man slapping a woman. Doesn’t happen a lot in Lord of the Rings, does it?
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
2hr ago
"He hefted his mace and swung at her"
Yeah but that just sounds worse to me. No accounting for taste I suppose.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
Refusing to take on the mantle and respect of authority, if that is your calling, does not serve anyone. It just confuses and scares them.
This reminds me of a plot point in the Wheel of Time series. At one point Perrin is back at his hometown which is being attacked by monsters, and people there look to him for leadership (which he consistently refuses, because he doesn't feel like he has the right to command them). It is only when one of the other characters gives him a speech to the effect of what you said, that he realizes he needs to step up and be a leader to those people in a trying time.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
I would say that the heft is part of the swing. You lift and make a motion towards your target, but I would not say that the swing starts only once the weapon is at the correct height.
Tree
2hr ago
I don’t know, bit anachronistic, and they don’t bring up this ‘liege solidarity’ anywhere else.
My theory is that employees think they produce a lot of value, at least equivalent to their wages + welfare (+ a share of ‘unfair’ walmart profits, which they reluctantly grant those bloodsucking capitalists), and that this sum is stable and independent of other actors, and prices. They equate the value they provide with the effort they put in, which is usually a lot, because low-wage jobs really are tedious and unrewarding.
So they think that without the welfare, they’d just get more wages. The idea that someone's work might only be worth 5$/h just will not compute.
Israel strike kills Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza due to allegations of his leadership of a Hamas cell involved in rocket attacks.
Corrected headline: Israel strike kills a Hamas leader and his subordinates, engaged in active warfare with Israel, and those people have been also employed by Al Jazeera.
Israel faces growing global condemnation over its plan to take over Gaza City
Corrected headline: Leftist activists who have consistently opposed every single thing Bibi has been doing since he became Prime Minister now are opposing yet another thing Bibi is planning to do. People who have consistently condemned Israel for every single thing Israel has been doing since its establishment are now are condemning Israel for this thing too.
Yemen's Houthis say they launched 3 drone strikes inside Israel
We launched three drones in the general direction of Israel. They have been shut down, as usual, before they got anywhere near anything interesting in Israel, but hey, we got a headline!
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2hr ago
I'll admit it's the long trail that interests me least (western U.S. supremacist, sorry), but I'll certainly read it. I do find the contrast between "generally close to towns and amenities" and "terribly routed trail with steep ascents/descents over awful terrain" to be fascinating.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3hr ago
anomalously high fertility rate into very recent times
Huh, no kidding (only goes back to 1960). ~3 until the early 90s, then a slow decline to about 2.4 until about 2014, and then a dramatic fall.
Here's a more historical one (by 5-year increments). That late 70s/early 80s bump is intriguing.
Iran arrests 20 Mossad spies, executes nuclear scientist for providing classified information.
Likely none of them are actual Mossad spies, and now they have one nuclear scientist less (and probably a lot less people willing to become one). Keep going, guys, you're doing great.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
China's fertility rate is low enough, and has been for a long time, that it's pretty much stuck. Exposing teenagers to childcare causes higher fertility desires but China does not have enough children to do this; China is also aging rapidly and will be running out of impressionable young people sharpish. And orientals have low rates of coupling, too.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
3hr ago
GPT-5 Thinking one shot this. The free Claude Sonnet didn't.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689f7c89-c6c0-800b-89c5-ba2988419f6c
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
It's interesting to note that Argentina is notable for it's anomalously high fertility rate into very recent times; this was plausibly due to its policy of targeting pro-natal gibs at lower class teenagers(which they had a lot of).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3hr ago
This sounds perfectly natural to me.
I think the complaint is that he actually hefted his mace before swinging (not while swinging, which is impossible), so it should be "He hefted his mace and swung at her".
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Yeah, a lot of these people think doctors are for 1) childrens and maternal care 2) emergency medicine and 3) really serious illnesses like cancer. Normal adults go to chiropractors, nutritionists, etc.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
And yet.
(in this metaphor, what's Xianxai? Gas station sushi?)
Lazuli
3hr ago
LitRPG is the literary equivalent to a three-day-old, half-eaten Arby's sandwich.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
3hr ago
"Hefting his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could."
This sounds perfectly natural to me.
Agreed on all the political points though.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
3hr ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ERNAqqNSId0?feature=shared
This matches my experience (growing up in a rural deep red area) of medicine. You go to the doctor for broken bones, bleeding you can't stop, or when you're in enough pain your wife makes you go.
theincompetencetheorist
3hr ago
Yeah but my hypothesis has nothing to do with Trump. It is just suggestion to ask: "Cui Bono?". I make claims with little elaboration and very little proof but gives my view that it is an useful avenue of thought if it is simply matter of corruption regardless who occupies the White House.
I have like 40 steam mods (happy to share list if anyone cares) so vic3 was an easy $50. I've also never paid for a Paradox game and put an ungodly amount of hours into Eu4/Vic2/Stellaris (less for this one) so it felt fair lol. Still never paying for DLC tho.
I do worry about this, it seems like it would be easy for Steam to book and aligned with their incentives to do it (they profit from DLC being sold) but they don't seem to care and I love farming free DLC so it's a risk I'll take.
Plus my stream library is pretty small, I'd have made a burner if I paid for more games.
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