domain:alakasa.substack.com
ResoluteRaven
19m ago
I know several people whose fathers were in their 50's and mothers were ~40 when they were born, some of them being the youngest sibling of a large number and others being the only child. The latter sort might be a bit more socially awkward than normal, but that seems to be more from similarity to their parents than anything else. I would say the main concern in such a situation is the child having to care for their elderly parents earlier than the norm, but apart from that there are no major issues.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23m ago
Not to hijack, but, with apologies to all the aphantasia folks, I am always visualizing, and have clearish mental images of most Mottizens (probably inaccurate, spooky if they were accurate.)
Ioper
23m ago
So if you exclude half of western food and squint hard it's not very good outside of fine dining?
ResoluteRaven
35m ago
Your taste is not atypical for someone raised in or around immigrant enclaves where disdain for "white people food" is quite common, but less so for someone that grew up eating and therefore has at least some childhood nostalgia bound up with said food. All the same I think Western food is too broad of a category to dismiss, as even limiting ourselves to the US we have regional cuisines or styles of preparation (Cajun, Southern barbecue, Southwestern) that can put up a decent fight against what China or India has to offer.
As far as explanations for why people prefer the latter, one involves the industrialization of food production, which over time transforms meals from family gatherings where a peasant grandmother slaves for hours over a pot to squeeze every last drop of flavor out of rare and precious ingredients into mass-produced microwaveable slop that people eat by themselves solely for sustenance and not enjoyment (and this is not just in western countries; the food that the typical Japanese person eats every day is also to my eyes bland and unappetizing compared to the Korean or Chinese equivalent, since the latter two developed later), and the second is that you can usually get a better deal eating at a restaurant owned by a poor immigrant than one owned by a local i.e. why would I pay $20 for a craft burger and fries or a single appetizer at a good Italian place when I could get a giant bowl of pho for $12 (your local prices may vary proportionally) instead?
JulianRota
54m ago
I started reading House To House by David Bellavia. It's a personal account by US Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia of the battle to re-take Fallujah in 2004 during operation Iraqi Freedom. Reminds me a lot of JTarrou's posts on Violent Class. It's very heavy on the details of the combat that his unit engaged in, not much discussion of any sort of grand strategy, politics, etc. That's clearly the actual experience of the guys on the sharp edge. The kind of thing you don't see written about much.
I noted that the book has a listed co-author, John R. Bruning, who, going by his listed bio, is actually a professional author and journalist. Did he do most of the actual work to transform this into a well-written story? I don't know, but Mr. Bellavia appears to be no slouch in the writing department himself - according to the Amazon bio, he has also been published in "The Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications". So I guess him and JTarrou are part of a relatively small number of people who are actual combat veterans and can also write about it in a highly articulate and insightful way.
I'm only about a third of the way through the book so far. The Amazon summary is all about some truly heroic badass feats that SSG Bellavia pulled off which earned him the Medal of Honor, but I haven't reached that part yet. The first part is more about the daily life of a Staff Sergeant, which is more about looking after the men in your unit, keeping them safe, well-equipped, and well prepared for the fighting to come. Stuff like evaluating who's good at what, putting the right guys in the right positions, making sure they have a good plan for the fight to come and everyone actually knows what it is.
He doesn't seem to have the generalized disdain towards officers. Some are seen as and portrayed as being useless douchenozzles. Others are, or have grown into, being decent quality combat leaders.
I do see portrayed here the notion that many actual soldiers, even highly skilled and experienced soldiers who volunteered to be in the infantry and have been promoted multiple times, are still a little bit reluctant to actually shoot the enemy sometimes. There's a passage near the beginning of the book where SSG Bellavia is on a rooftop during a battle, sees a presumed enemy on a nearby rooftop before they see him, gets him in his sights, but hesitates to fire. He has what sounds like an anxious feeling that the soldier he sees might actually be one of their Iraqi allied forces. He writes of watching the guy spot him, turn to face him, and start raising his own rifle towards him, all while he's dead on in Bellavia's rifle sights. He writes of thinking for a moment that the guy might actually be an ally who is trying to help him by shooting an unseen other enemy that's actually behind him, of wishing he'd just set down the rifle and go back inside. He does in the end manage to shoot the guy before the guy tries to shoot him.
TwiceHuman
1hr ago
Hmm, I don't exactly disagree. But I think a major problem is that people optimize for votes (Goodhart's law) instead of what the votes are supposed to represent. This happens even without votes, and we can conclude that people are the problem... But still, if a lack of votes removes some of the cognitive punishment or reward of posting something that everyone agrees or disagrees with, and helps people focus on what's important, I think it might be a good idea still.
Lets assume that I'm wrong and that none of these problems actually apply to voting (that common critiques against voting are wrong). Now I want to ask: What's the benefit of votes? Do they just reveal information about what the average reader thinks about your comments? I don't think that's all that valuable, mostly because I don't trust the average opinion of a community as a judge of quality.
The crowd seems to be good at telling that something is different, and shunning it. But differentiating between "Different because it's better than what's popular" and "different because it's worse than what's popular" seems like an impossibility. The votes just steer one towards sameness, inside-jokes, preaching to the choir, saying what people already think and agree with. This is why echo-chambers and excessive use of inside-references ('circlejerking') happen.
Some places will have comments which are out of place because they're excellent or written by a highly intelligent people, and other comments will of course be out of place because they're garbage or written by mentally ill people. But votes (well, people in general) seem to protect against both positive and negative change. It seems like the familiar is felt as good, and the unfamiliar is felt as bad. To the point that people will joke about among us despite claiming to dislike it. This is probably a quirk of human nature?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
I think your taste is atypical for someone raised in the West. For example, I could never agree that tacos are better than burgers. They are both incredibly tasty foods. In general, I think American food is quite good (albeit not always very distinct due to our immigrant culture and the fact we adapt a lot of other cuisine).
Rabbi Raphael Hirsch wrote,
Mankind, estranged from G-d, longs in vain for happiness and peace, longs for the garden of Eden, but they have chosen a way on which they will never find them! Cherubim and the flames of the sword of suffering "preserve" for mankind the road to Eden. Their message: Men cannot win Eden through his own strength; this road is saturated with blood; he will find Gan-Eden again if he is willing to be led and commanded by G-d. [Rabbi Raphael Hirsch: Commentary on the Torah]
I think Hirsh is right in that the story of Eden captures something that people, or something inside people, longs deeply for; and there are two paths that appear to lead toward it. One path respects our position as servants of a Higher Power, the position of our fellow man as being made in His image, and the constraints of the moral and causal laws of nature and human nature. The other does not -- and was aptly called the unconstrained vision by Thomas Sowell. Both are essentially spiritual in their composition. What does Marx's utopian vision look like? No divisions by class or country, no courts or cops, no private possessions, and plenty for all. Sound familiar? If you want to understand Marxists, you should think of Marx, not as a political philosopher, but as a self-anointed prophet. When Bertrand Russell met with Lenin, he unexpectedly found that Lenin regarded Marx that way:
If he [Lenin] wanted to prove a point, he thought it enough to quote a text of Marx. No fundamentalist was ever more addicted to scripture than he was to Marx. [Bertrand Russell, describing his meeting with Lenin in a 1962 interview with David Susskind]
Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. [Russell, Bertrand (1920): "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism".]
In a political compass model, the FDP was to the right of the CDU on economic issues and to their left on social issues. (The CSU is a Bavarian party which has caucused with the CDU since forever, but is the farthest right of all the respectable parties on both economic and social issues because Bavaria is the Texas of Germany).
The fact that it is easy to explain the difference between the FDP and CDU but hard to given an unambiguous answer to "which is more right-wing?" is itself evidence against the 1D left-right model.
The Netherlands were governed by "Purple coalitions" including the left-wing PvdA and the right-liberal VVD but excluding the Christian centrist CDA from 1994-2002 and 2012-2017. The 1994-2002 Purple coalition explicitly excluded the CDA becuase the VVD, PvdA and left-liberal D66 wanted them out of office. The coalition passed significant social-left legislation opposed by the CDA including the legalisation of prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia. (The 2012-7 purple coalition is a less good example because the only reason the CDA and D66 were excluded was that the VVD and PvdA didn't need their votes.)
This one, of course, makes perfect sense under a political compass style model - the PvdA is economic left, social centre, the VVD is economic right, social centre, the D66 is economic centre, social left, and the CDA is economic centre, social right. So PvdA-VVD-D66 is a social centre-left coalition which is all over the place on economics.
If you want to go full horseshoe, there are two important examples of the Communist KPD co-operating with the far right in Weimar Germany - the KPD had been ordered by Moscow to oppose the centre-left SDP as a priority. The 1931 Prussian referendum was an attempt to recall the SPD-led State government in Prussia which was supported by the Stahlhelm (an anti-democratic right-wing veteran's organisation tied to the DNVP), the Nazis and the KPD. There was a transport strike in Berlin in November 1932 where Nazi and KPD goon squads worked together to protect strikers and intimidate scabs.
I also endorse the modern German examples downthread.
bonsaii
2hr ago
Does anyone here actually consider Western food amongst their favorite cuisines?
Personally, I find American cuisine is downright trash-tier. My city is lauded by many as a "top-tier food city" but the examples people give of great food are pizza, hot dogs, burgers, Italian beef, and cheesesteak. Most of the ones I've tried I would call oil-drenched slop. None were actually delicious enough to justify the health detriments, especially when similarly unhealthy but better tasting options exist like Mexican tacos, Indian curry, Iranian kababs, Japanese ramen, Chinese hot pot, etc.
In my experience, this has applied to Western countries in general. Except for the Mediterranean-adjacent Italian, Spanish, and Greek, I don't think I've ever particularly enjoyed any other Western food. Do Canada, Australia, and New Zealand even have an identifiable cuisine? I don't know of any British, Nordic, or Slavic restaurants in my area. France is stereotyped as the culinary capital, but most of what I've had was overpriced and looked better than it actually tasted.
It may be that most of the hype around Western food is concentrated in fine-dining, in which I'm largely uninterested. When it comes to a more typical meal, I have a hard time putting any country (aside from Italy/Spain/Greece) above bottom tier when comparing to other regional cuisines from East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America.
So am I eating the wrong things, is my taste atypical for someone raised in the West, or is it relatively common for most Western cuisines to be clustered in the bottom-tier?
sohois
2hr ago
It's still early days for us, not even at the first scan. Mostly just been reassuring my wife that not everything has the potential to cause a miscarriage.
We also got Oster's book, and yeah, it's not too much that you won't know already, and the unorthodox advice on things like drinking alcohol and caffeine aren't any use for my wife as she barely touches either in normal times
anon_
2hr ago
the genuinely criminal distribution of actual CP by drowning it in mostly if not entirely indistinguishable AI forgeries
There is a civilizational fence here that you probably don't want to tear down cavalierly.
In particular, it's feasible (perhaps it would not come to pass) that:
- You drown the world in AI CP
- Child victimization goes down in the short term as predicted, the government doubles down on prosecuting those who harm actual children
- Over time, the prevalence and easy accessibility of AI CP erodes the norm against considering young children in a sexual manner
- Decades later, this rebounds into increasing harm of actual children
- With the norm eroded, there is less popular will to double down on prosecuting these cases.
They can't/won't do this though. Why not?
Failure of your imagination to supply a steel man to your opposition.
Thus the fact that these men have sexual urges at all is an abomination to women
This is not a brave statement, but I'm gonna double down on "sexual urges that are focused on a 5 year old are abominable" and maybe "and should be to individuals of all sexes"
anon_
2hr ago
No, but again, imaging to oneself is very different than publishing/distributing.
anon_
2hr ago
I fully agree that exaggerating the negativity of it is itself harmful.
But at the same time, this does fall within the longstanding tradition against libel, false light -- publishing a nude image of someone is a clear implication that they have willingly posed nude. If that is false, it's squarely libel. That's not the end of the world -- we can say it's bad/wrong/illegal without saying it's the worst thing that can happen. Nuance is dead, they say.
That said, if some horny teenager wants to create the images, rub one out and then keep them to himself, that's back in "creepy-but-not-illegal" territory.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2hr ago
He explicitly stated that if we could Read/Write minds then he’d change his mind.
Demonstrate mind reading and mind control, and I'll agree that Determinism appears to be correct. In the meantime, I'll continue to point out that confident assertions are not evidence.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
2hr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on The Future Does Not Compute. Also trying to catch up on my Shakespeare with The Tempest.
anon_
2hr ago
I'd like to add another option
- Wanted to do the right thing, but doing the right thing is hard (building a better mousetrap, except it's a billion/trillion dollar a machine) and there are structural impediments (legitimate & illegitimate) and entrenched interests. Over time, the desire to do the right thing sublimates into doing what's possible. That in turn includes maintaining allies against opposition.
SSCReader
2hr ago
Religious people don't treat cults and fanatics as "accidental harm".
Sure they do, in that they sympathize with the victims as being misled. Now of course what they see as a cult and what they see as a religion may vary from their own biases. But many of my Christian neighbors think Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are a cult and think most of the people are being taken advantage of. See how they react to people trying to deny blood products to their kids that will kill them. We don't arrest them for attempted murder, we generally just override their decision. We clearly do in fact treat people differently where we think they are making bad choices for what they see as good reasons.
That doesn't mean we don't do anything, we have negligent homicide and the like for a reason. But we do not as a society see it as harmful as a direct planned harm.
AvocadoPanic
3hr ago
That's why I put it in ' '.
It's like retouching a photo to make them look nude. This or composting their head / face into porn feels a bit different to me than writing a prompt that would generate a similar appearing image.
I finally finished the Flynn autobiography. I had begun an effort post about it though that may never be completed. Worth reading (the book).
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