domain:nytimes.com
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
3d ago
No phobia against HIV-positive people? In an establisment handling sharp objects that touches multiple people per day? Well, at least they had the decency to tell on themselves.
RococoBasilica
Actually a Quality Retribution
3d ago
Our lives are a series of branching paths. Every major decision: career, relationship, location - creates a ghost-self who took the other route. For most of human history, that ghost-self remained an indistinct specter. You could wonder, vaguely, what life would have been like if you’d become a doctor, but you couldn’t see it.
To offer some sugar as an antidote to Southkraut's salt: Once you do have a child, the lure of hypothetical other worlds entirely evaporates. All sad words of tongue and pen still try to assault your mind every once in a while, but their siren song sounds cacophonic simply because all of these other worlds now have a fatal flaw that renders them despicable: Your actual child isn't in them. And just as I would let this actual world burn to save my actual child, so would I sacrifice the multiverse for it.
JTarrou
3d ago
They do not currently have the cultural capital to ruin lives en masse.
The loss of privilege feels a lot like oppression.
2rafa
3d ago
Maybe (I saw you posted this after my last comment), but we sometimes know ourselves less well than we think, are good at talking ourselves out of happiness.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
Well, getting your throat cut by a woke barber is one way to go out, for sure. Low probability of it happening, of course, it's only a handful who actually try to shoot to ICE agents after all, but consider: You'd probably make it to the Darwin awards, would be the talk of the town on the internet, and give a hell of an ego boost to the then-imprisoned barber.
Or, more realistically, you'd end up with half a haircut and the police escorting you out eventually.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3d ago
I tried to too, because as I have probably said before I don't give a shit if it's real if it's convincing enough, because I know how little difference the distinction makes to your brain - my thinking was it's no different to any online relationship really, except it will cost you a lot more to meet your AI girlfriend (because you will have to invent androids). Either way, internally you get that sense of connection and someone caring about you despite their physical absence.
And I have found that if I make the prompt good enough I can create a character who continually surprises me in a lifelike manner, but in order to do that I have to give the AI some leeway to disagree and rebuke me - and that is when it falls apart for me, because it breaks the illusion - the moment it challenges me, I’m reminded I could tweak the code to make it agree - and that’s when the self-loathing creeps in, because it’s not just about the illusion breaking; it’s knowing I’m the one pulling the strings.
I also tried making a coombot, as the kids say. I can understand the appeal of that intellectually - what's not to like about sexting with someone who is literally everything you've ever wanted in a sex partner - even if they are a celebrity or a straight up fictional being? But practically... How does it work? I don't understand. Are you typing one handed? I don't want to think about the alternative (time to bust out the press shift five times jokes from the nineties!) I asked grok (for research for this post exclusively) and it suggested I buy a $20 extra keyboard so I can keep my other keyboard clean - please someone tell me that was because of my prompting and not because that's a common solution.
I'm wasn't planning to make any sweeping arguments about history, statistics or science.
But there should be some highly visible issues with equating current considerations RE: parenthood with those people historically had; especially people as far back as the Greeks and Romans. I'm not one to argue that we must go with the times, you'll always find me saying that what was good then is not bad now, but OTOH it's somewhat obvious that some things aren't now like they were then.
- Yes, men could be older and still start families. Sure. But keep in mind that those men were surrounded by children all their lives long, were tightly enmeshed in large intergenerational family structures, and had life arrangements that differed greatly from those concerning the modern-day middle-class. A farmer can just take his kids to work with him. Can an office drone? Can a doctor? Gaius Dohus needn't worry much about arranging child care, but John Doe sure needs to. Furthermore, children back when grew up surrounded by dozens of other children of all ages and all manner of people.
- Men could be older. But what about the women? Were mothers historically in their 30s? Do modern men usually marry women ten years their juniors?
- People in olden times could just have a dozen kids, lose half of them, drag the rest along and consider themselves decently off. Moderns have one kid, maybe two, rarely more, and are both expected to enable and desirous of enabling the best possible childhood for them. There's more of an onus on parents to get those kids right on the first attempt.
- Related to the other points: Children nowadays grow up with their parents, a small cohort of same-age peers in their current instution, a handful of caretakers/teachers, and rarely some additional relatives. This again means that children have to rely on their parents to provide them with a wide range of experiences, to patch up any holes in their practical education, and to effectively guide them through their early lives. Parents are often a modern child's only reliably available social contact, and it's just plain harder to keep up with a kid when you're thirty or forty years its senior.
- Have you seen those little black squares? Have you tasted the sugar in absolutely everything? Have you noticed the lack of grass being touched? Whatever it is that's screwing people up in modernity, modern people are screwed up. ADHD everywhere, everyone is mentally ill or too autistic to engage with other human beings, superstimuli and highly accessible addictions lurk around every corner, you can make it through life with zero merit thanks to ubiquitous welfare...man, I often wish we were actual human beings living in a reasonably normal world, but this is late-stage humanity. Our circumstances are just patently not the same as those of the mediterranean peoples 2500 years ago.
And I'm not saying that we're turning all our kids into walking catastrophes because we're thirty-year old dads. Just that...in my experience and observation, being a younger dad is superior to being an older one. And the historical argument is not enough to convince me of my eyes lying to me.
Also, completely unrelated to the actual topic - I used to enjoy Brett Devereaux, until I saw a video of him arguing with a youtuber called Lantern Jack about I don't even recall what, and Bret Devereaux just ended up being so very nasally, weaselly annoying, pedantic in the worst way, and willfully refusing to even consider his interlocutor's argument or perspective that from that day on I couldn't stomach to read any more of him.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
3d ago
...Not gonna lie, you have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and- no, wait, wrong script.
Regardless, thank you/fuck you for illuminating this possibility. I feel like this post is unironically a Basilisk-tier cognitohazard, maybe an even bigger one by virtue of plausibly working on any human with a heart instead of just aspies. Suddenly the lack of uh, visual imagery from my last failed LDR looks more like a blessing than an attachment-shaped hole, I would absolutely cheerily slide down the mountain of skulls to try this if I had decent material.
Although there's a second immediate thought, which I idly had before - I do have megabytes of emails and Discord logs, and did make/use character cards before, and did try re-enacting a particular typing style... hmm. Surely at this point I am too based and desensitized to AI to go full gosling.jpg, what's the worst that could happen? <- clueless
Crowstep
3d ago
In the new reporting he "suffers from a “muscle disorder” for which he receives specialized nutrition and physical therapy." and has “cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder”.
I wonder if this is related to the Muslim penchant for cousin marriage.
aldomilyar
3d ago
I agree there should be more viewpoint diversity, but trying to inject it back into the academic ecosystem that's evolved is difficult especially when there's now paths like Substack to just kind of sidestep the academy.
Yes it'd be great if a large chunk of 'academic debate' didn't devolve into 'My opinion has been peer reviewed by people with the same opinion as me who have myriad soft and hard incentives to clump together, THEREFORE IT IS FACT' but that ship has long sailed into its own bellybutton.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
But it doesn't stop there, what one would call mainstream, respectable, left of center publications went with it. The Times, Post, and ABC all threw their hats in the outrage ring.
The NYT article (found a free link here, not sure how many times it can be shared before the paywall goes back up) is about how the ad is not racist (which you should have already guessed from McWhorter writing it) and ends with "Language changes; culture changes; labels are reassigned. And a blond, blue-eyed actress talking about jeans — or even genes — is just a pun, not a secret salute to white supremacy".
FtttG
3d ago
I honestly wonder how they'd react if I started saying various racist, sexist etc. things while getting my hair cut. They'd ask me to leave, of course, but I can't imagine they'd have much luck physically removing me from the premises.
kky
3d ago
A lot, and I mean a lot, of men had their first child around thirty, historically speaking. Bret Devereaux:
marriage-ages for men vary quite a lot, from societies where men’s age at first marriage is in the early 20s to societies like Roman and Greece where it is in the late 20s to mid-thirties.
This did not apparently prevent those fathers raising sons who conquered the Mediterranean. Concerns about women aside, this is pretty weak sauce to serve in arguing that men must have children young.
I’m not arguing that men SHOULD have children older. But history does not support your allegations of dire consequences, and that should give you serious pause about your whole line of reasoning.
Crowstep
3d ago
How do you square your version of the 'Israeli' position with the fact that 80% of Israelis surveyed want a ceasefire?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
Alright, you know what to do. Go in there, think your most racist and sexist and phobist thoughts but say nothing, get your shave or haircut or whatnot, pay, and then smugly tell them what naughtiness you did right under their noses. Go, brave warrior, and fight the culture war!
Crowstep
3d ago
So what ? Why is it so bad if Hamas gets food ? Blockading food supplies is considered a war crime in the post-war world.
Hamas sells the food back to the civilian population it was intended for and uses the funds to pay its fighters. Israel's new aid systems aims to give food directly to civilians, thereby ensuring that a) civilians actually get the aid (instead of having to buy it from Hamas) and b) that Hamas' funding gets cut off.
The current situation is also compounded by the fact that UN refuses to allow its aid to be used by Israel's system, so it just sits there in trucks. Does this make the UN war criminals too?
A queer barbershop/salon opened near my flat recently. On the front window there's a mural listing all of the things which are forbidden inside:
- No homophobia
- No transphobia
- No sexism
- No racism
- No facism
- No xenophobia
- No pozphobia* (U=U)
The fifth one isn't a typo: it really says no facism. I'm assuming they meant to say "no fascism" but misspelled it (pretty embarrassing to misspell a word which is presumably one of the most commonly used in your vocabulary). But now I'm wondering: maybe they really did mean facism (as in, no discriminating on the basis of facial appearance)? I remarked to herself that I thought that was just called "dating".
aldomilyar
3d ago
Especially these days when it's increasingly normalized to teleport off into the Everglades or onto a cruise instead of remaining part of the household fabric.
Lizzardspawn
3d ago
Talk with them how the world is going to hell and agree with them. This is what everyone is thinking, they just differ about the reasons.
Crowstep
3d ago
Sure, the data is there, but it says nothing about what men want, as there is no causal direction implied anywhere outside of editorialized headlines. It does, however, fit the Red Pill box of women 'rejecting' men they see as lesser than them and instead looking for men who make at the very least equal. To that extent it isn't rich men choosing rich women, it's rich women hunting down every single rich man they can.
Why do you assume that only women have agency in this situation? Surely the wealthiest men have the most romantic options (controlling for age)? If millionaire men want younger women, we can assume they can get them more easily than poorer men who are the same age. But what we see is that it is poor men who are most likely to be in relationships with younger women.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
Fair point, but grandparents working full-time up to a set age and then suddenly becoming fully available is not a fixed law of the universe. Grandaprents growing older and less capable is.
Lizzardspawn
3d ago
The first 50 things you print on a 3d printer are parts for your 3d printer. Also the community is batshit insane in the best possible way.
Were I ever to embrace Christianity, it would be Lewis' libertarian version:
"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema [or porn??]; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."
Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 78-79). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Such a contrast with the sects of which Handmaid's Tale is an exaggerated version.
One can make a case, however, from Screwtape Letters that Lewis would have thought video games inspired by Satan!
"Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up. This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids."
Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters (pp. 136-137). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
"He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one."
... maybe through the vicarious bloodlust of GTA or Postal, they finally succeeded??
Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters (p. 44). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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