domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
HereAndGone
8m ago
I think maternal conversion is considered legitimate.
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
10m ago
I can semi-concur with you here. I went to a French immersion school in a decently black area as a kid, and it was a far better school than its demographics would suggest. Most of the black kids were either immigrants from Francophone Africa or otherwise upper-middle class, and while it still wasn't private-school quality, it seemed a hell of a lot better than the surrounding public schools.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
10m ago
"Immigrants from Christian Africa are easy to assimilate and at the margin we should be more welcoming to them" is a minority position among immigration realists, but not a fringe one. On the Tory (but not the populist) British right, it also ties into Empire nostalgia and the idea that we should discriminate in favour of Commonwealth countries.
HereAndGone
18m ago
What Hefner was doing was trying to take porn mainstream. The jokes about "I only read Playboy for the articles" riffed off that; he was presenting an entire package for the sophisticated (or wannabe-sophisticate) man. This wasn't porn, it was erotica. You weren't reading Playboy to get your rocks off (was the pretence), the Playmates were part of the ensemble of what an intelligent, worldly-wise man experienced. That was also the point of the clubs, there were "gentleman's clubs", with keys for members, and the image again was of the worldly, sophisticated man - a roué perhaps, but not a guy in a raincoat in a seedy porn cinema jerking off. Selling the "James Bond" image, which is why the mansion and Hef in his smoking jacket was also an important part of the image: this was what ambitious young men in the 60s and 70s USA were aiming for, with the booming post-war economy and possibilities of all sorts opening up and the Sexual Revolution at hand, or could be persuaded into thinking they were all part of, as Playboy consumers: taste, wealth, an urbane lifestyle their parents didn't have, and hot young women willing to be friendly and sexually available but not as hookers or paid escorts. You were all liberated and rewriting the conventions of society.
Of course, the seedy porn cinemas had never gone away and the likes of Hustler came along with a completely different and more cynical, more pragmatic philosophy: no pretence about art or erotica, more graphic and hardcore, to eat Playboy's lunch, and nowadays you can get anything you want on the Internet.
But as you say, for a while there it was the point where fantasy was presented in an attainable form.
Tree
19m ago
somali
black priest
Find the difference.
You and the average western intellectual could really benefit from adding that subcategory. It's not complicated, their tribal religion requires them to hate us ("The enmity and hatred that has arisen between us and you will last until you believe in Allah alone" Coran 60.4) and obey the moral code of a 7th century desert raider. This has negative consequences when you're trying to live with them.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
21m ago
Only a small minority of women have the sort of ideal breasts that earn you a Playboy photoshoot, so small that it’s impossible to fill all titty mags only with pictures of them. Hence the sad and pathetic proliferation of bolt-on tits.
It's not this small, as OnlyFans and PornHub have shown us. It's the combination of well-shaped breasts with a pretty face and a willingness to let a very broad audience associate the one with the other that is rare.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
24m ago
And I understand the people who feel it's duplicitous to pretend to be nice to someone you loathe or pretend to be happy when you feel like shit, but a) that's society and b) that's what they're being paid for, most people don't care if they grind the beans a particular way, they just want a cute girl or guy to smile when they get their coffee. And yes, maybe it's selfish to not want to worry about tailoring your behaviour to not upset some barista you'll never see again, but I think it is eminently more selfish - and entitled - to expect strangers to treat you like you belong in their Dunbar's group. Especially when you are being paid to be there and the stranger is paying you.
I don’t get this. You know going into service adjacent industries that at least part of what you do is offer a service. It’s not a mystery, it’s not hidden in the fine print. There is no “surprise, we actually want you to make this experience as pleasant as possible.” And as such, as either the owner/manager of a place like that or a customer, I expect that you will perform a service and do so without being rude or acting like the job you were hired to do is a burden. If not acting like a spoiled child made to clean their bedroom is too hard for you, then don’t work in the service industry.
And furthermore I don’t think that the current year thing where employees are allowed to bring political and social issues, personal problems or anything else into the workplace is good. It’s a business. It is not your personal billboard for whatever pet cause you have. It’s not a place where personal problems should get in the way of getting the job done. Such things just get in the way. Leave it at home or talk to a therapist as needed, but the primary purpose of a job is to get the work done. It’s not your home, it’s not your friends, and it’s not your therapist’s office.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
37m ago
I think honestly you should have the ability to do a National injunction but it should be a situation where you have to get all the plaintiffs on one case, and it should be automatically taken up by SCOTUS. The first part, to me, is reasonable because it removes the “I’ll keep going before judges until I get my way” tactic. The loss would be the end of the matter. But I think it’s necessary for such a system to exist because there are some decisions that it’s extremely hard to undo, and the courts especially, if there are multiple appeals, can move far too slowly to bring Justice. If I decide to force prisoners to work in a factory on pain of not feeding them unless they do, that’s potentially a serious breach of justice. If it takes 5-6 years for the case to wind through the courts, you have people potentially starved to death before you get a definitive answer on the matter. You can’t undo dead. But because there’s a threat of “okay, but because of the nature of the injunction, it’s only binding until SCOTUS rules on it,” people are going to be appropriately reticent to bring out that big weapon, and only use it in cases where the law is clear on the matter.
TowardsPanna
40m ago
He's permabanned. You shouldn't encourage alt-posting.
SkoomaDentist
1hr ago
Timed tests are too much for ADHD students.
Errr, what? Why on earth would they be? If anything, being in such timed situation helps with getting things done when you have ADHD.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
1hr ago
I'm all for further subdividing groups to get a better understanding, and it always should be kept in mind that different countries will have somewhat different problem immigrant groups due to geographical and political realities, but it doesn't really change my point. Somalis are very common here in germany nowadays, one of the most problematic groups and usually grouped as sub-saharan african.
FWIW, before the recent asylum waves that especially the Somalis, but not only them, took advantage off, sub-saharan black immigrants in germany also were somewhat of a model-minority, though also extremely rare. As a child, the only black girl I personally knew was an adopted, extremely bookish nerd, and otherwise would occasionally see a black priest from some mission.
Terracotta
1hr ago
This seems directly contradicted by the various attempts at measuring the frequency of baseline human relationships.
Why would the existence of undatable people in every era imply that their frequency must remain constant over time? That's true if datability is entirely genetic or if it's strictly relative (e.g. datability = being in the top 70% [or whatever]). But if animal courtship rituals involve complex, learned social behavior, then you could easily have cultural and environmental shifts that would reduce the number of people with the social ability to do courting effectively, regardless of their motivation or desire.
For instance, it strikes me that in every era, when you see intelligent young people who grew up like Extremely Online young men today (that is: indulged but also isolated, mostly sedentary life between school and home, 0-2 siblings under the care of a pampering mom or nanny, pressured to study hard with no economic constraints well through their early 20s, socializing largely virtually or in adult-controlled spaces, allowed to pursue status by developing obsessive, frivolous solitary or same-sex hobbies) - the introverted ones also commonly end up unpartnered or childless and a little eccentric. That's the H.P. Lovecraft story and it seems like practically the median trajectory for Gilded Age scions especially, but you can find instances all through history and across cultures.
So as more people are raised like this, you'd expect the ranks of the undatable to grow over time, assuming that some level of charisma or social confidence are necessary to inciting female desire in the absence of countervailing factors. It's just the "zoo animals can't mate in captivity" or the "my dog doesn't get along with other dogs" problem.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
sub-saharan "very little work, income almost entirely illegal or from state support, no willingness to fit in".
The is not an accurate description of 21st century immigration to the UK from sub-Saharan Africa. Within working and middle-class London neighbourhoods (i.e. segregating by ability to make rent) the recent African immigrants are better neighbours than the whites, and are overrepresented in cheap private schools, parent groups demanding more rigorous curriculum in State schools, Christian churches, and the Conservative Party.
This is obfuscated by statistics which lump them together with Caribbean blacks (who are now an indigenous underclass with similar but less severe pathologies to ADOS blacks in the US) and Somalis (who are basically undesirable in every way).
What is going on here is that there are social problems caused by the bottom 50% of the population (primarily consuming more public services than you pay in taxes) and social problems caused by the bottom 2% of the population (like crime). It only takes a minimally selective immigration filter for the immigrants to cause less of the second kind of the problem than the natives do - Sub-Saharan immigrants in the UK passed that test, even under the ultra-permissive Blair regime. The groups that don't are the completely unfiltered ones - refugees and illegals. (FWIW, the stats aren't great but in the US "put food on the table without drawing hostile attention from the authorities" looks like it was a sufficient filter that your illegals were less likely to commit non-immigration crimes than a native population that is 15+% ADOS blacks).
zeke5123a
2hr ago
I don’t think it’s that crazy of a position. First, the problem with national wide injunctions without classes is the asymmetry of the outcome. 500 different plaintiffs can bring the lawsuit in different district courts. 1/500 needs to win if the judge gives a nationwide injunction. Contrast with a class where the plaintiffs are in fact bound by a loss.
Second, the idea the government would in fact look for not yet born residents to impose something where there is direct SCOTUS authority is a hypothetical that is so far out there compared to the first concern because the government would quickly lose (eg new plaintiff would say there is a scotus case directly on point).
sun_the_second
2hr ago
I'd expect something less like genocide and more like anti-homeless hostile architecture turned up to 11. Don't need to kill the useless eaters if they can't take the resources your drone factories loot for yourself.
Tanista
2hr ago
I can get why Coogler didn't want the bad guy to be lying about the Klan, thematically.
I thought the mid-credits scene was a bit indulgent though and raised needless questions about the established vamp lore.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2hr ago
This part was interesting from Frost:
Frost: In terms of who I’m watching for, it’s all the folks who have not yet gone on the record as being opposed to nationwide injunctions.
Who are those people?
Frost: Really everybody but [Justice Neil] Gorsuch, [Justice Samuel] Alito and [Justice Clarence] Thomas.
However, according to this CNN article:
Speaking at a university event in 2022, Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, addressed how nationwide injunctions – when coupled with forum-shopping – were hamstringing administrations of both parties, asserting that “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process,” Kagan said.
My sense has long been that Kagan, as the only remaining Democrat-appointed justice who wasn't purely an affirmative action pick, is an the awkward position of being a genuinely capable jurist saddled with the burden of morons for ideological allies. But when supposed court experts go on Politico to explain who thinks what, and somehow a journalist at CNN manages to know more than them about the state of play, I have to wonder whether the experts are actually ignorant, or simply crafting a narrative.
sun_the_second
2hr ago
I'm not convinced that the Chinese are so different as a people that they don't try to get exactly what they want exactly the way they want, whenever they can. Just look at the way media is altered for their market.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
3hr ago
My impression is more that there is a somewhat indirect, but stable link between these two: If you're part of the elite, you usually already consider yourself more a cosmopolitan who just happens to life in this particular country. You have lots of elite friends from other countries, you have lived yourself in other countries. You profit from lower-class immigrant workers suppressing salaries. You should be able to live in the good part of wherever you are insulating yourself from most problems. All this together means is that you have a very strong positive disposition towards ethnic diversity. Any negative mention of any ethnic group except your own is frowned up on to such a degree that it is near-impossible to publicly acknowledge even obviously problematic minorities, it's always just specific people or at most this particular clan. Not being able to acknowledge a problem leads to that problem proliferating.
There is also the problem that some groups are simultaneously supplying useful cheap work, but are also high-crime. Some of this is even systematic, such as using legal low margin work companies as a front to do illegal side work which can range from merely supplemental to being the actual income stream. I think that's as usual a spectrum, with extreme cases such as east asian immigration at "great work, no crime, high willingness to fit in", the middle is something like east europeans "low-value work, often significant illegal side work, medium willingness to fit in" and the extreme other would be something like sub-saharan "very little work, income almost entirely illegal or from state support, no willingness to fit in". The middle groups are here for work, but still cause issues and some loss of trust, but just not as much.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3hr ago
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November 2022: A homeowner in a homeowners' association seeks to build a four-foot fence in his backyard, four inches from the property line. He receives approval from both the municipal government and the HOA. Accordingly, the fence is constructed.
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February 2023: The HOA claims that the fence is in violation of the HOA's rules. The homeowner replies that the fence was built in perfect accordance with the plans that were approved three months ago.
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March 2023: The HOA seeks to amend its rules in order to impose a minimum setback of ten feet on fences. The amendment fails to garner the required two-thirds vote of all members.
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September 2023: The HOA sues the homeowner under the theory that the minimum setback of thirty feet prescribed in its rules applies, not just to buildings, but also to fences, overriding the minimum of four inches that is prescribed for fences in the municipal zoning code. The trial judge rejects this argument as utterly ridiculous in April 2024, and the appeals panel affirms in May 2025.
Bonus: Trial transcript
I don't know the size of the lots over there, but, unless you've got a couple of acres, 30 feet back off your property line is a pretty significant distance. Frankly, it wouldn't be very aesthetically pleasing if you look at it that way, which is what these HOA rules are meant to provide. They want to keep the community a certain way, and a 30-foot setback requirement for a fence is just unheard of. I've never seen it anywhere. I've never heard of any association's having a 30-foot setback requirement from a property line for a fence. Drive around South Jersey. A lot of the fences, they're often at the property line, but you've got to get them off your neighbor's line unless you get his permission.
So I don't find that there is any material fact here. I think fences are specifically addressed under 8.1(c). If they wanted a setback requirement to be required, 8.1(c) should have had a setback requirement contained within that area. Otherwise, it should have been all under 8.1(dd), and it should have mentioned fences as well, but it did not. They separated them and there's a reason for that. Fences in one and the structures in another, the accessory buildings and shacks. I think it's pretty clear. And, if there is any ambiguity, you resolve that against the drafter. I think the defendants in this matter, they followed exactly what they were supposed to do under 8.1(c). The fence can stay.
FtttG
4hr ago
I think they were able to pay in instalments, half upfront and half at the end of the second semester. I think several droppped out without paying the second half, but I'm not sure. But you're right, quite a big chunk of cheddar, especially given quite a few were international students.
Corvos
4hr ago
That’s hugely excessive. A slightly clunky conversation struck up at the wrong moment is not the same as harassment.
There's a difference between people with low libido, who find this distressing and alienating to partners, and who want to have more sex and be more interested in sex, and so they seek treatment, and people who are asexual, happy about that, and don't want to change.
The self-diagnosed online types who have a laundry list of illnesses from the physical to mental, to prove what sensitive little flowers they are and how you cannot be mean to them at all, are the ones who may latch on to asexuality/demisexuality as another way to burnish their resumés, as it were: now I'm queer as well (if I can't manage to be trans or gay or lesbian or bi) so if you say anything at all that I disagree with, I can now accuse you of homophobia as well as the rest of the list of your crimes against the differently abled.
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