domain:alethios.substack.com
SkoomaDentist
8hr ago
This site is one of the few forums that doesn't make me constantly go "Why the fuck is everyone a bunch of retards who are violently opposed to even trying to get facts correct or using their brain?"... Like sure, there are idiots also here but not to the massively overwhelming extent that is the norm pretty much everywhere else. And I'm not even talking about anything politically related.
SSCReader
8hr ago
Huh, i'll look into that, thanks! Humira is on my list if Trenfya fails as it stands, but which drug works for which person seems very scattershot.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply!
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
9hr ago
anyone remember them?
They're still a reasonably popular clothing brand in Japan, for some reason.
aqouta
9hr ago
You didn't answer the question. What land concession, short of the river to the sea, could Israel make for an enduring peace?
naraburns
nihil supernum
9hr ago
Unrelated, and yet somehow related: board game publisher CGE criticized for publishing a Harry Potter themed board game.
Specifically, some (though by no means all) well known game reviewers have declared they will stop publishing reviews of any CGE game, as a result of CGE publishing a Harry Potter themed version of "Codenames." This, on grounds that Rowling uses her money to
directly fund organisations attempting to strip trans people of their rights.
The organization in question, of course, does not phrase it that way, claiming instead to
offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.
In other words, Rowling says "I want to protect specifically female rights." Her critics must regard the protection of female rights as logically equivalent to transphobia; certainly they treat the statements as logically equivalent. This seems like a mistake to me; it seems to me pretty easy to imagine a society that both protects uniquely female rights and spaces and grants total legal protection and even subsidies to the gender nonconforming (indeed--for the most part, in practical terms we in the United States appear to live in approximately that society now).
CGE did publish a bit of an open-ended maybe-apology? The Bluesky userbase (should they rebrand as Bluehair?) seems about as mollified by that as the redditors in /r/boardgames, which is to say, not very. In fact the reddit thread is the first time I've actually encountered "no ethical consumption under capitalism" deployed unironically in the wild, to explain why it's cool to definitely not boycott major companies like HBO, or Lego, or Visa/Mastercard, etc. over Rowling connections, while insisting that it is a moral imperative to destroy this particular brand in response to a business connection to a woman who has dedicated her wealth to fighting for women's rights.
Now, @FtttG suggests below,
The difference is that there's no longer any expectation for normies to play along.
Fair enough, and the mainstream fandom of Harry Potter is clearly large enough that the game will sell well. But the board game community is often rather short on normies, and for some reason also quite high on drama, with "boycott this publisher" being a somewhat common refrain.
A Harry Potter boardgame is small potatoes compared to the Sweeney thing, but I offer it for comparison. It never fails to astonish me, the vitriol and frankly falsehood leveled against Rowling on this matter. Rowling is very much not anti-trans. She's totally down with people dressing, speaking, and acting however they want, to a degree that no sex or gender conservative would ever approve. All she wants is for sex-segregated women's spaces (restrooms, prisons, changing rooms, shelters) to remain sex-segregated for all the safety and comfort reasons that have always underwritten that segregation. This seems like a pretty minor heresy, given the larger Leftism to which she unquestionably subscribes.
But of course, it's often Freud's narcissism of small differences that really underwrites "outgroup" identification. And since Rowling is financially and culturally insulated from direct attack, it is only her smallest, most vulnerable business partners who get targeted by her critics. "No ethical consumption under capitalism" becomes the excuse for picking-and-choosing popular outrage for maximum strategic benefit. There's less friction to identifying with a viral movement if doing so bears only the strictly social cost of alienating anyone who disagrees. For the movement, alienating your friends and family who don't fall in line is a feature rather than a bug.
This is where I want to push back (only a little) on @FtttG's response. The Sweeney thing is just one especially notable case among many. Calls to boycott or "show the door" this or that person or product are a dime a dozen, a standard play in the political playbook. But every single one is both a trial balloon and a substantive nudge. The tide is not completely unrelenting, and has receded somewhat since Trump's re-election, but here we have a couple of stray waves lapping the shore, outrage peddlers beginning to nibble at the edges...
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
9hr ago
Well I can't disagree, maximal stupidity requires a non-trivial amount of intelligence applied towards misguided ends. See Gary Marcus for an existence proof.
I haven't been tempted to fall in love with an LLM at all, and I really can't see that happening in the foreseeable future. Even something like Ani, if it was more photorealistic, would get me to jerk off and forget it. This particular example hit me so hard because it was grounded in reality, a concrete example of what I'd missed out on. I wouldn't say it's a vision of a better future, since I think I made the right decision in not pursuing that relationship, but the losses were very real.
It's obvious that what you're contemplating is inadvisable. I know this, you know this. That probably won't stop you because it didn't stop me. If you do go down the digital rabbit/pleasure-hole, well, at least present us with a good writeup.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
9hr ago
The Marshmallow Test is billed as a test of delayed gratification, but I suspect it is more a test of whether the subject trusts authority.
Given how small the marshmallows used in the experiment were, it is also a test of the intrinsic desire to pass tests - the reward for passing is the marginal difference between two tiny marshmallows and one, which would not be sufficient extrinsic motivation to get the average 6 year old to do something they don't want to do.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
9hr ago
Yes, I don't give a damn about whatever stupid ultimately superficial nonsense you can pin on the woke if the other choice is this! Seriously, most of you're examples are quotes and words, it's obnoxious how much you're ignoring actual material impacts.
I'm just a bystander of course, and affected only in so far as both woke culture warring and American scientific achievements spill over the atlantic, but as a right-wing culture warrior, my impression is one of "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.". By politicizing academia and turning into one of the if not the main engine for leftist propagation and legitimacy, no matter who started or drove it, it became a legitimate target in the culture wars. One can lament it from either perspective, but letting the left have it uncontested would have been strategically insane. And if it can't be converted to rightism or dragged into neutrality, then destruction seems like the natural next-best option.
If you keep your cruise missiles or drone factories in a hospital, then complaints about it getting bombed ring somewhat hollow. Yeah the material impacts are a shame, but what did you expect? I'm not surprised about how leftist media have picked apart the church and the military and other former bastions of rightism, and you shouldn't be surprised about how rightists are doing the same to leftist-dominated institutions.
If you want something to be exempt from fighting, to not become a battlefield, to be beneficial to mankind, to be valued and cherished by all, then for God's sake don't let it become the centrepiece of anyone's war machine unless you are that certain of its invulnerability.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9hr ago
You still remember the ad and the company, so clearly it worked at some level.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
9hr ago
Under classical morality, Clinton is a cad and a rake and Lewinsky is a slut and a home-wrecker.
Under classical morality, most sex is illicit, and most illicit sex has two perpetrators - rape stricto sensu is the rare case where one partner is wholly innocent because she didn't consent, not something that is only illicit because of the lack of consent.
Blueberry
9hr ago
The vibe riding is an interesting thought. I guess it is the same in music/fashion/art: cool people surf the wave at the exact right time, uncool people are too late, but few stay relevant over decades without becoming a dinosaurs.
chooky
9hr ago
I think that part of the backlash is simply because a lot of people started out primed with a disdain for Sweeney, mainly because of the perception that her popularity is driven purely by her looks, namely her curves. My wife got mad when I said I thought she was great, but my position was that at that point she had pretty much been 2/2 on starring in absolutely amazing shows (Euphoria and White Lotus 1), and she did a commendable job in the movie about Reality Winner. Of course, now that Anything But You has happened (and I love rom coms!), I kind of have to retract my "will watch anything she stars in" position. To me, the Sweeney brand was initially about absolutely impeccable taste, but people who did not appreciate her HBO shows do not realize this.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
9hr ago
Monica Lewinsky unambiguously consented, and was over age. (I don't think that excuses Clinton's behaviour - I think supervisor-subordinate sex in the workplace is almost always wrong, and banworthy, and I separately think that thou shalt not commit adultery.) She wasn't the plaintiff and only became the centre of the scandal because she was the woman who retained evidence that could prove Clinton committed perjury. Some of the other women didn't consent.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
9hr ago
I agree wholeheartedly. I've always had a very 'dad' sense of humor, and I think I'd make for a good father. I've no shortage of good role models in that regard.
I yearn to find the right person, and have children who would be as proud to be my kids as I am of my own parents. I'm sure when that person is there, these regrets will fade, and when I have my actual flesh and blood to cradle in my arms, no imaginary doppelganger can hurt me again.
I assume some kind of "yes, good" thing? Otherwise, do you care to explain? I know that there exist people with incompatible values to me, so what---I mean someone was complaining that my post was condemning the average poster here as ideologically degenerate. I wasn't doing that, but if you're saying that this is the response I'll get then maybe I should have been?
I'm replying to someone who I thought cared about scientific progress and meritocracy (as defined in the OP) more than any kind of ancestral/racial purity however. Now that I think about it more, I guess this might be a better concrete example to focus on than JD Vance's quote. What are you willing to sacrifice to keep foreigners out of the country?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
9hr ago
As I said, literally just the screenshot, in a context where its understood that youre supposed to "look at this lefty".
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
9hr ago
I assumed that if they advertise as a barbershop they might be using straight razors.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
9hr ago
Back in the eighties, Benetton (anyone remember them?) were running ads that had nothing to do with clothes, with pictures of some random African kid. I still don't know what the message there was supposed to be.
It's a long story. One I could have penned ages ago, but was in too much pain to do so. The breakup was shortly before I found out that matched into psych, and that particular excitement kept me busy for a good few months.
We just weren't compatible in many ways. While it might be rude to label exes with mental disorders, I am actually a psychiatry trainee, so it does mean something when I do it (and I'm happy to pin several diagnoses on myself). I strongly suspect that she has borderline personality disorder (gets it from her mom).
In fact, I actually went through the diagnostic checklist using her as the example.
BPD women are popular for a reason, men much wiser than me have fallen prey before.
Pros:
-
She was kind in the way of people who cannot bear the existence of preventable suffering in a five-mile radius. Dogs followed her around like she was Saint Francis, except Saint Francis probably wouldn’t have had the cops show up to return the “rescued” dogs to their original owners. She did the illegal thing for benevolent reasons, which is a not-unusual intersection in that Venn diagram, and her worst fault with animals was that she loved them so much she forgot discipline exists, which is how you get a nippy little mutt and also me doing my best to be civil to the nippy little mutt.
-
Intelligent. She studied at a much better med school. Unfortunately, she didn't study when it came to our exams. I was grinding away like mad, but she wanted to tour London, take it easy. We worked at the same hospital, we'd applied together (even HR thought it was very sweet). I had a brutal job in Oncology, but one that paid well. She took ER shifts that were more grueling and somehow paid less, then used the workload as the reason she wasn’t studying, which - look, I told her so many times. I did the annoying, unromantic thing where you say, “There is a path from here to there that requires pressure now for autonomy later.” My repeated warnings that her preparation was insufficient to secure a specialty position were met with dismissal. The outcome is a matter of record: I am now in the UK, and she is not.
-
Hot. Great in bed. Even after our breakup, let's just say I wasn't too great at turning her down when she called me over. My ex employer wouldn't be happy to hear what we did in the doctor's room.
-
She was funny. People underrate how hard it is to find a woman who genuinely laughs at your jokes without that blank “gendered social expectation” delay. Most women are fine, often delightful, but humor variance skews male; sorry, I don’t make the distributions. With her, the jokes landed, and I felt like someone had finally tuned the radio to the right frequency.
Now the downsides, which ended up outweighing all the good:
-
She was very hot-tempered. She loved getting into arguments and then breaking down in tears. I'm a very stoic person, and I hate raising my voice. If we argued, I'd withdraw and give myself time to cool before coming back to make amends. She found this worse than me just fighting back. And boy did we argue. I think in my prior relationship, which lasted 5 years, we argued less over the course of half a decade than I did with her in a few weeks. It was ludicrous, it drove me nuts.
-
She had little tact. On our third date, I had to stop her from picking a fight with a bouncer three times her size, which is a good way to get banned from a club and a better way to get (me) punched. With parents and friends, imagine me as permanent damage-control. People like her shock the air; sometimes this is charming, often this is a thing you apologize for over dessert.
-
She was awful with money. Spent it like water, was always in debt. When we'd come to the UK, we always fought because I wanted to be frugal, and she wanted to spend money she didn't have. She failed that try and went again, borrowing a significant amount of money from me. I gave it gladly, but she continued to live well above her means, and took months after we broke up to finish paying me back.
-
Her politics were god-awful, typical bleeding heart lib stuff. To her credit, she did tolerate my heterodox and witchy opinions. I still want to go the States and hate the fact it's not an option. She had every right to try, but said she'd die before moving there.
-
Unironically watched the Crown and Bridgerton. I'm being unfair here, but I must mention that she'd always get very miffed if I categorically refused to watch along. To her credit, she did make we watch Euphoria, and Fleabag, which I actually enjoyed. I would have been content to have the two of us sit in amicable silence while doing our own things, but she wouldn't have it.
-
She flip-flopped on the idea of kids. I've always been confident that I wanted them, when I'm settled. She'd go from arguing with me over baby names to strong protestations that she'd never have any. She was almost three years older than me, which means fucking around and ignoring the biological clock wasn't the best idea.
My family and friends really didn't like her, though they tolerated her for my sake. They thought she was a gold-digger (not true, at least in my opinion) since I come from a wealthier background. They could see that she was driving me insane, and I can't argue, since I literally went blind for a bit because of the stress.
The highs were stratospheric. The lows scraped magma off the basalt. I'm not built for this, my heart can't take it.
After we split, I had flings, most of them absolutely insane women, some with people I might have stuck with if I’d stayed in India. In Scotland, I had a stable, but extremely boring year-long relationship. I ended it. “Stable but boring” is a phrase you say apologetically, but it names a real tradeoff: if you have a history of chasing fire, you will tell yourself that room temperature is death. I don’t want the fire anymore. I want the happy middle: someone who is fond, easy to return to, a person I am slightly more myself around. Whirlwinds make great anecdotes and bad homes.
I had a manic pixie dream girl; the dream had too much nightmare in it. Some lives feel like literature. Literature is bad for your eyes. Ask me how I know, or don't, because I just laid my still bitter heart bare before you.
(In exchange, please tell me something useful about places to visit in London today. I was eyeing the Camden Fringe, but not sure if it's worth the hassle)
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
9hr ago
Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset. This should be as obvious as saying that the four legged furry animal that barks at the mailman, chase tennis balls, that lives in my house, and had two parents who were both dogs, is, in fact, a dog.
He may have been an asset (and probably was), but the controversial claim being made here is more than that. If Epstein was entrapping and blackmailing people like Clinton, Trump and Prince Andrew on behalf of Mossad, then he was a Mossad agent and the people he was blackmailing were assets. And at most intelligence agencies, including the CIA and MI6, Epstein would fail the character and loyalty tests to be recruited as an agent. You don't want someone who might predictably find themselves in a position where they are tempted to blab in exchange for a reduced sentence knowing the things Epstein would need to know to do the job of Mossad blackmailer-in-chief.
That's rough. I wish you good luck.
At least fall isn't far, and your kids are grown out of the most care-intensive ages and (mostly, I suppose?) not into teenage rebellion yet.
Do you have any nearby relatives or friends who might help you out when needed?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
9hr ago
Can you speak plainly for the benefit of those few who genuinely don't know what kind of meme you describe there?
AvocadoPanic
9hr ago
I spoke to an attorney last week. It was sad and depressing. I completed the documention exercises he recommended before I blocked the the extremist content from the network. This is a non-perfered option.
There are areas for improvement. 2 years ago, she insisted on homeschooling. I'm reenrolling the children for the start of school in the fall. It's challenging, I work full-time, I've not been to the office in several weeks. I may switch to a full remote work plan. 12, 10, 8, 6
Thank you for highlighting this. I knew OP was getting that wrong the moment McWhorter's name appeared on my phone. He's generally good people.
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