domain:kvetch.substack.com
Jazzhands
57m ago
It was only 4 years ago. That's hardly an eternity. Is there some evidence he has seen the errors of his ways?
Here's what you actually said
Nit: when did our definition of socialism become so drowned-down? Is anything that's not free (free-as-in-captured) market capitalism now considered socialism? The only "means of production" that Mamdani is suggesting be owned publicly are a few grocery stores, no? That's hardly a "seizure" of means.
Implication is that it's somehow unfair for people to be identifying this guy as a socialist. Given that he has called himself a socialist and he addressed a significant group dedicated to socialism where he quoted approvingly from the Communist Manifesto, seems like they got it right. At the very least, the burden of evidence is on the side that wants to claim he's seen the error of his ways.
If some people were able to determine this just from his campaign rhetoric, all the better for them! They made a correct prediction! The evidence is that their definition of socialism is accurate, not "drowned-down." You should be asking why you weren't able to see it was obvious to them.
faceh
1hr ago
Yeah. Not to get into the weeds of the evolutionary biology of it, but
"The way I dress/makeup is solely to feel good about myself! That it happens to 90% coincide with what makes men lust after me is completely irrelevant, its not about men's desires!" is the purest cope imaginable.
I've now seen it countless times, women who abjectly refuse to leave the house without putting together a cute outfit and doing at least minimal makeup. And when pressed (politely) its usually waved off as a matter of self-confidence or personal preference, and I just want to whisper "from whence does the preference come? Self-confident in whose eyes?"
Going to the gym, going to the store, going to grab takeout Chinese food, can't risk you might be seen in a state that might cause a man to overlook you. Especially if other women might put in 10% more effort than you and win the status game.
LotsRegret
1hr ago
It is easier to have a wife.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Hmm. It might be possible to get trendlines for something like CS2. But then, I understand valve has a long history of detection vs ban waves. It’d be very hard to measure.
Perhaps survey companies that sell cheats to try and keep skin in the game? I seem to remember seeing a retrospective from, like WoW gold farmers or something. You might be able to measure revenue vs. player base for a common game.
Intuitively, I doubt that video game cheating is worse today than it was in the mid-2000s era of PC CoD hackers and the like. Or the golden age of Minecraft servers, maybe.
DradisPing
1hr ago
Huma Abedin is a very different case. It's pretty obvious that she was raised to be a sort of foreign agent -- her parents are Muslim Brotherhood activists and they moved to Saudi Arabia to raise her right after she was born in the US.
Most women chasing after Alexander Soros are in it for the money. She was in a better position because she wanted access to power and thus could easily pass all tests about being in it for the money.
2rafa
1hr ago
There are some people who simply cannot be trusted around most of the opposite sex. They’re usually at least moderately, although only very rarely exceptionally, attractive, but they have an intoxicating charisma and can seduce almost anyone. The archetypal siren, rake, Mata Hari, whatever. Only some variant of the Pence rule is going to protect you from them (if targeted).
gattsuru
1hr ago
With eight people, all older than fifty and some over eighty, facing serious burns, it'll be a minor miracle if there are no fatalities.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
I'd urge to at least try "assimilate or GTFO" (don't know if there are any success stories as stark as El Salvador, though)
The best example in America are Germans. Germans went from being a fairly-unassimilated minority, with high non-english persistence and significant ethnic lobbying...to completely dissolved in the American "white" mainstream over the course of two generations. Of course, we all-but criminalized the teaching of German in schools and fought two wars against their coethnics with pretty stringent propaganda against the inherent evils of "Germanness," but it worked.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife. In fact it's the one thing I hear most guys complain about at work.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
That being said, I don't think society is unfixable. I just think that political solutions are pointless. We need what has always been the core of strong societies - a culture that promotes and encourages personal virtue. Without that, you have nothing.
This is why our politics is broken. The political machine has borged almost everything, and thus the other rival institutions have become rumps of what they would be in a healthy society. Education has been swallowed by the state in the form of mandated curriculum and state testing. Churches have little influence on culture as they have been mostly reduced to the few things that don’t touch politics and then trying to avoid the IRS crackdown for even broaching the subject of some politicized issue. Families are weakened because now that mom works 9 hours and commutes for 1 hour, her children are raised by daycares and the school system, with the parents as minor players in their kid’s lives mostly for a couple hours on weekdays and then on weekends. When politics is everywhere and running everything and no other institutions can match it, people hyperfixate on politics. When it’s not something most people deal with, nobody but us nerds care.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1hr ago
He's a caricature of a man. Toxic masculinity, minus the overt misogyny. Nothing is ever his fault. No compromises. All decisions are "tough", but somehow don't solve any issues. Manages to piss everyone off every time he opens his mouth.
Probably the worst defeat progressivism has faced in the US since LaFollete lost to McCarthy.
But, Chicago is a powerful economic engine with a multitude of billion-dollar-per-year, both publicly-traded and privately-owned entities across multiple industries. Even a few decades of bad mayors won't stop it, maybe just slow it down. Pritzker seems to be helping at least, too.
DradisPing
1hr ago
Monogamy is a huge time saver. A spouse can help you with all sorts of random life crap.
Bezos got married young and doesn't want to learn how to do things like plan dinner parties with his friends while in his 50s.
Sure he could hire personal assistants and prostitutes, but he's got a company to run and it's just easier to have a wife.
SerialStateLineXer
1hr ago
I just realized: Is porn called smut because it's "dirty?"
2rafa
1hr ago
My guess is that he just fell in love with her. If he wanted to fuck 18 year olds he could have divorced his wife 20 years ago (or come to an arrangement, like Eric Schmidt, or done that classic rockstar / Larry Ellison / Henry VIII thing and just had a succession of younger wives). It seems more likely that he was relatively happy or at least comfortable in his marriage and was then seduced by Sanchez, who is no doubt a skilled and immensely ambitious operator, and then divorced his wife (likely at Sanchez’ request, and certainly as a consequence of her will given she gave her own texts to her brother who then sold them on to a tabloid) so he could marry her. There was no buffet of 20 year olds to pick from, it wasn’t like that, and the billionaires who do live that lifestyle are essentially plugged into the party circuit, big time nightclub promoters, model / escort agents and so on on the Cannes/Miami/LA/Mykonos circuit with which Bezos was not really familiar pre-Sanchez given he was a nerd who mainly attended sober economics conferences.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1hr ago
I was judging him by his campaign, not by a speech while he was still in his 20s that I wasn't even aware of. Does seem to be a nice gotcha, though. Kudos.
If he brings up any more seizure rhetoric I'll adjust my priors, but for now I'll file it away in "Young politician says something strategically embarrassing to signal being in-group".
veqq
1hr ago
We might call it "agency", or projecting a sense of "in-control-ness", if not over his external environment then at least over himself. If a man can't demonstrate at least a minimal amount of "put-together-ness"
Nietzsche's Will to Power (expressing a sense of agency, freedom, self-sovereignty)
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1hr ago
As always, relevant TLP: No Self-Respecting Woman Would Go Out Without Make Up
Let me offer a contrary position, unpalatable but worth considering: the only appropriate time to wear make up is to look attractive to men. Or women, depending on which genitals you want to lick, hopefully it's both. "Ugh, women are not objects." Then why are you painting them? I'm not saying you have to look good for men, I'm saying that if wearing makeup not for men makes you feel better about yourself, you don't have a strong self, and no, yelling won't change this. Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, now you're saying the cover of the book influences how the book feels about itself?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1hr ago
Mamdani has not, as far as I know, gone to any great lengths to explain what a democratic socialist is or why he is not a socialist.
Weird requirement imo. He at least distinguishes himself as DemSoc:
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a New York State Assemblymember and democratic socialist running for Mayor.
It seems to be conservatives that omit the Democratic half of the moniker Democratic Socialist way more than progressives, but that's just my impression that prompted me to say "Is FoxNews blocking the term..."
I think if you're going to demand consistency here, then you should do so consistently. Are these capitalist policies he is proposing?
I mean, that's a bit of moving the goalposts, no? The argument is that his policies aren't strictly socialist, therefore his policies aren't evidence that he's secretly a socialist despite calling himself a democratic socialist. Why would his policies need to be capitalist in order for him to not be socialist? It's not as if all policies can be neatly placed a spectrum from socialist to capitalist - I don't even think that it's useful for a society to try to think of things in that dichotomy, but it sure is useful for propaganda if that's the way the discussion is forced.
Aside from that, can you name a policy that is purely capitalist? To get ahead of what your answer may be, I would argue that "deregulation" that is often cited as "capitalist" is simply rent-seeking cronyism. As Adam Smith said:
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords... love to reap where they never sowed.
- Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
Socialism at the federal level mostly means endlessly bloating the elder care apparatus
To be fair it also means doling out increasingly huge wodges of cash to professional activist organizations and favored political client groups.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
2hr ago
It hasn't "failed" so much as been undermined and attacked at every turn by our so-called elites and the rise of MAGA is in large part a reaction against this. If you aren't down with making America great you can get the fuck out.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
2hr ago
Do you think Bezos didn't think of simply doing a Di Caprio, or was afraid of the backlash?
I've often heard an opinionoid about the idea of older guys dating 18 year olds that goes something like "there's nothing we can talk about after fucking", and while lately it does look like sour grapes/Havel's groceryism when it comes from older guys, there might be something to it. Of course, if it was revealed that Sanchez is actually not particularly good intellectual company, then I'd be at a loss.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2hr ago
she should be satisfied with her own personhood
Do you know how many humans (male or female) are "satisfied with their own personhood"?
Not many!
We are all, at all times, engaged in a vain and desperate struggle to alter ourselves in order to solve the riddle of the Other's desire. It's not a woman thing it's a human thing.
"However, the thing to add at once is that the desire staged in fantasy is not the subject’s own, but the other's desire, the desire of those around me with whom I interact: fantasy, the phantasmatic scene or scenario, is an answer to: ‘You’re saying this, but what is it that you actually want by saying it?' The original question of desire is not directly 'What do I want?', but 'What do others want from me? What do they see in me? What am I for those others?' A small child is embedded in a complex network of relations, he serves as a kind of catalyst and battlefield for the desires of those around him. His father, mother, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, fight their battles in his name; the mother sends a message to the father through her care for the son. While being well aware of this role, the child cannot fathom just what kind of object he is for these others, just what kind of games they are playing with him. Fantasy provides an answer to this enigma: at its most fundamental, fantasy tells me what I am for my others. This intersubjective character of fantasy is discernible even in the most elementary cases, like the one, reported by Freud, of his little daughter fantasizing about eating a strawberry cake. What we have here is by no means the simple case of the direct hallucinatory satisfaction of a desire (she wanted a cake, didn't get it, so she fantasized about it). The crucial feature is that, while tucking into a strawberry cake, the little girl noticed how her parents were deeply satisfied by the sight of her enjoyment. What the fantasy of eating a strawberry cake was really about was her attempt to form an identity (of the one who fully enjoys eating a cake given by the parents) that would satisfy her parents and make her the object of their desire."
(From Zizek's "How to Read Lacan")
wemptronics
2hr ago
Tony Blair, Nicolas Maduro, Pol Pot, and Castro walk into a bar...
It's in the water. People do it without even knowing.
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