domain:alexepstein.substack.com
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
It's a common strategy for picking a VP. Obama and first term Trump utilized similar strategies, despite their own talent and charisma. I'm curious to see if Vance has the balls to push Trump out on that ice flow.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
That even before the questions about his ability became pubilc, Biden had been doing little to nothing in actually governing the country and the decisions were being made by a mix of insiders, cabinet members, civil servants, and whoever could grab the spotlight to get their pet project rammed through.
I think this may well have been the case; does anyone think, for instance, that Joe Biden personally really really wanted Sam Brinton as deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy? Or that the LGBT Pride Celebration with the topless trans people on the White House lawn was a cherished long-time plan of his? There's an awful lot of "he probably just signed what was put in front of him" that seems to be there, even if we discount the autopen!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
7hr ago
“Heap more evils upon them O Lord, heap more evils upon those who are glorious upon earth.”
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
7hr ago
Third rate universities have programs like lumberjacking, which do require manual labor.
Makes me think of Deep Springs College.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
7hr ago
Mantergeistmann
7hr ago
I remember stopping by Trader Joe's during the mid-morning on a day off... completely different demographic from the weekend/evening crowd.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7hr ago
This is an astute observation, but I assume you can reason out what the result would be if an entire generation or two of Americans were raised only being exposed to the counterfactual reality presented in media, with no knowledge of our exposure to the mundane-but-not-telegenic underlying reality. They’d have an extremely skewed understanding of what the world is actually like.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
7hr ago
Hey thanks man. It’s a gift from God, was never very good at it without Him heh.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
never pauses to question whether a better VP candidate might have been able to salvage the shit sandwich they were handed. Or, for that matter, whether a stronger VP might have pushed Biden to the curb years before. An ambitious, mildly evil VP, like a young LBJ or Bill Clinton, would have stuck a knife in Biden as soon as he looked weak.
There's some hint that this was precisely the policy the Biden administration (or the Politburo, or whomever you want to point the fingers at) adopted to muzzle Kamala: all the stories that leaked out about "trouble in the VP's office" and how she was a terrible manager and had high staff turnover and was being sidelined by Biden's office so she constantly was the last to know about things going on and never got the chance to make a name for herself (apart from things like being saddled with the 'Border Czar' position which was a poisoned chalice).
So whatever ambitions she may have had, the Biden inner circle/Biden himself made sure to quash so she would not be able to build up the reputation as the dynamic young rival for the next race. Ironically, Kamala herself seems to have picked her VP on the same criteria: Walz because he was not visibly ambitious and would not be a threat and would be content to stand in the background and do as he was told.
I think that most people who care about the Epstein matter, me included, care mainly because of the political implications, not out of empathy for the girls. I abstractly empathize with the girls, but I don't know them, so their woes don't really emotionally affect me any more than it emotionally affects me if I hear that, say, 3000 people died in a flood in Bangladesh. Which is to say, very little. Same with the Rotherham scandal. I abstractly care about the victims, but I don't really feel much emotion about it.
The point of the Epstein business is that I want to see rich, powerful people who seem like predators brought down from their high places, thrown into the mud, and trampled on. That's why I care more about the Epstein matter than about the Rotherham scandal. Because it seems to afford more opportunity to damage rich, powerful scumbags. Now that's something I do feel emotion about. Glee and a zestful desire to see mighty amoral people brought low. It's a very primal, atavistic, selfish emotion, to be clear, not some clean moral imperative that looks pretty on paper. No, it's like the glee that a villager feels when he sees that a lion that has been prowling around the outside of the village for days get shot through the heart with an arrow. I don't feel the glee because yesterday the lion ate some guy on the other side of the village whom I didn't know. I didn't know that guy so I felt little emotion when I heard that he got eaten. But that lion felt like a looming threat to me, prowling out there, powerful, enjoying his lion life in a very annoying way, enjoying it so much, sitting around licking his fangs out there with not a care in the world while I spend the day working, that lion clearly not giving a single shit about my desire to not get eaten or the fact that I have to work for a living. So when the lion went down, I celebrated in the same sort of ecstasy that communists might feel when they see that the rich people are fleeing the city. Will the rich people fleeing the city actually make my life better in the long run? Probably not, intellectually one understands that if the populists come to power they'll probably just make things much worse. But in the moment, one feels an atavistic glee.
pigeonburger
7hr ago
But not quite up there with that misunderstood Karl Popper quote!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7hr ago
I would say it’s not.
You’d probably get a bunch of knee-jerk reactions writing you off as a stereotypical SJW, so it might be frustrating, but it wouldn’t be against the rules.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
7hr ago
And this is a fair way to say it.
If I am a Martian Elm on Neptune, I’m not concerned much about the plight of the Neptunian Elm. But I also don’t want the Venusian Elm to move in on my nice spot by the river, either, and start competing for water. Even if I am supremely confident I’ll win, there’s nothing I really gain out of the situation.
Besides not speciating into a Quokka Elm, I guess.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7hr ago
Your opinion is just as valid as his. “I hate spending time with racists” is fine. So is “I think racists are shooting themselves in the foot.” Neither of those is booing the outgroup, and neither is building consensus. No one can take your preferences from you.
Mantergeistmann
7hr ago
I know a boomer or two who has empty houses that he doesn't even rent out because he doesn't want to bother.
Pretty much everyone I know personally who has rented out in the past would never rent out again. They'd much rather pay taxes on an empty house than deal with the potential for another tenant from Hell, and they've all dealt with at least one. And these were not people renting out cheap shacks, either.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
7hr ago
I got sniped by your edit, RIP.
Sorry.
To respond, you seem to think of the “weak but strong” mindset as recognizing the enemy’s strength but thinking oneself still capable of taking them on.
I think it is most essentially revealed in that Tyson quote. It is unsurprising to me that uneducated Iron Mike, via practical training and competition at the highest levels, stumbled across the idea’s purest distillation. Throughout training, he is deeply concerned that his opponent is too strong for him. This leads him to train harder. He does retain a certain degree of confidence in his own strength, though, or else he wouldn’t be willing to face this guy’s challenge. At the moment of decision, he then switches over to the idea that his opponent is too weak, that he knows he has him. But he still has to respect his opponent’s strength, because Tyson demonstrably fought hard and tactically. He is just utterly confident that he is the strong one now.
It’s important to note he wasn’t always right! He was one of the greatest, but I think it’s fair to say that when he lost this “too weak and too strong” mentality, he also lost bouts he could have won.
As I see it, and as how most applications of the term I’ve seen look like, it’s a cognitive trap that does improve morale, but usually does so at the cost of epistemic clarity(e.g. “Republikkkans are literal fascists, we can surely defeat them with protests and slogans!)
I think this is just a side effect of, what I would Chudishly call “ivory tower thinking.” A sort of over-academicizing of thought. Despite this, the concept is extremely practically useful in real life.
The way it is tossed around by overeducated people who do not have any actual experience with low-information, high-friction contests is what leads to the cognitive trap version that I think you do correctly identify.
I think this is why colleges and universities used to be so big on amateur sports for as much of the student body as possible. I’m sure the logic would have been “It’s just good for the young men’s development,” but I think this is kind of practical learned knowledge is an element of what they meant by “good.”
daguerrean
7hr ago
I think it makes sense to say it is invasive in the context of a white suburban middle-class family. Are white people an invasive species from the perspective of indians? Absolutely, but I don't have to care about that.
WandererintheWilderness
7hr ago
While there are obvious political-correctness-related reasons for this, you do have to consider the 'Dog Bites Man' angle. I wouldn't want detective shows to reflect real crime statistics, because most of the homicides making up those statistics are boring and obvious. 'Who shot this low-rent ghetto drug dealer? Well flip my dickens, it was this other low-rent ghetto drug dealer.' Right. Not exactly gripping drama. When it's an intelligent, wealthy man hiding a dark secret using an intricate fake alibi - then you have good drama, precisely because it's unusual relative to the real world.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7hr ago
Anecdotal, but expressing anything anti-Trump is one of the easiest ways to get a bunch of downvotes, in my experience. The only real competition is showing sympathy for trans issues.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
It depends who they're being racist against.
Antisemites, you are normally free to call them Jewposters or accuse them of obsession with "da Joos."
If anyone tries anti white racism the tradition is to accuse them of trolling and bad faith, because surely they don't actually believe it.
East Asians are normally where we see a real fight, posters will land half and half on whether it's justified or not.
But blacks, south Asians, any Muslims, the expectation is that you calmly engage with the meat of their argument, such as it is.
aardvark2
8hr ago
Babies at 2 years old, if exposed only to people of one race, will respond to people from another race differently.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
8hr ago
I got sniped by your edit, RIP. To respond, you seem to think of the “weak but strong” mindset as recognizing the enemy’s strength but thinking oneself still capable of taking them on. This is, indeed, a healthy mindset to have towards one’s adversaries. As I tend to see it in practice though, it’s a cognitive trap that does improve morale, but usually does so at the cost of epistemic clarity(e.g. “Republikkkans are literal fascists, we can surely defeat them with protests and slogans!)
NullHypothesis
8hr ago
That's actually a good point and yea you're right that anecdotes are pretty weak in the grand scheme of things.
I dont' think there's any disagreement that the percentage of people with college or higher tend to vote democrat especially in the last 20 years, but Turok's point was specifically that conservatism is increasingly becoming the party of the uneducated, yet if we look at the data for the last 3 election cycles the lead democrats had amongst people that voted with college or higher has actually been decreasing:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
Percentage of people that voted for republican in 2016, 2020, and 2024 Post grads 29 > 32 > 33 Grads 41 > 42 > 46 Some college 49 > 50 > 54
It's increased for each group.
Granted, just because you voted for Trump doesn't mean you are conservative. Possibly other factors such as people not voting that could impact the numbers. I guess Turok is technically correct since High school or less also increased from 51 to 59.
Maybe you're right and mods are unfairly applying mod posts to Turok. Personally I don't think Turok should have been modded for that statement specifically but looking at Amadan's post it seems to come off as a mod post about his behavior across multiple posts and not specifically the post he made that got the modded comment.
Anyways it looks like the virulent post that modded and I see some mod comments as well so hey seems like you are making an impact.
Chess has limited transfer effects. It won't "develop the brain" very much except for getting better at chess/recognizing its patterns. I do like one thing about it though: It teaches the value of looking more than one step ahead when evaluating anything.
There's no career option in it, unless you're a very rare talent. Pretty much a dead end, as you say.
Chess players are usually kinda weird/nerdy. It takes a somewhat special person to spend hours every day on plugging away at it. Chicken or egg problem. Not sure how good the socializing aspect would be, I suspect not that good. I usually try to chat when I play online chess with mediocre results. But as deluxev2 says, it is pretty much respectable. Moreso than playing MMOs every day or something. Chess is "cleaner".
I guess I would encourage soccer just as much as chess? Decent hobby to spend a limited amount of time on though.
Paul Morphy said: "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
Some months ago, someone on Twitter said the following:
That's the kind of middle-of-the-road statement that, two or three years ago, I would have associated with Right-wing rationalists. People called out the media and the establishment when it was wrong while also being open and honest about the Right's flaws. While that tendency still exists in places like DSL and here, I've found it's becoming rarer and rarer, with those espousing it increasingly likely to be told they aren't welcome. This parallels a wider tendency in American politics: the rise of the so-called "Tech Right." People like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Shaun Maguire. Richard Hanania initially hoped they would infuse the Right with needed level-headedness, after all, such people were urban, socially moderate, and didn't have chips on their shoulders about class. This has largely not happened. You could hardly imagine Musk, Andreessen, or Maguire saying anything like the above statement. Their attitude parallels that of the Right as a whole - "misinformation" is just a left-wing smear and there's no downside at all to every random person with a two-digit IQ having a social media megaphone. Musk did push back on the tariffs, (perhaps because his business interests were being harmed) but you could never imagine him saying "libs are right" about anything. Even when he's broken with Trump, he hasn't reflected on the barren epistemological environment that led to Liberation Day, instead doubling down on conspiratorial Epstein stuff. To get a reasonable, moderate perspective, you have to follow the kind of people who march around with tiki torches and scream "Jews will not replace us!" That's not much of an exaggeration; the statement that libs were right about misinformation came from Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Charlottesville goon march.
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