domain:rifters.com
aldomilyar
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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.
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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.
6d 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
6d 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.
FtttG
6d ago
IIRC John Lydon of the Sex Pistols fame was making noises about this open secret in 1978.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
6d ago
the whole social support network being older and less able to help - it's just worse parenting material.
This is a funny one. We ended up (not for that reason) having children three months before my mum retired. The difference between what a retired (but not yet decrepit) grandparent can offer vs a grandparent with a demanding full-time job is massive. There is a reason why the Chinese are loath to raise the retirement age - they rely on grandparental childcare far more than we do.
What, you too?
Look, I had my first and hitherto only kid when I was 30, and my wife 29. My brother had his first at 23. My wife's sister on the other side had her first at...hell, 17? The consequences of becoming at parent at various ages and what it does to people under different circumstances aren't some abstract, statistical question to me. It's right there. I see how I struggle to live up to my idea of what a parent should do because I lack the health and energy of my younger self, and because I need to walk back a decade of entrenched non-parent habits that would have been a decade of parent habits instead had I become a dad at 20. I see how those other people I mentioned, and others besides, rise to meet the challenge and become more responsible, more practical and more far-sighted thanks to parenthood. I see how bullshit and bad habits evaporate. And I see how young people are just far more up to the task than those who are already beginning to slide into physical and mental decline. Lower neurplasticity, more bad habits, bodies having had more time to pick up various beginnings of decrepitude, the whole social support network being older and less able to help - it's just worse parenting material.
The only things you gain from being an older parent is more material wealth to throw at parenting issues, and additional life experience (but those experiences being those of a non-parent, so not as valuable as otherwise). But those advantages aren't worth much compared to what you're giving up. It's perhaps a little different if parenthood forces you to become a single dad because the mother dies or runs off or collapses into a pile of mental illness, but if you can become a regular (though young!) couple in which the man does the career and the woman takes care of the kids, then starting as early as possible is, in my view, mostly just the better way. And yes, this implies that women having careers is a tremendous waste of time and effort.
Unless, big caveat, there's preexisting mental illness. That just gets worse with kids. Those women are probably better off safely stowed in some office job.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6d ago
Speak out as the tide is changing a couple of years too early? Gulag and execution. Speak out a year or two too late? Irrelevant, timid, late. Timing needs to be perfect.
If we're talking about the period when Gulag camp and execution was an actual threat (meaning the Stalin era - the Gulag system was formally abolished in 1957), the timing was actually very easy - you just did like a loyal communist and condemned Stalin at the very moment when the Party, speaking with the mouth of General Secretary Khruschev, did so.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
6d ago
I've read quite a bit of his work, though I didn't like Arrival or the story it was adapted from I'm afraid. I have a dim opinion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and even its most ardent believers probably don't think it makes you into a mentat.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
6d ago
It's okay, I'm guilty of being less than tactful at times, so I genuinely don't mind a dose of my own medicine.
wayfarer
6d ago
so investors lost money on both counts.
investors in railway construction in early days of USA also very often (mostly?) lost money, this does not changed fact that railways radically changed USA and were in useful use for long time - some still are
Current models cannot replace anyone
this is provably false, and blatantly false
writers of low-quality marketing spam and bottom tiers of image creations are among first, low-tier translations died
FtttG
6d ago
If you've seen Denis Villeneuve's movie Arrival, it was adapted from one of his other novellas.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
6d ago
Well that's the rub isn't it? We weren't stable, even if we were young.
We could have made kids work, at least if our own relationship woes didn't sink us. We'd just made it out of med school, and gotten new jobs, but we both were working hard to get professional accreditations in order. Getting into the UK, then entering training, so many milestones seemed unmet.
It's not like we couldn't absolutely afford it, I'm sure with the help of family it wouldn't have been too bad. Maybe.
At any rate, I do want kids, and soon, as opposed to "at some point in the future". Now the hard part of finding someone to have them with.
I wonder if this is related to the Muslim penchant for cousin marriage.
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