domain:mattlakeman.org
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
Who cares? It's absolutely delicious, one of the all-time great dishes. I don't give a damn about the color.
5434a
1hr ago
White fish + white flour + white potatoes, all cooked in neutral flavour vegetable oil. If anything warrants the reputation for bland beige British food it's fish and chips. It's not even cheap, it's practically the same price as a takeaway chicken curry with rice.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
Right-coded violence reasserts itself (?)
It's sobering, that this morning someone might have asked you "did you hear about the 40-year-old Iraq war veteran who committed a 'third space' mass murder over the weekend?" and you might have reasonably responded, "Which one?"
(Insert Dr. Doofenshmirtz meme here!)
Of course, like any normal American, the instant I heard that someone had shot up a Mormon congregation and burned their house of worship to the ground I crossed my fingers and prayed the perpetrator was a member of my outgroup immediately wondered if the shooter was a right-coded wingnut who somehow blamed Charlie Kirk's death on the Mormons.
(I've never managed to determine whether Tyler Robinson and his family are actually Mormon, or maybe were Mormon at some point, but nobody seems to care; apparently all anyone else wants to know is whether he was really a gay furry, a groyper, or both. But living in Utah seems sufficiently Mormon-adjacent that a psychotic killer could draw the association.)
So far, no apparent Kirk connection! However the Michigan shooter indeed regarded Mormons as the anti-Christ. Perhaps that's the whole story: he just really, really disliked Mormons (sort of like everyone else). This makes Donald Trump's commentary interesting; the President immediately declared that this was a "targeted attack on Christians" and was met with an Evangelical chorus of "Mormons aren't Christians" (which to me seems a little tone deaf, under the circumstances, but times being what they are...). In any event this is probably the deadliest case of targeted violence against Mormon congregations since the 19th century.
(There was apparently a bomb threat in 1993 that could have been a mass casualty event, had the explosives been real. Other than that, I'm not an expert on hate crimes but Google does not seem to think that Mormons are very often the target of such things.)
The North Carolina shooter got less attention (he did not burn down any churches), but that didn't stop Newsweek from digging into some peculiarities of history:
They also confirmed on Sunday that “Mr. Nigel Edge actually changed his name some years ago,” adding that they are working to identify “all of his past.”
One authority referred to him as “Sean,” and according to public records that Newsweek obtained, he previously identified as Sean DeBevoise.
...
According to a 2020 self-published book on Amazon, Headshot: Betrayal of a Nation (Truth Hurts), DeBevoise wrote that on tour, he took "four bullets including one to the head." He said from that moment on his "life would never be the same," adding that "all of this was at the hand of friendly fire that would provide the most crippling mental damage."
This fellow has quite a colorful record, and part of that record includes the fact that
...Edge has been behind several bizarre lawsuits filed in North Carolina this year — including one accusing a Southport church of trying to kill him.
The suit, filed in May, claimed the Generations Church was behind a “civil conspiracy” masterminded by the LGBTQ community and white supremacist pedophiles to kill Edge because he’s “a straight man.”
In January, Edge filed a similar suit against the Brunswick Medical Center, accusing it of being part of a conspiracy launched by “LGBTQ White Supremacists” who were allegedly out to get him because he survived their attack in Iraq.
This reads like schizophrenia to me, but on balance it seems more right-coded than left-coded, concerns over "white supremacists" notwithstanding.
All this seems to have the usual left-coded social media spaces crowing; they have spent the past few weeks assuring us all that right wing extremism is far, far more common and deadly than left wing extremism. But to my mind, neither of these cases quite reach that "political extremism" threshold. The Michigan shooting appears to be genuine sectarian violence of a kind rarely seen in the United States, and the North Carolina shooting looks like a textbook mental health event. Nevertheless, I have no difficulty seeing these as right-coded, for the simple reason that they were carried out against minority groups by white, middle-aged, ex-military men. That's red tribe quite regardless of what their actual political views are--indeed, whether they have any coherent political views at all.
This got me thinking about all the other violence that I see as a blue tribe problem, quite regardless of its ideological roots. The obvious one that Charlie Kirk himself occasionally gestured toward was inner city urban gang violence; that is blue-coded violence, to my mind, though it is arguably "politically neutral." A couple weeks ago I suggested that we should be paying closer attention to the role that "Neutral vs. Conservative" thinking has to play in the national conversation on identity-oriented violence. This weekend's events strengthen that impression, for me. I do not really like the "stochastic terrorism" framing, particularly given my attachment to significant freedom of speech. But neither can I comfortably assign all responsibility for these events strictly to individual perpetrators.
I wish I had something wiser to say about that. I would like there to be less violence everywhere, but certainly the trend toward deliberately directing violence against unarmed, unsuspecting innocents seems like an especially problematic escalation, and one our political system seems to be contributing toward even when our specific political commitments do not. I don't know if drawing a distinction between "tribe-coded" and "tribe-caused" is helpful. But it is a thought I had, and have not seen expressed elsewhere, so I thought I should test it here.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
Problem one: Italy does not believe it exists to spread Italian influence and culture. There are no Italian missionaries spreading the message of Al dente pasta. Islam is a missionary religion with a strong cultural belief in forcing others to adapt to their religion.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
I think honestly it’s because it wasn’t authentic in a sense. They didn’t embrace the happy clappy because they thought it would make better Catholics, they kinda did it to appeal to outsiders.
SkoomaDentist
1hr ago
I've found my recommendations to be often reasonably decent as long as I keep engaging in that heavy curation.
SkoomaDentist
2hr ago
concerns about attacks by wildlife are usually the mark of a greenhorn
Except of course attacks by ticks, mosquitoes, horseflies, blackflies, deerflies and wasps (not to forget midges if you're in Scotland). And probably a bunch more that luckily don't live up here. Goddamned motherfuckers.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I’m generally in favor of controlled legal immigration, but I just don’t understand the food and music angle. Those things frankly don’t matter at all. Like, okay, suppose I transport you to his nightmare alternative universe in which Americans have never tasted lasagna. Okay, so is it that bad? Is America truly worse off if we don’t have pasta?
SkoomaDentist
2hr ago
The OP specifically mentioned they are not in "grizz country".
Also grizzlies are quite literally the same species. The Northern American subpopulation just hasn't developed as much fear of humans as the European one but similar differences exist even between local Eurasian brown bear populations depending on how remote the larger area is and has historically been.
Now polar bears, they are scary fuckers and will happily hunt a human.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
Luckily, it's the modern era now, and Italy has modern infrastructure. You can get pizza in Rome now, or risotto in Bologna, or really whatever you want in any major city. You can even get (gasp) non-Italian food! And sometimes (double gasp) it's actually better, because the local specialty places are just as likely to be cutting corners to save money.
But of course that's not what tourists want. They want to go to a very specific area, eat a very specific thing that got invented there 500 years ago, take a picture of themselves eating in front of a romantic backdrop, and then brag to there friends that it was just so much better than what you'd get back home, even if the restaurant back home is cooking the exact same food with better equipment and higher quality ingrediants. They'd lose massive hipster cred if they were seen eating the "wrong" food in Italy, even if they were eating it with actual Italian locals because locals also like to eat a variety of foods and they're not going to eat spaghetti bolognese every single day. They can appreciate a good kebab or chicken tikka massala just as much as anyone.
Lewis2
2hr ago
YouTube used to be very good at recommending interesting, relevant content. It still occasionally recommends a gem that I would never have known to search for otherwise.
cjet79
2hr ago
The lines are often blurred between state and non-state actors. That is usually part of the problem with corruption, that the state hasn't fully locked down a monopoly on violence.
I was mentally thinking of France and Scotland when I thought of corrupt state actors.
It's been the longest amount of time since they were bad about corruption, but they absolutely were not free of it in 17th and most of the 18th centuries. The king of France would sell these tax collector positions that were basically approved banditry. In England it was difficult to run anything larger than a family business without the backing and often bribing of a noble. These places were absolutely corrupt in a way that we would all call "third world".
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
2hr ago
Note also that:
- 400m is almost exactly 1/4 mile, which is part of why highway signs are marked like that instead of a round number
- A full-sized plastic jug of milk is still a "gallon", and cans are all in a weird number of milliliters because they're a round number of ounces (when things are rounded off in metric it's generally done to hide shrinkflation)
- The measure of land is still an acre until it's a forest fire (nobody knows nor cares about what a hectare is)
- People who give their weight and height in metric are generally recognized as being obtuse/snooty
Canada's a great case study for why English Imperial measurements are better than French Imperial metric when you're operating on human-sized scales. But then again, that's not what the French were going for when they designed that system, they designed it with the intent on forcing it on everyone else at gunpoint under the banner of rationalism.
But there's a reason nobody copies the French.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
No model is perfect, and im not aware of any uncontacted tribes that would answer for the control group. Maybe isolated villages in Bhutan or Nepal or something. Even then, they know modern civilization exists. Even going back to early psychology is difficult because psychology itself is a modern concept— it started as a field in 1900 Or thereabouts, and we don’t have much before then except maybe someone occasionally notices people acting weird and records it or reports on it. There’s not any clean data to be had, but I don’t think that means you can’t find hints by comparing different subcultures and the pathologies they tend to have or not have.
If “modern approaches to community” are causing unhappiness or causing relationships to break up, cultures that do otherwise are less likely to have those issues. If the concept of “love marriages” breed narcissism and divorces, then there are other cultures that have arranged marriages (Orthdox Jews do, so do Hindus). If there’s a positive effect in arranged marriages, it should show up. If TV and screens cause short attention spans, we have plenty of places on earth that don’t have them. Comparing those differences correcting for other confounding variables should give us hints about this kind of thing.
faceh
2hr ago
Right, the thing that stands out to me is that the Cartels very actively prevent the government from ever becoming less corrupt by literally murdering anyone they can't buy out before they can attain public office. Back before reddit banned /r/narcofootage it was actually crazy to see vids of Drug Kingpins rolling around in massively up-armored pickup trucks with gold-plated AK-47s. They get away with absolutely absurd amounts of violence on a daily basis, and while individual acts don't get punished, most of 'em eventually get got in the end. Except El Mencho.
So one can correctly say that the Cartels as a whole are a "parallel" sovereign occupying the same territory. Which isn't really true of anywhere else that I'm aware of. The primary government isn't really able to oust this force, unless they get outside help. Now, if they did get outside help, and they committed to it fully to the extent that El Salvador did, I bet they make good progress.
Notable, on the topic of European corruption, that is how Fascist Italy broke the Mafia for a period of time, which might have led to the strengthening of the Italian Mob in the U.S. thanks to displacing the leadership.
Russia seems to have fully intertwined its organized crime with its state apparatus.
The U.S. at large seems to have managed to keep its violent criminal element from comingling too much with its political class, AND has relatively low levels of "Politician being handed cartoonishly large bags of money in secret" type of corruption. I'll grant "insider trading out the wazoo" is a factor, of course. MAYBE that's a distinction without a difference. Of course, in my local area, the Sheriff got hit with a Federal Investigation for literally taking a cash handout. And he's Italian (his name is CARMINE MARCENO), so maybe its just a culture inclination.
Also, our politicians do seem to have a weakness for sexy foreign agents.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2hr ago
Kenya shares a border with Somalia, and seems to be doing ok. It's still a very poor country, but conditions are rapidly improving there. Life expectancy at birth of 64 years rising at about 0.2 years / year, GDP per capita rising 6% / year, infant mortality of about 3% and falling rapidly (similar to how the US was in 1950).
Kenya has no McDonalds but it does have Burger King, KFC, and Coldstone Creamery. And also Uber Eats.
Kenya is still incredibly poor but it's poor in a normal country way, not in the bodyguard and armored vehicles are not optional for foreigners way that Somalia is.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
I think it's referring to his grandfather, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Yglesias "the patriarch of a writing family."
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Vindaloo
Portuguese, is it not?
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
which is something like there's this overabundance of book smart people who have extreme problems modeling second order social effects.
I wouldn't really call that "book-smart", just "being a midwit" and/or "suffering from a few wide-ranging misapprehensions that change the apparent calculus".
(The one I'm particularly thinking of here is the assumption that SJ can just Tarkin Doctrine its way to a favourable result, rather than suffering the same problems Tarkin did.)
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
American Catholicism declined following thé decision to relax social controls; obviously post hoc non ergo propter hoc, but also prior hoc ergo non propter hoc.
I certainly agree that the American Catholic Church was not going to maintain its fifties peak. But the looming decline was not in 1965 something that was generally known.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I'm excluding Mexico because that whole situation is 'complicated' by the existence and influence of powerful Cartels
This is not, by Latin American standards, particularly unique. Thé much poorer golden triangle countries south of there are(or, in the case of El Salvador, we’re up until recently) even worse. Columbia and Ecuador certainly have extreme problems of their own with the same thing. And some of the Caribbean nations are just as bad. Brazil also has a problem with it, although granted everything I’ve heard about it is that Eastern Europe style bribery is also common there.
We know about Mexico’s problems with the cartels because it’s huge and nearby. Something like a quarter of thé world’s Spanish speakers live in Mexico, it’s the standard dialect, it’s relatively wealthy(by Latin American standards), it borders America, etc.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2hr ago
I saw it and liked it, though I felt that the overall narrative of the movie lacked coherency. Then I found out that in large part, the movie is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and now I'm impressed that PTA was able to take something from Pynchon (I've never read Vineland, though now I want to) and make it that accessible on the big screen. I can definitely see why it could be seen as resistance bait, though, and I'm sure for some folks the CW angle could be enough to sour them on the movie.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Maybe to an extent, but both factors are structural- restaurant kitchens are inherently tons of not super pleasant work performed alongside drug addicts for long and often unusual hours, and if you raise pay too much you have to raise your prices above what the market will bear.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Yeah, but the structural limitations of seafood markets far from the sea have nothing to do with the presence or absence of Japanese people.
You know who cooks thé food at the restaurant scene in DFW? I’ll give you a hint- regardless of the ethnic coding of the food being served, the kitchen operates in Spanish. This is true regardless of the quality level. You don’t need actual ethnics to have good ethnic food. People like sushi, so it’s worthwhile to train Hondurans(or whatever thé local source of cheap semiskilled labor is) to prepare it.
I'll admit to reading and enjoying these chapters. I do think you (probably intentionally) oversimplify and the conclusions to each chapter feel like a post-hoc "just so" story.
But I'll take the bait and riff on your story a bit.
Imagine there is another island that was populated by a number of different ethnic groups. These groups came to the island over different periods of time, sailing from other islands to escape famine or enemy attack. By happenstance, these groups had obvious physiological differences. By a similar process that you describe, one of these groups had better time management, better long-term planning, and greater self-control. Let's call them "Nahribs". The other groups had varying degrees of "capability", but the Nahribs had an absolute advantage in "civilization-building" capabilities.
While a similar process as you describe caused a "downward flow" of this Nahribs elite, the fact that there were distinct physiological differences meant that members of one group couldn't "accidentally" breed with a member of another group. And for religious and cultural reasons, such intentional inter-breeding was considered anathema and very little of it occurred.
Surrounded by their inferiors, the Nahribs gained expertise in coordination, administration, and (unfortunately) status games. Coordination was needed to ensure that the inferiors were working productively. Innovation was not selected for, since there were so many inferior groups who could provide manual labor. Over time, the populations grew large and administration was needed to run everything smoothly. With so much manual work performed by the inferior groups, the superior group had leisure time which they spent inventing various ways to "one-up" each other. And so society continued in relative stasis, with all the intellectual capacity focused on organization, political machinations, and navigating complex social relationships.
At some point, the Hajnalis came across this island and with their superior inventiveness quickly subdued it. However, it didn't take long (at least, not long in the way History is measured) for the Hajnalis to realize that this island had vast pools of moderately competent labor. The Nahribs didn't know how to labor, but that was ok: the few groups directly under them were not as talented as the typical Hajnali but were a tenth of the cost, and could perform repetitive, rote, tasks. Soon these workers were producing the bulk of physical goods. Not long after, they were producing much of the world's "simple" intellectual work as well.
As technology improved island navigation, more and more Nahribs were able to travel abroad. They soon discovered that the Hajnalis were living in a paradise compared to their native island. The Nahribs saw an opportunity: the productive structures of the Hajnalis were familiarly hierarchical and, as technology progressed, increasingly dependent on administrative work. This is the type of culture that the Nahribs' were bred to excel in! They quickly climbed the various bureaucratic ladders. Within decades they were highly overrepresented in leadership roles. In the new "information age", "leadership" was about spouting the right words, coordinating capital and human resources, and knowing when and who to back-stab. While much of their corporate climb was "deserved", much of it was also greased by their compatriots. Nahribs, naturally, felt closest kinship with other Nahribs. Unlike Hajnalis, Nahribs felt no ethical qualms with nepotism.
The Hajnali had laid the seeds for their own demise. The new Hajnali economy, flooded in abundant goods created by other islands, disfavored the types of capabilities that had once made their island so powerful. There no longer was the same need for innovation, industry, and individualism. In short, they became an economy eerily similar to the Nahribs' original island, and the Nahribs had many millennia of "management experience" on the Hajnalis. Elite Hajnalis, by participating in a labor arbitrage that forced their economies into rewarding "administration", had set the stage for their own replacement.
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