domain:moultano.wordpress.com
jake
7hr ago
CPT apropos Epstein is the easiest way for frothing antisemites, e.g.; Andrew Torba, to cloak their animus in something ostensibly reasonable. Torba is clear about what he thinks, it's his motivations he gets to hide. Today he's playing panican on X. He isn't mad because he believes in a general sexmonster conspiracy being swept under the rug, he's mad because he believes jews orchestrated that sexmonster conspiracy (as if American politicians were famously free of deviancy before) and if unmasked we could finally begin expunging their influence and usher in a new American golden age.
I think Epstein was an op, just one that equally implicates multiple nations. Pizzagate was something entirely separate, but the righties have their wires crossed thinking these were all one thing. Epstein's Island involved 16/17 year old girls, and rarely 16/17 year old boys, being paid to have sex with various wealthy and powerful men. Pizzagate involved high-power dems and DC figures, among others, raping children who were then probably quite often murdered. One involves an activity legal in all of Europe where the problem they would have is that money changed hands. It is a simple taboo that we should punish as it functions as a critical test for good socialization, I just can't pretend there's anything actually unusual about a man wanting to have sex with a 17 year old girl. The other, as we all know and as Greer notes here, is a problem universally agreed upon as solved by woodchippers. They're not on the same planet of severity.
kky
7hr ago
This might lead you to wonder if maybe you should learn something from the wealthiest racial group in America. But no, the author doesn't suggest that. Send your kid to work at McDonald's, good for them, builds character. Who cares if Asians take 25% of Ivy League seats and conservatives find themselves increasingly locked out of the American elite?
Is the argument here that you should ape the wealthy regardless of your own norms and values, or that striver Asians are universally living good lives? If it's the latter, color me surprised, a lot of them are IME quite angry about the whole situation and hate/fetishize whites to a pretty uncanny degree. Is that the aim here?
But if he's well adjusted, does well in school, and has lots of friends, there's no reason to make him work manual labor because someone conservative writer who attended a third-rate university told you it's an "American folkway."
Going further, it's bad to raise your kids in some way or another because someone else told you to. On the other hand, it's good to raise them in that way because you personally believe it to be a good thing.
There's not a lot of meat on this bone. You very briefly mention the kinds of reasons why people might want their kids to try their hand at working before leaving the nest. You do not engage with them in any depth, and your refutation stops at saying "this is stupid." OK, in that case, what is the good life that these parents should aspire to providing for their children? You got something, right? The only thing I'm hearing is "genetic confounding" which, when I plug it into ChatGPT, comes out as "do nothing and trust the plan." Otherwise, this post is effectively just "explain to me why you'd want your kids to go working" with a lot of unearned snark.
Loquat
8hr ago
I don't know where you live, but in my neck of the woods pottery is accessible enough that there are multiple pottery studios within two hours' drive, and I know for a fact the closest one offers classes for both children and adults. Also, coincidentally, I was looking up pottery videos for my kids today so they could see the process, and there seem to be quite a lot on YouTube explaining all manner of techniques.
Now, if you really are totally unable to physically go anywhere and must therefore learn everything from books/videos/etc, I'd recommend woodworking instead, but if there's a pottery studio you can reasonably get to, I suggest you give it a try.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
Oh, the Jew-posters already think I am a Zionist trying to deflect any criticism of the Jews.
The post seemed mostly facetious, but the joke was too... on the nose. Like, the punchline is "Jews are degenerates trying to lower white TFR"?
Reports don't "force" us to do anything, but when we're on the fence about whether something merits an admonition, several people saying the same thing is evidence that it's not just me.
kky
8hr ago
I appreciate talking specifics here!
For the first part: $70k is well within the target range. The numbers I picked up said it was actually a little high. However - point being - while the average 1bed costs somewhere in the $1,600-$1,700 range, that means that half of them are BELOW that in cost, matching the roughly 50% of workers occupying that income range. So, in fact, you can get below the average and still meet the concrete requirements that he sets. Here's a link out to some cities with REALLY cheap rent. When you're talking $1k/mo or less, you could practically get away with minimum wage. Not saying you necessarily want to live there, but considering that the cities he has top of mind are NYC and SF rather than Des Moines and Madison, you should expect the number to be skewed.
And that's my point! He gives an estimate that is highly specific to the kind of coastal city he's used to (the guy's from Portland, OR), and the only reason to index that estimate highly is if you're trying to live in a similar city. (He's actually pretty far off even for Portland - median rent there is $1,380, which puts target income at around $50,000 - median income is just shy of that at $47,000, making it within reason for a single guy and well within budget if it helps you land a girl to help pay rent.) So the number is not what matters. He even caveats the number as "probably." I'd certainly caveat it as "probably," given that it's the wrong number, but I'm not here to beat up on the guy over the math he did or did not do before his fingers hit the upper row of his keyboard. I'm here to say that the meat of that paragraph is this sentence, edited down to exclude all bait:
It’s a job that pays you enough to afford your own apartment, own a car, and pay for an adult lifestyle.
Now we hit the real point of contention. Can the average American afford their own apartment, own a car, and pay for an adult lifestyle? When you consider that the costs of these things scale based on place and class, the answer seems to be a pretty confident yes, most men have the potential to do it, even assuming a relatively luxurious (but not frivolous) American adult lifestyle. If we're looking at the type of person who he is trying to advise, the kind of person who has even heard of Substack or who is willing to hire a dating counselor, I'd estimate that the number approaches 100%.
Let's go back to what you said in the beginning.
Although much of the post is the standard dress better, be fit, be more interesting shtick, one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was Get Better Soon's insistence that you had to be making at least $70k to be thinking about having a girlfriend, as well as living by yourself and preferably owning your own house/car. Now the median income in the US in $60k, and even controlling for the fact that men out-earn women, Get Better Soon is effectively saying here that more than 50% of men in the US are undateable.
I've highlighted the two assertions that seem totally unsupportable to me after reading the guy's actual post. He doesn't insist on $70k, he spitball estimates it, and he's wrong. Oops. As for the second, here's what he actually says:
The good news however, is that nearly all men can clear the bar if they’re willing to work on themselves...
This is why I'm accusing you of reading what you want out of the piece rather than what's actually there. If you told this guy "hey, I read a Substack post the other day that said you need to make more than the national average income to have a chance at scoring a woman," and then revealed to him it was his post, I bet he'd be shocked at the twist reveal. Call him innumerate, sure, but actually talk about what he wants to talk about. Are those fair standards for a job? Can nearly all men live up to them? I think so, on both counts. But, if we're being honest, assuming that there's a substantial contingent of men who CAN'T meet that bar is actually more about the job market and the housing market than the dating market.
So, for your big point, and here I'll do exactly what you're asking and respond to you personally:
I am not saying self-improvement is bad, nor that it won't increase your odds of success, I am saying that it is insufficient to deal with social decline, which is manifested in this issue and the others that I mention.
I couldn't disagree more. It's necessary to deal with social decline.
Draw back. What is a society if not the totality and product of its constituents? What is the quality of a society if not the quality of its constituents? What could cause a society to decline if not a decline in the quality of its material?
When you talk about societal decline, you say:
Yes individuals did great things, but they were only able to do those things because of the presence of continually enforced social norms surrounding gender roles and expectations. The farmer and factory worker of the 1880s worked hard to provide for his family. We were able to win the civil war and the first and second world wars because we had competent social systems (at the family level and beyond) that have since vanished.
We're not talking specifics here, so I don't know how much I agree with you on the details, but what you're describing here is coherent. So: how were these social norms continually enforced? Was it done by God, by the laws of nature, or by the individual members of American communities on the back of their own character? When we talk about competent social systems, aren't we talking about the competence of these old Americans? You say: "The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional." OK, then who's supposed to fix it? "Us" "communally?" Come on, we all know how value-props that start as "we should really..." wind up going. "We" means "nobody," unless there's someone in the room who hears "we" and thinks "me."
That kind of thinking is, very specifically, the poison in America right now. It's the thought that you, personally do not have responsibility to fix a given problem, that it doesn't rest on your shoulders, that it's communal guilt. Say what you like about Christ, but he was big on personal guilt, that it's not enough to say that everyone else is doing it, that you personally must repent and uphold standards. He was even willing to make that his own cross to bear. He took on our sins, and died for them. Our Lord took on our communal guilt - so we could no longer have the excuse.
At my current stage in life, the biggest thing on my mind is my family. In particular, it's the future of it. My parents were not especially good at keeping the fabric of the family together. I love them dearly, they have much to commend them, but that was not one of their strengths. I want to keep mine together. I want my children to have faith, to have me and my wife, to have their eventual spouses and children. I want them to have honor. I don't see any way for them to get this if I do not act faithfully and honorably. I don't see how they can be faithful and honorable to their friends or even to strangers if they can't be that way within their family. I don't see how their family can be that way if I am not that way. I don't expect these actions to magically change the entire world, but I do hope that they will change my family, and that we can be fruitful and multiply, that we can be a bedrock for our communities wherever they may be. And I believe that individuals making these decisions, over and over again individually, is what will create the new great American society.
Obviously I am still a poor sinner, no matter what I aspire to, you need no help picking that particular out. But I believe that the things I do matter for the people around me. My family is, right now, living in a better society than it was when I was a feckless adolescent because of the actions I have taken. It is a small society, but it is theirs, and I am proud of what I've done for them, no matter how small. That is what I believe in.
Yes, it's possible to be Catholic and in good standing among progressives on the understanding that one does not take Catholicism's moral teachings seriously. Catholicism is resolutely pro-life but nobody on the left even attempted to give Joe Biden any grief over being Catholic as far as abortion goes. It is accepted that you can be Catholic while just ignoring what it teaches. (Something like this may be happening with Islam as well.) It's only when a person signals a credible level of obedience to church teaching that Catholicism comes into the spotlight (e.g. Amy Coney Barrett). By contrast, if a person regularly attends an evangelical church, that in itself is probably going to be taken as more indicative of their moral beliefs. For better or for worse, evangelicalism is taken as a stronger signal of moral and political belief.
It's possible to be a left-wing evangelical, but it requires a bit of throat-clearing first. You need to deliberately distinguish yourself from other evangelicals, whereas I don't think Catholics need that. That said, I suspect this is mainly due to the much larger population of non-practicing Catholics? There are a lot of people who still identify as Catholic in a 'cultural' way without going to mass or taking Catholic doctrine seriously, whereas when someone raised evangelical ceases to go to church or take evangelical Christian doctrine seriously, they stop calling themselves evangelical at all. I'm sure it doesn't hurt either that Catholics are fairly split in terms of political affiliation, whereas evangelicals line up much more solidly behind the Republicans. Identifying as Catholic by itself just isn't a good signal of moral or political beliefs.
That said I would not be surprised if this changes - if younger people who leave Catholicism increasingly drop the label entirely, rather than continue to call themselves Catholic and just not do anything, then Catholicism will become more meaningful as a signal.
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
This sounds right, but is it true?
Chess is a famously enduring centuries old game, the goto example of refined design which even you cite. Yet I think your impression about it is wrong. Basically every GM has a quote about how high level play is a boring memory game. And 960 became popular for a reason. It's not entirely unfun, but it's a lot less fun (and arguably less entertaining) than 1500 level play.
Football is celebrated as one of the best ball games ever created and enjoys popularity on the scale of the whole human race. It's well known for it's upset outcomes and the general unpredictability to the last minute. And yet, it too has a well known problem where mid to high skilled play can be incredibly boring 0-0 matches where nothing happens because a dominant strategy at those levels is to play quite defensively for most of the match and aim for a last minute killing stroke.
Motorsport is well known for its pattern of very long periods of boring dominance intermediated by legendary high stakes races where it's anybody's game. And that's despite the best efforts of its organizers to tweak the rules to prevent dominance as much as possible. It seems to constantly naturally arise out of the business dynamics of the companies involved and the technical characteristics of the cars varying over time.
My theory is that the level of fun at meta level play is actually not a common or required characteristic of good games. The sporadic entertainment value they provide is what's selected for at those levels, alongside fun for the median player.
Fighting games are actually like this: it is fun to watch high level players and fun to play the game at an intermediate level yourself, but whether or not the high level players enjoy themselves is I think immaterial to their success.
This is also true of all the above: playing chess with friends, a pickup footie, or racing your buddies in lemons is a lot of fun. And GM galaxy brained moves, Champions League upsets and F1 drama are fun to watch and talk about.
OliveTapenade
8hr ago
Isn't there a difference here in that tennis is, to use the language of gaming, PVP? The way you put it here, tennis as a sport is validated in part because of the way that real tennis pros effortlessly destroyed Ackman. That doesn't seem the case with Musk.
It could be if he streamed himself playing a competitive game. I don't know if PoE2 or Diablo IV have active PVP scenes, but in the past Musk has claimed to be good at PVP games, like Quake. But he has not bragged about these recently. It might be one thing if Musk claimed to be fantastic at Starcraft II or League of Legends or something with a competitive pro scene, and then played against actual pro players and got crushed. That might validate the scene. But he has not done that, and has just tried to show off his supposed achievements in ways that avoid direct comparison.
(That said, I would indeed find it entertaining to watch Elon Musk play Maru in Starcraft II. Though it may not be that revealing - I feel like anybody who has any acquaintance with pro Starcraft knows that the guys who play it are unstoppable - it would at least be very funny to watch.)
No_one
9hr ago
And one technique is simply having the Europeans give their existing hardware to the Ukrainians ASAP. Gotta prime the defense industrial complex pump.
The entire European inventory of air defence would sustain Ukraine for.. a few months. Maybe a year if they were purposefully ignoring all the Geran drones and staying off the front lines, exclusively defending the rear.
There's maybe 200 modern self-propelled guns left to give. What should they give ? Tanks? Storm Shadows aren't coming. There's the 500 Taurus missiles, which are air launched (so can't salvo), I'm not even sure how many launch platforms Ukraine has and which Russia can likely pick off using their few AWACS planes. And in addition, they don't range far enough either, just about capable of hitting Moscow.
in that Ukraine has been taking on Russia quite successfully for years now
Ukrainians have suffered drastically higher casualties than Russians (because they have less artillery(src, Syrski) and fewer drones(src: Sukharevsky interview in Economist)) for the last two years at least, have lost strategic initiative and are now falling back at an ever increasing pace? Putin, ever the reptile, cares more to end the way predictably and with maximum loss of life for Ukrainian fighting men, as that's going to make the occupation of everything east of the Dniepr less of a problem.
You seem to take ISW and Ukrainian numbers (we kill 1500 Russians a day) at face value. It's not like that. The article you posted is typical. Ukraine's mediazona count got only to 120k, not 250k. Maybe it goes up to 180k if you count in the prisoners.
Meanwhile, the growth in cemeteries in Ukraine indicates war deaths of well north of 500k. Data on amputees, until they stopped publishing it likewise - north of 300k dead, easily.
Even though looking at satellite photos of cemeteries is quite simple, no one seems motivated to perform this calculation when it comes to Ukraine. They did so for Russia, but strangely, they neglected top apply the same methodology for Ukraine. Why? I mean, if they were sure Ukrainian government was telling the truth, or even just bending it by 2x, so ~100k dead, that's less than 0.3% of Ukrainian population. In short, there shouldn't be that many new graves.
You should read this article by retired US officer, not some 'international relations' pukes. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-battlefield/
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
9hr ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
That's pretty dramatic hyperbole if you ask me. You can optimise the fun out of any game. Chess and go grandmasters often burn out, as do many esports players, when they reach the skill ceiling and their motivation becomes extrinsic instead of intrinsic. Esports players bitch all the time about how playing professionally has impacted playing for fun because they can't help but optimise for success, they can't just relax and fuck around like they used to. Fighting games are great for meta because of the reasons you mention, but even they have ceilings.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9hr ago
I’m one who at this point doesn’t care much. Unless you’re really going to perp-walk whatever celebrities are on the list as well as anyone who provided the girls or the money — which isn’t going to happen— the list is academic. It’s pointless to waste mental bandwidth on guessing who is on the list, what they did, who paid for it, and what they’re getting out of it when none of it will change anything. Game of Thrones happens all through the political systems of every country that has ever existed or ever will exist. Stuff like this is what elites do.
As far a China — I’ve no doubt that most elites or potential elites are on very similar lists.
jake
9hr ago
When I was in high school I spent a couple summers lifeguarding for my city's public pools. My parents suggested it but they didn't require it, and it was largely my mother's doing. I've always loved swimming, I never did it competitively but all the time recreationally, and my mom also loved swimming, and I think she recommended it because she had a sense about these things, obvious as it is, that her teenage son would enjoy getting paid to spend summers at the pool.
I did. I never thought of it as work, I still don't. It's very funny to me how it does not parse at all in my memories as a job. I was hanging out with people my age, or girls just a bit older than me who were all thin and attractive and in skintight lifeguard suits. It was also a nice pool and this was the 00s so most people going were thin, other than the classic fat dad or chubby mom. It's lifeguarding so it built responsibility, and I think I'm a better person for it, for all of it. As far as summer activity options for high schoolers, lifeguarding must be high on the stack for socialization and peer esteem. I'll fully recommend this to my kids, but as with my parents, not require it, and for the same reason as I suspect from my mom. Work ethic, get in touch with the working class? The pocket money is nice, but nah. Hang out at the pool, socialize, exercise, flirt with girls. That's just a good summer.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
9hr ago
Not quite. His attorney got ahold of the items somehow, but then turned them over to the FBI when asked for them. You can rest assured that they were the same items the FBI initially found, and speculating otherwise is being a conspiracy theorist.
Also, during that search:
On the first floor, agents also found a plastic bin tucked under a bookshelf in an office. The bin was filled with hard drives.
The hard drives all had tamper-proof "evidence" tape on them when the FBI found them, Maguire testified.
Nothing suspicious about that.
At the very least, an itemized list of images found on those hard drives and CDs would constitute "the Epstein files" that could be released.
Tree
9hr ago
It’s always been weird, because rafa would lose enormous amounts of status in such a system. Right now the PMC, doctors bankers lawyers are at the top of the status pyramid because it’s their bourgeois regime. Replace it with rigid generational classes, and rafa’s title and status would be downgraded to ‘banking clerk‘. Just like it was in the good old days. And rafa works like 60 hours a week or something, which is huge, but most people do not feel this pressure, and they don't need to be "liberated" from it/re-enslaved in a guild by the revolution.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9hr ago
I’m sort of torn here because some of the things you learn on a job are things that will very helpful once you pass through all the testing and actually get to college. Things like showing up to work on time, doing tasks as instructed, going to work even though your friends have something more fun in mind, time management. Now what happens with a lot of kids is that the6 got used to the handholding that happens in high school where the teachers basically walk everyone through that big paper or assignment with every step checked off and multiple reminders about when the thing is due. And the6 start college where the midterm paper is in the syllabus but never mentioned, or maybe mentioned once or twice in passing— until the TA is collecting them. A kid who never learned to do the work will probably forget until the last minute.
I don’t think that con only happen at work. Sports teams can do the same. Maybe math camps? I never went to one.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
9hr ago
Yeah sure, the firefighters say there wasn't a fire. Also they said to me there was a huge inferno five minutes ago. Be it Trump or the DOJ itself.
I'm not stepping in the gaslight chamber. There are four lights.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
9hr ago
Wait, you're telling me a criminal destroyed evidence?
Sounds pretty normal actually.
Gaashk
9hr ago
Some people I know have been trying to foster and/or adopt, because they're unable to have biological kids, and it is super difficult and uncertain. The system will often find a relative after several years, then spend a long time placing the child with that relative, sometimes a sibling when they come of age, and sometimes the teen just absconds because they don't like being parented all that much.
Maybe you should do it, good foster parents are great, but don't go into it assuming that you'll get a kid who will choose to stay with you until they're 22, or will listen to your good advice, and follow your sensible rules.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
9hr ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
Cries even worse in DOTA2...
Cries in League of Legends...
Tree
9hr ago
An 11% (or 30%, depending on how you calculate) difference is not much. Plus the fact that most of the effort of courtship is still expected of men (granted, it’s not that much in the modern world). But it’s easy to imagine those 11% men ‘would be open’ to a relationship with a woman who showed up all baked and ready to go at their door, but aren’t willing to text various women for weeks/face rejection.
Plus the general tendency of women to undercount their sex partners and men to overcount them. That is, men are supposed to want it, women aren’t supposed to want it. If you abandon the chase as a man, you're a loser, and if you're mancrazy as a woman, you could be a slut or a bad feminist. That alone, the shy loser and the shy slut, could explain the discrepancy.
Grant_us_eyes
9hr ago
I've never experienced this directly, but it was depressing as hell watching a friend of mine trying to find someone to marry; here was a guy extremely fit, handsome, very well off, retired before 40, with a hobby list as long as my arm, and he still struggled to find a long-term partner.
I couldn't help but watch all this in action and left helplessly thinking, 'Christ, if HE'S having problems, what chance do I have?'
He did eventually get married to a wonderful woman, however, but he's still had to make a number of quiet sacrifices. Nothing technically major, but still...
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
9hr ago
I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.
I do. If they didn't lash out while they were younger and hot-blooded, why would they do it in older, lower-T age? And it's not like all of them are going to have the fuck you money to just drop out of productive labor.
birb_cromble
9hr ago
would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections
One of the parties implicated in this affair recently blew the dicks, assholes, and/or parinea clean off 3,000 people in multiple countries with devices the targets willingly put on their own bodies.
Given that display of competence and coordination, it feels like your assessment of what is or is not possible in this case may be overly conservative.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
9hr ago
What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't. Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
It's not a kind thing to say, but anything over a little pudge is actively revolting to me.
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