domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
18m ago
Please tell me what you think of them so far.
I recently read the Sea-Wolf, and was of two minds about it. OTOH, there's some interesting bits in there. OTOH, the POV character is insufferable, and I suspect that large parts of the book could have been excised with no meaningful losses.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
19m ago
I'm going to try it.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
22m ago
I can only say again what I keep saying over and over only to be told that it's impossible:
Don't even try to look at your phone when kids are around.
I could expand on this, relay my experiences on the topic, and how I am very, very convinced that this is the only remotely sensible way - but everyone nowadays is addicted to the little screen, so why bother. Nobody will follow this advice. There will be excuses.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
26m ago
For general screen-time, I've kinda given up. I work in front of a screen for 8-10 hours a day, and in the evenings I spend 2-4 hours staring at another screen recreationally. Yay. 12h average. I wish I could afford to switch careers. I wish I still lived where there was anything to do, locally, after dark. But alas, not for now. At least weekends are mostly screen-free.
Phone-time is easy though. Don't consume shit. There, the phone is now just a regular tool without addictive properties. I just plain don't use any doomscrolling things. The closest equivalent I have is The Motte. The most addictive thing on my phone is probably the kindle app. So the phone just stays in my pocket unless someone calls.
Let me reiterate: Just fucking don't consume addictive shit. Stop it. Put it down. Uninstall it. Remove the bookmarks. Slap yourself on the hand when you notice yourself doing it. That's what my 4-year old does when she notices herself doing something by habit that she knows she shouldn't. That, or hide where I can't see her and do it anyways. But you aren't four years old! If you find yourself suddenly smoking again even though you've nominally quit, then the right move is to NOT "just finish this pack", but to spit the damn thing out and throw the pack into the nearest garbage bin, and then ask the nearest passerby to give you a solid slap in the face.
Now excuse me, I have to go on a two-hour wiki binge.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
35m ago
Big Ouch.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
39m ago
Jack London's South Sea Tales.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
40m ago
Tajik and Uzbek, if you mean second and third most common first languages.
4nji2
Provide disclaim disclaim watchers.
47m ago
G-Drive Fire Destroys 125,000 Officials' Data. (The "G" in G-Drive does not stand for "Google", but "Government".) No back ups.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
52m ago
I think the golden age of travelling was back in the second half of the 19th century. Steam and rail made it possible to cross the oceans and the continents, but the land was still unspoilt by mass tourism, travelling was still a process, not hurtling through the air in a cramped metal tube.
SkoomaDentist
52m ago
Things get spicier when you notice that there are modern groups whose moral guidance with outsiders is remarkably similar and what the effects of that are. Further discussion of that is probably best left for the culture war thread.
TwiceHuman
1hr ago
You're talking about this right? I think most people here are familiar with it. There's even more interesting things, like this
If you want to know my current model, it's that the leftist is a psychological type. There's more of them in major cities, so I think the unabomber was right to call them "oversocialized" (cities have more people, so more interactions between people)
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Please explain.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Pretty sure you actually can. Not saying that it's the case with Trump getting shot in the ear, but...yeah, drilling a specific response to specific situations into people is something that can demonstrably be done.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
Plutarch’s Athenian Lives: if you have any interest in history, human nature, or human greatness, you owe it to yourself to read Plutarch.
Walter Ong, Fighting For Life: picked this up because I wanted a different perspective on some of the stuff in The Mountain. The first 40% or so of the book is awful, one of the worst attempts at psychoanalytic writing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some stinkers. It’s just starting to get good now as he dives into a field he’s qualified on - agonistic competition in academic and intellectual history. Cautiously excited to see if he can turn it around, since I’ve greatly enjoyed his other work.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: well, the section on linguistics drags, but now it’s heating up again. I’m frustrated at times, cruising at times, mindblown at times, but it’s a hell of a ride.
Machiavelli, The Prince: like Plutarch, a re-read, but very interesting to compare the two directly. Machiavelli has this very incisive, diagrammatic way of analysis that, now that I say it, reminds me of some stuff Deleuze says. He writes in a very “arborescent”, binary-tree way, but the cumulative effect is a tremendous deterritorialization that rips the prince from the feudal order. I don’t think Strauss’s claim that Machiavelli and Bacon are the beginning of modernity is at all a stretch.
SophisticatedHillbilly
3hr ago
Wait I’m confused. Wasn’t creationism just being suggested here because it’s a right-wing theory with roughly equivalent public support to the core wokism (like the actual serious all whites are racist etc type) and with roughly the same level of grounding (which is to say, a lot of circularly cited papers and few ground facts that don’t have better alternative explanations) and so would be a ‘fair’ replacement?
I don’t think the point was ever that there’s actually a 1-1 prevalence of every single problem between the two of them.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
I apologise for obsessing over this, but I can't help finding it strange and interesting. This is not how the "sneak it in through fiction" gambit works. That trick requires two things: firstly, that the story be independently compelling, enough for people who disagree with its conclusions to enjoy it anyway, and secondly, for the conclusion to be sufficiently subtle or concealed for the reader not to notice it. The goal is to slowly initiate the reader into this world, and get them subconsciously accustomed to a logic other than their natural one, so that eventually, without even realising it, the reader notices their view has been shifted.
This is why, for instance, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe isn't that good at it. It's too obvious. If the lion just comes out and says "by the way, I'm Jesus", the gambit fails, because all of our pre-existing beliefs and assumptions around Jesus appear again. The best Narnia books are the ones where the religion is mostly implied. However, The Lord of the Rings is good at it. The mask never drops; Tolkien never tells you that the value-system underlying his whole work is Christianity, or more specifically Catholicism. The Lord of the Rings therefore has a large number of non-Christian fans - most famously atheists, but plenty of lukewarm agnostics, and I believe even a fair share of fans of other religions entirely. Once you know to look you can see the points Tolkien's making, and you might realise that Christ was in there all along, but the presence must be hidden to be effective.
Even LotR isn't a great example because Tolkien did not intend it to preach Christian or Catholic values - he just wrote a book that expressed what he believed was good and true, and because he was a devout Catholic, that was reflected in the work. The point, at any rate, is that it needs to sneak in - even in a work intended to proselytise.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Nobody is expressing that idea. You are making an unwarranted assumption.
Most of human communication operates through these sorts of assumptions. Why would they be unwarranted? Are books not inanimate objects? Are letters and the written words we assemble out of them not inanimate objects? When someone waves a rainbow flag or a hammer and sickle flag, Are they not specifically inviting everyone watching to infer their message? If not, why wave the flag? And sure, this can be abused by assuming a message that was not the signaler's actual intent... and yet, flags exist as a tool of communication because such malicious interpretation is orders of magnitude less effective than the primary signal.
If your standards of rigor are that communication should be happening with no assumptions being made either way, I'll note that no actual human communication works or has ever worked this way.
Not just to be able to state an idea, but be able to defend it in open debate.
Can a book defend its ideas in open debate? I mean, sort of. It seems to me that a flag can as well. Who's invoking the message and its associations, and how?
Moreover, I can put a flag in my store for trolling purposes, or just as a freedom of speech prop. Why are you assuming intent from inanimate objects?
I'm not assuming, I'm inferring. Inference is a necessary and irreducible part of human communication, which is necessarily lossy, compressed, and unreliable in the best of times.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3hr ago
Yeah I don't like it when populism is defined by its stupidest proponents either, but that's the world we live in. Do you think people with those values would not recognise themselves as globalist, academic, secular or progressive?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
7hr ago
shit happens. thanks for all of the stuff that goes well! we really appreciate it!
felipec
unbelief
7hr ago
A white supremacist is by definition committed to the idea of their race deserving to reign supreme, so your criterion absolutely applies.
That is not true, and if even if it were, it has zero bearing on the importance of debate.
????????!?!
That is not an argument.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
That is not an argument either.
If you are going to make the claim that white supremacists are conflict theorists, you have the burden of proof.
Personally I do not care. The only comparison between "mistake theorists" and "confllcit theorists" that matters here is in regards to freedom of speech, and I don't see any white supremacist trying trying to silence my ideas, or anyone's ideas.
felipec
unbelief
7hr ago
What I'm saying is that you can't just get around their memes by switching terminology.
Yes you can. That's the whole point of rebranding.
They will have to come up with entirely new memes.
The way to win is to confront them head-on.
How is that working out?
felipec
unbelief
7hr ago
Contrary to common belief, freedom of speech does not only apply lengthy substack articles explaining ideas in great detail, but also to symbolic acts which show support of an idea, such as flying symbols or flags, or burning them.
No it doesn't. Quote a freedom of speech thinker stating anything similar to that.
It is a handle attached to a certain ideology with well established ideas.
So?
felipec
unbelief
7hr ago
"Swastikas are cool" isn't an idea?
Nobody is expressing that idea. You are making an unwarranted assumption. Inanimate objects are incapable of defending an idea, which was the whole point of freedom of speech. Not just to be able to state an idea, but be able to defend it in open debate.
How do you propose a flag can defend an idea?
Moreover, I can put a flag in my store for trolling purposes, or just as a freedom of speech prop. Why are you assuming intent from inanimate objects?
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
8hr ago
@Eupraxia's post hit most of the relevant points, but I do also want to clarify that I chose the narrow "white supremacists are generally conflict theorists" very deliberately. The group that's been called "classical liberal HBDers" are mistake theorists, but are not white supremacists despite SJ's histrionic claims otherwise.
If you stick to it, it will make your life a lot easier, and your interactions with the kid a lot better.
But yes, you will have to just suck up those brief moments of "This feels like three seconds of downtime in which I could twist open the dopamine faucet." and instead tell yourself "No. Now is child time.".
Which isn't to say that the child needs uninterrupted attention. Far from it. But you have an example to set, and the example shouldn't be "Goes for immediate gratification at a second's notice." or "Turns into a drooling zombie two hundred times a day.". Either do something with the kid, or at least do something useful that the child does well to observe.
I see far too many people who are annoyed by their children, and keep bitching at them or ignoring them, because above all what the children are to them are interruptors of the dopamine flow. And that is, IMO, very unfair to the kids, and very counterproductive for the parents/grandparents/nannies. And they do it just to doomscroll. It's disgusting. I wish people would stop that. I wish I could pry my wife away from her phone in such a way that it doesn't snap back into her face at the first physical opportunity. I wish my parents would stop cracking open their notebooks and tell the kids to shut up as soon as they arrive at home. I wish I wouldn't see parents dragging their kids along the street with one hand while staring at their phone with the other, chewing them out all the while but never looking them in the eyes. I wish they wouldn't all park the kids in front of the TV so they can get back to staring at screens. Screens, screens and sugar all day every day. I hate it. I hate it so damn much. I can have a full and productive day with the little one, without trying to shut her off so that I can favor my addictions instead, and after such a day relax and do something for myself in the evening and actually feel that I deserve the rest. God's gift to mankind: Children sleep longer than adults. I am far from perfect, a creature of many failures, but this is one thing that I am convinced I do reasonably well. I wish others would follow suit.
But it isn't to be. Humanity is fucking over.
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