domain:mattlakeman.org
aldomilyar
9hr ago
I think it's a transgression but I also feel like the consequences are a bit too hardcore for what's essentially masturbation. Dude's essentially been exiled from his life, whilst having hung out with some of the guys who are in the B Team orbit they're hardly above locker room behavior and a lot of that stuff is essentially Craig Jones' personal brand. His main media thing last year was a bunch of sexually charged stuff around Gabi Garcia/challenging her to do an Onlyfans shoot with him if he caught her in a particular submission that he actively went for and only relented when she essentially said 'I will let you break my leg instead of tapping since I don't want to play into the onlyfans thing' (https://youtube.com/watch?v=HID-Xi8hOUw&t=741) which IMO is way more of a consent issue than anything Rod did.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9hr ago
All you’ve done is mistake familiarity with openness, and mistake newness with secrecy. They are not the same. Obviously if I were to convert to Islam, I would have more homework and research to do than if I were to become a Southern Baptist, but that doesn’t somehow mean that Islam is a secretive religion trying to hide things from you…
Ironically, the push to call ourselves by the mouthful “members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” was prompted by a desire to be more transparent, not less. The reason being that sometimes people thought we worshipped a god named Mormon. That’s not linguistic poisoning. It’s accuracy. Our church’s name has been identical since 1838 (first 8 years had a few variations, but never Mormon, not internally, though Smith was known to use the phrase “Mormonism” from time to time.) A fact that is betrayed by your own words (!): Joseph Smith is not “the” central figure. It’s still Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith is by our own doctrine like, maybe third at best? Joseph Smith to Mormons is definitely a weaker link than Muhammad to Muslims, for example.
The precise degree of and debate over what doctrines are essential and core vs merely informative is common to all religions, but it seems surprising to me that you think you are better suited to answer this than an actual member?
Funny enough, unlike many other religions, we do actually have a standardized “worthiness interview” that asks about basic questions of faith. You can look them up. They are quite simple and are, generally, yes/no. On that basis I’d argue we are MORE transparent than other religions, where beliefs vary widely within a congregation (let alone sect or branch) even on self-admitted core topics with little to no effort at correction, and where most members wouldn’t even know where to look to find, for example, what makes a Baptist a Baptist and not a Methodist instead (at least that’s my personal experience).
No problem, still appreciate the reply. Hope it's been interesting for you as it has in return. Or maybe I have too much time on my hands.
I respect and appreciate the enthusiasm.
To be frank, my ADHD makes it hard for me to handle all the subjects of discussion in our exchange and consistently organize my replies in a useful way. As a younger man perhaps I would have made it work by hyperfocusing on the thread to the exclusion of all else, but that’s rare these days. Since it’s the best I can do tonight, rather than leave you hanging I am going to summarize a couple of partial thoughts.
I agree that Hebrews was probably not written by Paul but by someone in his circle. In the absence of internal attribution I am partial to the Barnabas theory, but that’s really underinformed speculation on my part.
I somehow did not predict that the Mormon view of Hebrews would be so different, but in retrospect it would have to be to correspond to the Mormon view of priesthood. I think that view bakes in some assumptions about what the Levitical priesthood is for, though, that I want to dispute. The primary function of the Old Testament priesthood was to present offerings to God, particularly sacrifices. That’s why the author of Hebrews presents it as being not only surpassed but replaced by Christ’s role as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (e.g., Heb. 10:8–14).
That phrase, “after the order of Melchizedek,” is a reference to Psalm 110, which is a royal psalm. The phrase applied to David as king in Jerusalem, so David is being treated as a type and Christ the antitype. Christ is priest-king in a way that David only foreshadowed, and he is a priest forever unlike Aaron or (metaphorically) David. He made his one sacrifice, himself, and sat down at the right hand of God. But the office of priest-king is unique; since Jesus lives forever, he can have no successor. There cannot be another priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7–10, more or less).
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
9hr ago
It's not just your wife that does that, it seems to be a common trait. Mine certainly does that, squirrel-style.
Whose definition of eudaemonia are we using here?
My own idiosyncratic definition, which rests on certain assumptions:
I take it as an axiom that eudaemonia comes from the exercise of virtues, and that virtues range on a scale from passive virtues to active virtues. Passive (feminine) virtues include chastity, temperance, mercy, and piety: they are something you avoid, or are. Active (masculine) virtues include valor, industry, courage, and nobility: they are something you do, or become.
I take it as further axiom that in general, the active virtues hold greater eudaemonic potential: they are what build monuments. Feminine virtues are absolutely important for individual and civilizational well-being, but they are the mortar and masculine virtues are the brick.
Therefore, the sex who is disinclined towards and incentivized against exercising masculine virtue will suffer lower average potential for human flourishing. Women's maximum capacity for masculine virtue is almost certainly lower that men's maximum capacity due to the consequences of gestation, but I believe that they are capable of more, should be incentivized to exercise what they have, and might hopefully be gifted with greater capacity for excellence.
tl;dr: genetically-modified tomboy supremacy
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
9hr ago
If you liked Snow Crash, try The Rapture of the Nerds.
I'm not saying the Holocaust was a particularly bad crime because it targeted Jews, and I'd be the first to argue that the Holodomor was a comparable atrocity. At the very least, the fact of the Holodomor ought to mean that wearing a hammer and sickle t-shirt on a Western university campus is as unacceptable as wearing a swastika t-shirt is. The fact that everyone in the West has heard of the Holocaust and so few have heard of the Holodomor is appalling, and didn't happen by accident.
My point is that all of this "recontextualisation" of the Holocaust, talking about how the Nazis also targeted homosexuals and Slavs, is diluting one of the most important and essential facts about a crime: who the victim was. I don't believe it is remotely historically controversial to say that the primary victims of the Holocaust were Europeans who had the poor fortune to be born Jewish, and that this was entirely by design. And yet in our modern culture, it's not remotely uncommon for people to expound at length about what a horrific crime the Holocaust was and how it shines a bright light on the depths of evil to which the human heart can sink - without once specifically mentioning the group which represented the overwhelming majority of the Holocaust's victims. I find this distressing and alarming in much the same way that everyone knows the names Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, but few can name even of one of their many victims (myself included, I'm holding my hands up here). Or, to cite an example I encountered recently, in the series The People vs. OJ Simpson there's a heartbreaking moment when Ron Goldman's outraged, teary-eyed father is being interviewed on TV and says something to the effect of "this was supposed to be the trial of 'did OJ murder my son?' and instead it's turned into the trial of 'did Mark Fuhrman say a bad word?'" Think of how suspicious you'd find it if someone did begrudgingly acknowledge that the Transatlantic slave trade happened and it was bad, but seemed to be bending over backwards to avoid mentioning who exactly was enslaved by it.
I think that acknowledging a crime took place but going out of your way to avoid mentioning who the victim of that crime was amounts to a tacit denial of that crime (or at the very least, it's one step removed), and all the more so when the victim's identity characteristics are the entire reason the crime was perpetrated in the first place.
It's my understanding that the figure of "5 million non-Jews" was more or less invented from whole cloth by Simon Wiesenthal, and the real figure was likely as much as an order of magnitude lower. "The Holocaust was mainly a crime against European Jews" is, in my view, the only historically accurate and responsible way to describe it.
I'm not sure what you mean about agency in this context. That they should be more assertive?
Those typically-male traits which combine to create agency (internal locus of control, risk taking, a certain amount of disagreeableness) are what have led men to dominate public affairs since the beginning of civilization. The increasing complexity of civilization over time has in turn caused the expansion of the public sphere and atrophy of the private sphere. After thousands of years of this, 99% of everything that matters for the maintenance of civilization occurs in the male realm, and the instrumental value of femininity for civilization has been pared back to its bare biological function. You yourself have touched on something like what I'm getting at here.
Given this, it seems to me that to preserve the dignified utility of woman, her sphere should be expanded to include particular sections of the public domain. You'll notice that this is the stated goal of feminism; while I agree with the early feminists about the root of the problem and the directional solution, my preferred means and ends acknowledge intrinsic sex differences and attempt to work within them when possible and subtly modify them when required.
Also, I'm proposing an increase in the mentioned masculine traits, but not to the point of complete parity with men. There's definitely some amount of contextually beneficial tradeoff to conformity and risk aversion, I just think women's present average amounts aren't adaptive.
ResoluteRaven
10hr ago
Whose definition of eudaemonia are we using here? Surely a risk-averse conformist with low agency is more likely to be happy with whatever their lot in society is than an iconoclast burning with ambition who chafes at authority? Even if what you value is a life lived in service of humanity's expansion into the cosmos, the differences between men and women derive from women's role in childbearing, which absent artificial wombs is an essential part of any society (and is not well-served by them taking on dangerous tasks and getting killed). If you were in fact able to eliminate this role through technology, then there would be no reason for women as a separate category to exist at all.
Karpal
10hr ago
BJJ gets tougher as we age. I don't know how old you are, but there will come a time when you shouldn't feel comfortable tying up with someone standing unless you know them well. And for fitness alone I'd recommend almost anything else if you're mid thirties or over.
Creation/Possession of Deepfakes as a scandal is kind of interesting to me.
On a basic level, this reads to me as the epitome of a victimless crime. If the existence of the images is not revealed, then no harm can possibly result. And we can presume no rules were really breached to create them, if the guy WASN'T taking creepshots and just pulled images posted to social media to feed the generator. And there's (currently) no evidence that producing them makes it likely the 'perp' will try any further inappropriate behavior.
Its obvious that producing the deepfakes is labelled as "creepy"; but why precisely?
On the spectrum of ways to sexualize a person this seems maybe slightly 'worse' than vividly imagining them naked but on the same order of magnitude of pasting a cutout of their head onto a nudie mag or maybe doing some extra work and photoshopping their face onto an existing nude photo. Maybe also worse than finding a pornstar that is a close enough doppelganger that you can squint a bit and make it work.
Also add in the fact that he HAS (had?) a girlfriend so he's not a complete loser, even ignoring he's a talented martial artist with a decent social media following (169k instagram followers is impressive by normal standards, no?). This isn't your stereotypical incel who disgusts women by his mere presence and mannerisms.
Socially, well yeah I can understand why this hurts his status... but again, would it be 'better' if his porn habits/browser history leaked and it was just standard fare or maybe niche fetish material? Certainly embarrassing but I think most onlookers would just kind of nod and say "to each their own" and pretend they didn't see it (unless they need to roast him later). Its the deepfaking in particular that makes him mildly radioactive.
Best I can muster is that it does display some bad judgment to keep files proving you masturbate to your 'colleagues' sitting around. "We need to boot you now on the offchance there's a worse skeleton hiding in your closet, if you're stupid enough to have this one." Definitely an HR risk in that sense.
But if I were to guess as the real reason it led to immediate ostracization, its simply that its 'hoe-scaring' behavior and the other guys are unwilling to stand up for him if it will reduce their appeal to women in general, and women interested BJJ in particular. Yes, I can see it would be 'bad' to have this guy present if other women were noticeably uncomfortable with it. But its not because he actually poses any real threat to them, its more that he's breached the general rule that the one and only way its 'acceptable' to see a woman naked is with her explicit consent, and then, only WHILE that consent is being given, and not a second longer. If that's the implicit or explicit social rule, then spying/peeping tom behavior, creepshotting, aggressively soliciting nudes, AND deepfaking are all approximately the same level of bad. Oh, and defending someone who did any such behavior also tars you with the brush.
I guess I'll leave it on this question: assuming it is 'wrong' to make deepfakes of women you know, what could possibly be the proper punishment/restitution/retribution to make things right again? I'll immediately grant "delete any and all copies of the images." But if the 'damage' is all emotional/psychological there's not much one can do other than let time heal the 'wound.'
And to be clear there are certainly things one could do with deepfakes that I think unambiguously cross lines of decency and morality, such as:
-
Sending the deepfakes to the intended subject knowing it will cause distress.
-
Publishing or distributing them, especially if you imply that they are genuine.
-
Attempting blackmail, whether it succeeds or not.
-
Impersonating the subject, obviously.
-
And hell, I'd even say accepting money to produce them at someone else's bequest is suspect, even if you don't keep them.
These are mostly covered under existing legal concepts like defamation or harassment.
ResoluteRaven
10hr ago
There isn't much research on 3rd generation Asian-Americans, which would be necessary to answer your question, but this study seems to show some convergence in educational outcomes with Hispanics (although it includes all kinds of Asians). I was unfortunately not able to locate another paper I recall reading that showed incomplete convergence of several personality traits between 2nd and 3rd generation Asian immigrants with American averages e.g. something like 25% of the difference along any given axis between 1st generation immigrants and the average American is still present in the 3rd generation. Studies on Asian adoptees will also tell you what the floor is on differences attributable to culture.
Now if I were to guess based on my own observations, I would tell you that 2nd generation immigrants have the highest educational attainment due to parental pressure, followed by a decline to a level somewhat higher than the white average. Criminality, on the other hand, I would expect to increase with each generation, eventually hitting an asymptote somewhat lower than the white average.
There was the thing where a democratic campaign volunteer attempted to murder as many of the republican congressmen as he could, the FBI covered up the clear political motive, and it was common for years afterward to hear Progressives mock the victims and wish the would-be assassin had done a better job.
There was the time the Antifa guy murdered a trump supporter in cold blood, on video, his antifa buddies publicly celebrated the murder on video, prestige media responded by glazing him, and local progressives shrugged and said it was the trump supporter's fault for engaging in political speech in a blue enclave.
There was Butler, where the evident Progressive reaction anywhere outside formal contexts was sorrow that the assassin had missed, and complete obliviousness that the assassin had in fact killed one man and wounded two more.
There's the multiple other assassination attempts on Trump too, of course.
Then there was Luigi:
Woman inspired by Luigi Mangione planned to kill Trump cabinet members, feds say
Luigi Mangione Musical Is Real, And It's Sold Out
Jimmy Kimmel Makes Stunning Confession About ‘Hot Killer’ Luigi Mangione
What Luigi Mangione supporters want you to know
This is not what the media coverage looks like when they want their audience to leave with a negative view of the subject.
Then there's the open calls for the murder of Elon Musk, together with the coordinated mass violence against properties associated with him, which Tim Walz among others gave winks and nods to on stage, advising Tesla owners to remove the logos from their vehicles.
Then there's the family members, friends, and acquaintances who've opined to me that it'd probably be for the best if Trump or Elon or Vance were just murdered.
ABigGuy4U
11hr ago
Leftist handling of 'Oppressed groups', in which the oppression is centered and what the group actually believes/practices just doesn't really come up despite the fact they're some combination of borderline theocratic, hardline conservative and run contrary to woke culture.
Ironically both Israel and the Provisional IRA are good examples of this. Both are basically bog-standard 19th century ethnic nationalist movements that spent decades getting glazed by the left wing because they bothered to give the bare minimum of socialist lip-service. The difference is, the Provos never won (not completely anyway), so unlike Israel they never got the chance to reveal that their left wing commitments were a paper thin cover for their real goals. Whereas Israel has the misfortune of being a leftist bette noire due to their socialist apostasy. This apostasy is also why most of the left hates modern Russia so much.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
11hr ago
I think that at some point in the early 2000s, the EDM genre might have bifurcated into a much more mainstream subgenre ("Anthem Trance"?) and a myriad of niche ones that you couldn't really play at a club or beach party without scaring the hoes or whatever they call it these days.
Is your issue with the remix the specific choice of orchestration, or just that it seems all around more busy? I wouldn't call either version of the song you linked "not repetitive", insofar as there always has been trance/EDM with a more pronounced dramatic arc. There are a number of newer songs that I would consider to have similar vibes to yours: Christian Fischer - Watch the Dog (original mix), So Inagawa - Selfless State, or on the busy end of the spectrum, NAYUTA - Weisse Messer.
Some other trance songs I enjoy: busy with mainstreamish orchestration: Plutian - Sonagi, lawy - forget me not, marginal to the genre: Hooverphonic - Battersea. There is in fact a wealth of great trance songs with vocals, but I figured you might not be looking for those.
anon_
11hr ago
Yes, you need to not be a felon to purchase a gun. If you aren't knowledgable about guns, buy one from a reputable retailer carrying a reputable manufacturer.
The real kicker is of course no one actually cares if you own a gun. Even in California there's millions of them and no one gives a shit until you start wandering around the neighborhood firing into the air (and even then, they seem annoyed they can't rationalize ignoring it).
Grow up and realize you are not the center of the universe.
PokerPirate
11hr ago
The whole diskworld series by Terry Pratchett. The plot is roughly "use fantasy tropes to make fun of the real world" and has excellent longterm story arcs along those lines. But it's also full of excellent one-liners like the following:
Give a man fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.
Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
Against all rationality, his hair ached.
Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces!
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
To call Rincewind's understanding of magic atrocious left no word to describe his practical application of it
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
anon_
11hr ago
Prior to Dobbs, there were States with just a single abortion clinic. Most everyone with a fetal anomaly detected at the point of anatomy scan (can't get those before 20 weeks) had to fly out to what, 2 dozen clinics?
Gay marriage doesn't have a gap because even Republicans got behind it. At its peak (ironically the T part of the LGBT movement sunk it a bit recently) it was polling 67% -- that's more than Reagan got against Mondale (59-41) or LBJ v Goldwater (61-39) both considered historic landslides.
Gaashk
11hr ago
I'm just skeptical of uncritical complementarian narratives that declare that men and women are simultaneously unequal in their dispositions and yet equally valuable in their own domains, because it seems pretty obvious to me that men get the better deal.
It doesn't seem obvious that men get the better end of the deal in the current society, which is admittedly working pretty hard to make sure that they don't. They probably do have a better deal in a state of nature, but nobody who's posting on online message boards is living in a state of nature. Very obviously, whether it's more of a hinderance to be a neurotic woman or a man who can't control his temper will depend on what kind of society you're living in -- in ours it seems likely that the latter would be worse.
Why would you remove conformity? It seems useful for both the society and the individual that most people are fairly high conformity, and there are only a few highly disagreeable outliers.
Why should women take more risks? What kinds of risks should they take more of? We've probably gone a bit too far into saftyism, but high risk taking in men pays off in winning wars or having lots of sex with women they're attracted to. What does it get women?
I'm not sure what you mean about agency in this context. That they should be more assertive?
I guess the positives you listed would be nice to have more of. We can have even more aspiring novelists who run half marathons and organize aesthetically pleasing parties that they post on Instagram (though observationally this seems to be an occupation for thirty something women without children to show that they're still important, interesting, worth attending to, etc).
aldomilyar
12hr ago
Niche Hobby Drama alert
In the sport of Brazilian Jiujitsu, there's been a recent drama in which a popular grappler called Jay Rodriguez has been kicked out of the B-Team (Most popular team in the sport despite not tending to actually win things) due to sexual impropriety. The original message said that he'd obtained illicit images of female training partners.
This was revealed a few days ago, and it has since been revealed that the alleged impropriety is that Jay Rod's Girlfriend discovered that he had been deepfaking nudes of female competitors he'd met on the mats. She then exposed this to the team upon finding out, but it's acted as a bit of a touchpoint for drama in the sport as a result. The original message made it sound like he'd been taking creepshots or sharing actual nudes. It's additionally attracted drama as the mouthpiece/defacto leader of the B Team is Craig Jones, who is by far the most charismatic person in the sport but also has a long history of putting out content which could be considered a bit sexually untowards. He had the famous intergender match last year against Gabi Garcia, has done a lot of travel blogging with ladyboys, massages and other broadly risque subjects and is generally a 'loose unit'. Now he's taking the moral high ground against Jay, which has created some controversy.
Personally I think that it's reasonable to kick Rod out once the deepfaking became public knowledge, but also the comms were handled poorly. BJJ sex scandals are more common than you'd expect, but typically tend to be more of the 'Brazilians versus the age of consent' age-old rivalry than something with such a modern tinge.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12hr ago
I don't know the answer to your first question, but I am wondering why it would tell us with any definitiveness the influence of culture on behavior. Possibly I'm being obtuse, but could you explain?
celluloid_dream
12hr ago
Having wasted far too much time playing Classic on and off since 2019, the ratio there is probably closer to 20% total, and 10% of serious raiders. Fairly confident in that estimate based on experience in raiding guilds and hearing everyone's voices in discord.
Testing that would run into general statistical illiteracy among the population, I think. if we asked the average person to say how much taller and heavier men are than women, I'm sure you'd get some zany answers, even though people intuitively know how large the difference is from constant observation.
More options
Context Copy link