domain:tracingwoodgrains.com
I think it started with her wholesome(-seeming, I didn't see it) "Anyone But You" movie from yea, a couple years ago. Like an Abercrombie & Fitch couple starring.
Puritan Massachusetts
The home of bundling. Sure looks like a way of allowing pre-marital sex with plausible deniability (admittedly in a relationship which is well on the way towards marriage, but lots of short engagements and premature births expected).
People claim that goblins in Harry Potter are an anti-Semitic caricature.
Heck, I've seen people claim that the (decidedly non-mercantile) goblins in Goblin Slayer are an intentional anti-Semitic caricature; on the grounds that (paraphrasing from memory) 'goblins are always, and have always been, nothing but an anti-Semitic caricature — that's why they're depicted with long noses.' (Still not quite as ridiculous a take as the 20-something who complained about "anti-Semitic microaggressions" in a Mel Brooks movie.)
studies are coming out of denmark proving immigration to be net negative
Do you have links to some of these? I'd be interested in giving them a read.
Eh, I'd think of it more in terms of if an attractive looking woman is hitting on you, you don't need agency.
Also, I'm sure wealthy men are going for young women. Just not marrying them. To that end I'm not sure if the data is demonstrating that recently married men are getting married to parity partners or if these parity partners have been an item for a long time. It would certainly match my experience of people meeting in university.
My kingdom for something resembling 'authenticity' in a romantic relationship.
However this was like 20 years ago and I have no idea to what extent the woke has penetrated fantasy.
I haven't read as much fantasy recently as I wish I had, but from what I have read, my impression is that while I don't agree that it's as extreme as @YoungAchamian makes out, there's usually at least some element of wokeness in most things. For example, here's a list of some of the things I've read over the past few years and what stands out in each of them as particularly culture-war driven:
1/ The Chronicles of Castellane (Cassandra Clare): Everyone seems to be bisexual by default, although the main characters look at this point to all be ending up in heterosexual relationships, making the bisexual angle come across as oddly token in retrospect.
2/ The Library Trilogy (Mark Lawrence): One villain is the rabidly racist, anti-immigrant king of the city where the events of the story take place (whose name happens to be one letter away from "Donald"). Also involves inter-species romance.
3/ Where You Must Not Go (Emil Haskett): A Swedish urban fantasy book. Of the five main characters, one is gay and one is a straight male SJW who sometimes wears makeup (and whose parents are a gay couple). One of the villains is a violent, racist, homophobic ex-mercenary who's also a repressed homosexual. Nothing too extreme but all together a collection of profiles that would be quite statistically improbably IRL.
4/ Age of Madness trilogy (Joe Abercrombie): By far the most high-profile name on this list and also the only grimdark series mentioned here, which you'd think would be particularly resistant to woke influences. Arguably woke features include universally hyper-competent female characters whom everyone is in love with, a racist country lord who's also a repressed homosexual and finally a memorable scene where the urbane and sophisticated prince lectures this same country lord on the merits of diversity and multiculturalism during a visit to the capital (and truthfully speaking makes a much more articulate case than Sadiq Khan ever does). That such elements were noticeably absent from the same author's previous books, e.g. The First Law trilogy, does throw into sharper focus the exogenous changes that seem to have occurred in the broader genre.
Sure, here you go. You'll have to excuse me from re-typing all that, though if I have time I'll re-state a good chunk of this later in this thread anyway.
Does anyone have any experience with the US intellectual property system? I’m pretty confident I have invented a novel technique for denoising signals which I think may actually have applications in other areas beyond my field but I am trying to decide if it’s actually worth the trouble to try and monetize it instead of just donating it an an open source project I help maintain.
I work for an institution which splits royalties with the inventor (me), but I am very hesitant to get my intellectual property office involved since the second I do they will prevent me from doing option 1 above. I also assume the time and paper work burden for me would be onerous and detract from the parts of my job I actually like.
I also don’t have a good sense of how often inventors even get compensated for this sort of thing (if say a camera manufacturer uses my algorithm how could anyone every prove they stole it from me?). Is my intuition that I most likely won’t ever get paid anything anyway correct?
As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.
The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
-CS Lewis, Screwtape Letters
On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.
-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
-Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
It's a problem that was predicted well in advance.
Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny is an interesting essay that touches on some of these points. It fails to come up with much of a conclusion, and it doesn't address how/why this dichotomy is still true with so many Americans being overweight/obese, but I found it worthwhile anyway.
Aside from the goblins there was also an effort last year to label her a "Holocaust denier" for denying that the Nazis specifically targeted transgender people. "Holocaust denial" and "Nazi apologia" are anti-semitic, so she's anti-semitic. Here is an article from the time arguing the pro-Rowling side.
Her dad is black, mom's white.
I googled an image of her family, and holy shit did she win the genetic lottery. Her father looks like a frog with dreads. Her mom looks like a lesbian punk rocker who aged poorly. I guess the ugliness canceled out.
I thought about it, but then I didn't think the right people would find the PR subthread.
I think there's three separate motions: a specific anti-straight-male-sexuality coming from feminism, a weak effort toward normalization of other sexuality, and a broader and pretty strict anti-public-expression control from the professional class. The professional class doesn't actually like "crying low-testosterone manchildren, ponies, furries and ugly transexuals", it just finds them useful or tolerable for now; that's how you get itchio or spotify thrown under the bus as easily as hardcore porn sites, while at the same time so many discord guilds have dedicated channels for tits-(and-or-dick)-and-ass level smut and there's little or no working-class stigma about a month-long subscription to a ShowMeYourHoles-tier onlyfans.
Absolutely.
I remember an article about A&F intentionally trying to be “exclusionary.” Ah, that checks out: it was a Netflix exposé.
The models, the hiring for storefronts, it was all very specific. And why wouldn’t it be? Fashion gets a lot of mileage out of that. It worked really well for them.
This had to be intentional at some level.
when they are actually going to police their crazies the way the right's mainstream does
Tucker got fired for some combination of legal liability and picking fights with his management. Owens apparently just for the latter. Which progressives are in a similar position?
I’m not really sure who you’re expecting to be policed, here. Reasonable center-leftists don’t have any way to punish random TikTokers for jumping the gun. I guess they can cancel their NYT subscriptions if they don’t fire an editor or two.
Maybe they are. Maybe that’s the vibe shift I keep hearing about. If Nate Silver is right, and Colbert’s Late Show was struggling enough to get on the chopping block, is that what you’re looking for?
I'm not sure how Sidney Sweeney became an icon of traditional/conventional beauty as a rebellion against the "woke"/progressive/SocJus idea of "traditional beauty standards are bigoted and oppressive." She seems like a decent-sized Hollywood star but not particularly big, and in terms of her physical features, she's definitely very attractive, but not in a way that would stand out compared to other Hollywood actresses known for their beauty or some popular Instagram model. As far as I can tell, she hasn't made any particular political or ideological statements, and she hasn't leaned into her sex appeal any more than the typical Hollywood actress would be expected to, at least until her recent promotion of that soap that was made with her bath water, which I have to believe was inspired by some female Twitch streamer selling her actual bath water like half a decade ago.
Yet, a couple years ago, I started hearing her name constantly as critics' go-to example of a conventionally attractive actress that contrasted against the looks of the types of women that "woke" creators liked to put in their films/TV shows. And even Hanania explicitly wrote about her boobs as a symbol against "wokeness" or whatever. She just seemed to come out of nowhere.
Perhaps it's just that I'm not in touch with the media she's famous for (I still haven't seen her act in anything), and she is bigger than I thought she was. And when I try to think of other famous conventionally attractive young Hollywood actresses with blonde hair and big boobs, I'm drawing a blank, so maybe she really is the best choice for that icon.
In any case, I'm happy for her that she seems to be doing a pretty good job of monetizing her sex appeal, with that soap and also with this controversial ad. Honestly, that Washington Post or ABC would join the likes of Salon in problematizing the ad is unsurprising and is probably just the new normal; as others have mentioned, "woke" isn't in decline, it's entrenched, so much so that it's become the water we're swimming in.
Really feels like we managed to get the worst of both the sexual revolution AND the evangelical movement.
Sex is no longer taboo or 'sacred' in the slightest. Women will wear painted-on clothes at the gym and go around braless in public. Even if she isn't selling nudes on OF, she might be selling feet pics or is at least thirst trapping on Instagram.
BUT, you aren't allowed to stare at her ass or chest. Unless of course you go online and pay for a subscription, then you get to see ALL the goods. But only digital interaction allowed. Can't approach a woman in real life unless she approves, either.
Thanks to cell-phone cameras, women can send nudes to any guy they find attractive. This is not a big deal, "it's their body!" But thanks to cell-phone cameras, women are not as prone to whip out their boobs at a party on the off chance it gets posted online. Oh, and of course if you post a woman's nudes online you can often literally be prosecuted for revenge porn. Because sex and nudity are no longer a big deal, you see.
Of course you get the dating apps that make hookups much more frictionless. Yet you can't ever SAY you're just looking for FWB, and advertising that you're just there to bang as many people as possible is verboten. Unless you say you're polyamorous, then its somehow kosher.
There's like 30 different derogatory slang terms/innuendos to describe being in a noncommittal, ambiguous, and completely sex-based 'relationship,' just don't suggest to someone that they're making things harder for themselves and should try dating for marriage, what are you a prude?
You're allowed to complain about NOT getting sex, but if anyone hears you you're getting called an Incel.
If you try and convince a woman that she should pick a nice guy, settle down, and have kids with him as soon as possible, its exploitation and controlling womens' bodies. You convince her to become an online prostitute the very day she turns 18, though, putting her body out there for any given man to pay to see, you're just empowering her to be independent or whatever.
And now of course they're putting further legal restriction on the access to porn ANYWAY, right as we're getting Titty-based commercials on TV again.
I overstate, but its so annoying to live in a world where sex is both not a big deal thanks to contraceptives and the lifting of taboos... AND its jealously guarded by women (mostly), still stuck behind paywalls and used to extract resources, and people who aren't having it are still targeted with derision.
Its as if everyone knows that that's a critical component of human flourishing, but we're all required to politely agree that treating sex as anything other than a 'boring' commodity to be dispassionately traded makes you a weirdo fundamentalist or something.
In such circumstances, the mods have the option to remove a comment entirely. This seems like an honest, harmless mistake, so I'll let it slide. Ideally you'd be the one deleting and re-pasting your message elsewhere, but eh.
I'd have assumed she's uncontroversially mixed race.
Different strokes for different folks but 3/10 sounds pretty absurd to me.
My bad for starting with the analogies, but I'm not going to have us ride them into the sunset.
Let's get back to reality. Leftism dominates in academia and media and leftist ideologies effectively utilize them as central organs for spreading their way of thinking, for recruitment, for drowning out opposing opinions and for legitimizing their own. Do you disagree with this?
"black is beautiful" does not have the same signaling value.
If they go "black not blue", that might have a similar impact, but will likely end with both sides hating them.
Sorry, I didn't answer the Prigozhin analogy because it directly implies the whole fever swamp idea that this was directed by people in high levels of government. But since you asked, I don't think it's really a relevant analogy. The first issue is that you're comparing the actions of an authoritarian dictatorship to those of a liberal democracy. If incontrovertible evidence came out that Putin had Prigozhin, such as the meticulous documentation you suggest, what do you think the repercussions would be for Putin? How would they compare with the repercussion faced by an American president facing similar allegations and similar evidence?
Which brings me to my second point: The allegations aren't similar. Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian army during the middle of a war. This is not controversial. Alexei Navalny was the leader of an opposition party critical of the ruling regime. This is not controversial. For every person whom Putin or whoever has assassinated or attempted to assassinate there has been a clear, uncontested motive. It wasn't based on the "theory" that Prigozin was secretly the head of Wagner. Your proposed motive is based on a theory that Epstein was an "intelligence honeypot" for some organization, most likely Mossad but you've mentioned the CIA a few times so who knows. Whoever it was, the working theory appears to be that Epstein was used to procure young girls for sex with powerful men, who could then be blackmailed into making important decisions that would benefit the blackmailers.
If we examine this theory from the standpoint of it making any practical sense based on the known facts, it quickly falls apart. The first problem I have is that it muddies the water insofar as the motive is concerned. In the wake of Epstein's death, the gist of the dominant theory was that he had dirt on powerful people and was killed in an effort to prevent this dirt from coming to light. Now that intelligence agencies have been added to the mix, it's unclear to me if the theory is that the intelligence agencies had him killed to protect the powerful men who were being blackmailed, or if he was killed so he wouldn't reveal the existence of the honeypot scheme.
Either way, the whole scheme was a curious one, in that it evidently didn't target anyone in power, and seemed to serve Epstein more than any of the alleged targets. Of all the girls who have made allegations against Epstein, only a few of them claim they were abused by anyone other than Epstein or Maxwell. And the people who have been named don't exactly comprise a who's who of people you would want in your pocket. Bill Clinton (no allegations were made against Clinton but his name comes up so I'm including him) didn't become involved with Epstein until after he was president, and at a time when the opposition party was in power, which party had just tried to destroy him for sexual improprieties a few years prior. I don't know what kind of influence Clinton was supposed to have had on the US government at the time, except that he might be able to convince Hillary to vote a certain way. Trump was a real estate developer who was famous for being famous but didn't have any political aspirations beyond an aborted bid at the Reform Party nomination in 2000. Alan Dershowitz was a Harvard law professor, talking head, and occasional appellate litigator. I don't know what he could have done for anyone who wasn't facing a complicated criminal appeal. Prince Andrew was the brother of the heir apparent to a ceremonial monarchy. George Mitchell was a former senator and was out of politics. Some guy owned a hotel chain. I don't know what blackmailing Bill Gates gets you other than cash. Steven Hawking? A French talent agent? The only person named who had any actual political power was Bill Richardson, and the governor of New Mexico isn't exactly high on the totem pole. And however useless these people were in the early 2000s when they were supposedly being blackmailed, they were even more useless in 2019, when Trump was the only one on the list with any contemporary relevance.
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