domain:asteriskmag.com
Jiro
3d ago
This one isn't inherently silly. Sure, pointing to the name is stupid, but Ra's al Ghul is clearly a Fu Manchu imitation complete with daughter. And the fact that he was created by people with a good record dealing with other races doesn't mean they can't be wrong when it involves Asians.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
To be fair, this is nothing new. Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan and J.Paul Getty weren’t particularly nice people either. And the old extractive industries had the same weird semi-sovereignty where one minute you’re overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy and the next Mexico is nationalizing your oil wells.
Lizzardspawn
3d ago
If I was the EU, I would be working hard to secure other trade deals with other nations
What other nation nations? Witch China which we talk down to, with Russia which we hate, with India that will never develop, with Africa that is doomed, with south america that is firmly in US sphere of influence or with Australia, Japan, Korea that depends on US for protection, all while we are crybabies about bullshit like human rights.
We could create a potent anti US union - but we will actually have to do what other players do - play realpolitik. Not play "performative morally superior" just because a century ago some people did bad things.
DelendaEst
3d ago
I think even viewing it as "It's okay to be white" is a view you can only take a culture warrior whose Time To Fight bell gets wrung by the word genes.
The most straight forward interpretation is clearly "she is hot and slim and has large natural breasts" and her race is only relevant to the extent that you think white girls are/aren't hot. Moving from "she is personally genetically blessed with beauty" to "she is an aryan princess" is such a culture war brained move that it SHOCKS me how many people seem to think it was intended in any way.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
Can you imagine if suddenly everyone started dressing in blue and someone writes an article about how concerning it is that young women are dressing in blue en masse? The only people who would care would be those who were against blue.
If the proportion of people wearing blue multiplied by an order of magnitude or more virtually overnight, that would be weird to not notice.
If wearing blue also resulted in a lifetime of medicalization, I would like to think people should care!
MonkeyWithAMachinegun
Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones
3d ago
Well I took the bar exam this week. It sucked, but it's over. Fortunately my test center was relatively undisturbed, but many other test centers had a bunch of shit go laughably wrong and I'd like to regale you all with some of the stories I've accumulated from some of my friends who took the exam in other states and from reading the /r/barexam subreddit.
1 - DC. DC was apparently Ground Zero for the shit-storm this year. Day one they failed to do any bag searches for prohibited items, and I guess DC has a reputation for being incredibly lax on security, so multiple people brought cheat-sheets with them to the exam and would study them in the bathroom during the exam. People had friends and family bring them outlines during the lunch break. This led to much (justifiable) complaining on reddit, so on Day 2 the proctors chewed out the entire group and conducted bag searches, leading to about a dozen people getting written up for having prohibited items. Also on Day 2, perhaps as some form of protest perhaps out of sheer stupidity (I believe stupidity for reasons that will become clear) four different times people tried to walk out the wrong door and set off the fire alarm. Someone fired up a joint in the bathroom, and half the testing center reeked of weed. At least one person, and possibly more, filled out their scantron for the multiple choice in highlighter.
2 - Virginia. Virginia was apparently mostly well-proctored, but the building that the exam was conducted in, which is the same building the July bar exam has been conducted in every year for something like 10 years, conducted fire alarm testing during the afternoon session of Day 2. The building also had multiple toilets back up on both days, because the convention center the exam was being conducted in claimed they were unused to the demands of a few hundred people using the shitter at the same time.
3 - Iowa. Someone crammed their lunch into the toilet, which caused it to back up and spew raw sewage all over the bathroom floor.
4 - New York, Hofstra Center. This one is actually pretty horrific, a student had a heart-attack during the exam, and the proctors apparently made every wrong decision they could, including shush-ing people who were begging them to call 911, chastising students for trying to provide first aid, and ultimately causing a delay of several minutes before the student could receive medical attention. All students who didn't suffer a heart attack were expected to continue working on the exam. Reddit link with most of the facts.
5 - Hawaii. Tsunami warning meant the center evacuated. No word as of yet as to how they'll be addressing that.
There's probably more that I missed, but I think those are the highlights.
5434a
3d ago
every gene is equal. No allele is ever "good" or "bad," ever "better" or "worse" than another
If no genes are good or bad then they ought to have no objection to an embryo being edited to have the "bad" genes that produce congenital disorders of one type or another.
The aversion to judging negatively fails when it results in the reluctance to provide any judgements at all. It's an overcorrection. Failure to exercise judgement can be equally as bad as eagerness (thisisfine.jpg).
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
There's also an extensive study out of The Netherlands on native, Western, and non-Western immigrant costs over time. The results are probably about what you expect but interesting to see documented.
BahRamYou
3d ago
wait, how do you actually make that work? Do you just tell people to come knock on your door at any time? Do people actually do that?
I'm not very popular even though I do my best to reach out on social networking. If I didn't have a cellphone I'm pretty sure no one would ever talk to me except my fellow drunks at dive bars.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
In a similar spirit to conservatives being liberals 20 years behind, the morphing from tits-and-beer liberalism (RIP) to barstool conservatism- yes.
Now resisting to do another dive through the Kontext archive. Some good commentary in there before he (probably) got that brain tumor.
quiet_NaN
3d ago
Yeah, Trump won this particular round of chicken. Of course, another way to spin it is that 15% tariffs are not a world-shattering amount, especially to the numbers he originally proposed. But all in all, it seems a bit more than just a token amount to allow him to save face.
If two people are in a positive-sum, mutually beneficial relationship then it is very likely that one of them can leverage the relationship for short term gains. "If you really love me, you will cancel on your buddies and go watch that movie I like with me tonight instead" will probably work fine the first time you pull it if your partner is invested in the relationship. On the short-term, tangible level, that is a clear win.
But just because long-term consequences may be more difficult to quantify, that does not mean that they are not there. Every time you pull a stunt like this, your partner is adjusting their valuation of your relationship a tiny bit downwards. Eventually, your partner might suddenly decide to move out and dump you.
Mutually beneficial trade relationships are not so different. I would argue that for past decades, both the US and the EU have immensely profited from the free trade with each other. Zero tariffs are a rather obvious Schelling point. But now Trump with his zero-sum mindset is in charge, and thinks that either the US is fucking someone over, or it is getting fucked over. In the short and medium term, the EU needs trade with the US, so they can not afford a trade war. In the long term, Trump is a red flag. If I was the EU, I would be working hard to secure other trade deals with other nations, so that when another MAGA president decides in a decade that he will not settle for anything less than 30% unilateral tariffs, we are in the position to tell him to fuck off.
When you have something of great value, it tends to become the only thing that people ever want from you. We can consider Elon Musk as a figure of intense material and symbolic value. He's one of the wealthiest men alive, he runs X, he runs SpaceX, he had a spectacularly public falling out with Trump, and these factors undoubtedly dominate in virtually all of his interpersonal interactions. It's probably a bit hard for him to just be a "normal guy" with "normal friends", innit?
This is something that is far more blessing than curse; a member of the aristocracy may chafe at the fact that their inherent social standing is all they will be known for, but it's sure better than being the serf that finds themselves without much value by default and who will need to scrape and bleed if they want to reach even a fraction of that. This dynamic shows up in the relations between the sexes as well, even in symbolic ways. Hell, women's clothing is skewed far more towards that of the aristocracy than men's clothing is; many items of male fashion evoke utility and/or discipline in some way (even male formalwear derives from military uniform), whereas many female fashions are expensive, throwaway fripperies which embody the idea that status is earned through not having to display utility, and being able to attain resources without having to dirty your hands by doing hard work.
Really there's a grand irony here that I think puts the lie to the idea that women would want to be treated like men: The only reason why women can even complain about that is because of that inherent value. The only reason why anyone even listens to these complaints in the first place is because they are women, and people feel their needs should be catered to and that their complaints carry more weight than that of the male sex. It is okay if women consume resources; they are the appropriate beneficiaries of help, and attending to their complaints is a worthwhile use of others' labour. The same is not true for men. Even the people making complaints along the lines that women can never stop being seen as women often self-consciously capitalise on the fact that they are either female or acting on behalf of women to give their point more weight.
If we are to start treating women like men (something I fully support, by the way, PLEASE actually start doing this), the answer to this complaint should be "suck it up, buttercup, and deal with it". The fact that it is not, and that women expect people to actually take these complaints seriously and spend time, resources and effort dealing with the supposed problem, tells you everything you need to know. Nobody, not even the women making these protestations, truly want women to be treated like men. So many women have been spoiled with this pernicious and unrealistic idea that tradeoffs are not or should not be a thing, that they can "have it all" - but the reality is that they can't, and that results in them never being happy and treating equality like a buffet where they can just pick the parts of the bargain they like while leaving behind everything they don't (so, the last century or two of gender activism). Try as you might to force reality to conform to that fanciful ideal, that's not how anything works.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
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.
She's the current it-girl, and it's been a little while since one was blonde and non-apologetic about being herself. At least that's my sense; I don't follow acting particularly closely.
As far as I can tell, she hasn't made any particular political or ideological statements,
That may well be a significant factor- relative political silence codes as conservative (ish) in a field overflowing with people eager to make unnecessary statements. Plus she does MMA and restored a vintage Bronco.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Franco was a failure because of a handful of specific mistakes- among them choosing a compromise candidate for the throne rather than a carlist and choosing to repress the basques.
All of these had reasonable explanations at the time, and probably would have been survivable if it wasn’t for Vatican II. The Catholic Church bureaucrats maintaining his regime(fascism does not have enough staying power) were very affected by this. ‘Not enough power for the Catholic church’ is a baffling criticism of Franco.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
I found Rebecca Ferguson much more attractive in Dune, despite her being over a decade older.
This by a very wide margin. And call me an Ayy-ophile, but I also liked the appearances of Anya Taylor-Joy and...whoever played Margot Fenring. Forgot the name.
Obviously I am racist, but I also just honestly think that Chani in the new Dune movies was a caustic harridan and woke mouthpiece, and from what little I've seen of her actress otherwise, she doesn't appear to be much more likable IRL. With those traits, race doesn't even get to be a factor.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
It's far and away the most high-budget professionalized "It's okay to be white" phenomenon.
Trolling feels too generic for this; is there a term for this kind of "the backlash is the real signal" thing?
Well, this one was from a different young twenty-something steeped in Tumblr leftism, ready to pounce on the slightest "racism" in ways that displayed their serious ignorance.
But they were quite vehement that the people at DC (specifically Julius Schwartz, Dennis O'Neil, and Neal Adams; not that they knew that) were engaged in deliberate racist messaging when they (back in 1971; again, not that they knew that) created an "Eastern" villain (Middle Eastern with some East Asian ancestry, I believe) to threaten the "Western" — and "implicitly white" — Gotham City like some kind of "racial ghoul"… and then named him exactly that. Oh, sure, they deliberately misspelled it to look pseudo-Arabic, but c'mon, "Ra's al Ghul"? It couldn't be any clearer what they really meant.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
I do own a perfectly modern smartphone and use it, but with the practiced disdain of someone who refuses be beholden to it. I make a point of not using it in human company, and I absolutely will chide anyone who pulls out a phone mid-conversation. I often leave it at home when I go out, so as to travel lighter and not be disturbed. I have every app except the nominal "phone" muted at all times, and even that is muted at night (lest some annoying robo-call wake me).
Humans are tool-users. I just insist on not being abused by my tools, and I try to remain independent of them. Hell, I even regularly spend a few days with my glasses off just to make sure I can function without them. I sometimes go out barefoot to make sure I'm not shoe-dependent. I'll spend a few days without coffee to spite the addiction. And so on. I'm sure this is all just pontless eccentricity and won't ever do me much good, but I grant myself these little things.
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
Straight guy as well, and I'd consider her pretty mid for a normal woman, much less a starlet.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3d ago
Modern "reactionary authoritarian governments" are still too modern — I don't recall any of them restoring feudalism and hereditary aristocracy, let alone pre-Reformation attitudes on the role of the Church. Franco was, ultimately, a failure, primarily because he wasn't nearly reactionary enough.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
No, that's your solution. Acquire some reading comprehension!
2rafa
3d ago
The deal is very good for the US but all the spending pledges are, as with Japan, pure fiction and essentially the counterparty just tallying up broad estimates of outbound foreign investment, government procurement and so on. The “EU” has no mechanism to force $750bn of investment, no framework to make it happen, and certainly can’t force sovereign governments to spend x amount on their own militaries in American weaponry. But, as the Gulf Arabs also figured out, if you add together all of your companies’ total spending in the US over the next y years that was already going to happen, it sounds like a big number.
As far as trade deals go, the EU sacrificed a a moderate amount to continue exporting at near-current levels to the US. The tariffs are too low, given huge US salary differentials for skilled manufacturing, to reshore manufacturing that is currently done in Europe to the US. But tariff revenue will rise and, on the margins, some US skilled manufacturing will become more competitive.
octopus_eats_platypus
3d ago
I own a dumb-phone and keep my cell in a box for when I need to use it for GPS/internet/etc in some situations (like when travelling).
quiet_NaN
3d ago
Yes, the conditions in the state of nature are indeed horrifying. I wonder if the past 200,000+ years of human evolution had anything to do with the incentives, motives, and options typically leveraged by its participants? Surely modern peoples are trained to understand those core motivations, and are honest about them, at all times, and not forming their basis of what is and is not good and proper based solely around purely instinctual self-interest. (Now if you'll excuse me, a pig just flew past my window.)
If I understand your sarcasm right, this seems like a fully generalizeable counterargument to most human progress. If you want to argue "back in the ancestral environment we (likely) did not have a conception of sexual consent, so I do not see why we need one now", the same argument could be made against other civilizational projects like trying to limit the murder rate, curing diseases or preventing starvation.
For women, they want someone as old and powerful as possible (more secure, more resources, more even-keeled)
I think that both in the ancestral environment and agrarian societies, age (above 20) was directly negative in a husband, but sometimes positively correlated with beneficial qualities.
Evolutionarily speaking, if you are a 14 and looking to marry, you perhaps have 15, 20 years of fertility ahead of you. Sure, there is some heavy discounting because chances are that you will die in childbirth or some unrelated cause before you reach age 30. Any children you have will be a net drain on resources until they are perhaps 14 (when they will either be in the position to sell themselves into sexual/domestic/reproductive bondage or work to produce their own calories). If your expected age at the birth of your last child is 25, that means you would want your husband to provide for your family until you are about 40 (or possibly 50 if you are really lucky wrt fertility).
That is a tall order in the best of circumstances! If the husband you marry is 20, he would have to be able-bodied at age 46. If he is 35, he would have to be able-bodied at age 61.
Now, I will grant you that in the ancestral environment, humans might not have had a conception of fatherhood, or long-term monogamous mating patterns, so let us consider agrarian societies instead, where both of these were generally a thing. (Absent paternal involvement, the trade-offs for age in mating are that on the one hand, paternal age is indicative of a higher genetic fitness, but also will increase the mutational load.)
In an agrarian society, almost everyone is a peasant. Most girls will not marry some noble land-owner. Working marginal fields is back-breaking labor, my guess is that most men give out before 40. What happens then is very dependent on the customs of the society. In the best case, your husband dies quickly and you inherit his land and can marry some landless 20yo who will be happy to breed you for the rest of your fertility window. In most cases, this is not how societies organize. The realistic best outcome is that your husband had a younger, landless, unmarried brother who will just take both the land and you over for him, but more realistically, he will inherit the land and marry a fresh 14yo. He might keep you around and feed you and your kids while times are good, but if he has to chose between his wife and his kids and you and his nephews, things will look grim for you. Realistically, the land might never have belonged to your husband in the first place, but just been leased out from a local noble, who will simply proceed to lease the land to some other guy once your husband fails.
Obviously, if you can become the nth wife of some guy rich enough that he does not have to work the field, that would be preferable from an evo PoV, but realistically that is not an option most girls have.
In conclusion, from evo, you would want to go for a rich man if you can, but settle for a young, strong man if you can't.
Exactly. There is no alternative. China and Russia are the only other independent players in the world besides the USA, and China is the only one with a comparable size economy.
If a President decides to squeeze the imperial provinces, they will get squeezed.
Now, the genius move would be to build momentum with these trade deals to try to squeeze China in the near future. China also can't afford to walk away from the table. Let's see how it plays out.
More options
Context Copy link