domain:questioner.substack.com
hydroacetylene
51m ago
Uh, not to be too indecorous but what was the typical BMI of a member? I suspect that most of these single women were not very appealing to men.
Quantumfreakonomics
1hr ago
Not that the Catholic Church cares much about doctrinal integrity these days, but there are at least two major heresies in this interpretation, the heresy of monothelitism and the heresy of adoptionism.
odd_primes
1hr ago
Washington DC will go into a near full death spiral as a city over the next decade-plus. It will be 2040 before anyone considers living there again.
This seems unlikely to me, the DC area has gentrified a lot and they are one of the main beneficiaries of the federal government money printer. A serious effort to relocate core government functions to other parts of the country would kneecap the city, but look how DOGE turned out...
Yes, you are probably thinking of Twin Flames Universe. Leadership encouraged several cisgender women, who had no prior indication of being trans, to transition to men.
ETA: I did some brief searching on Twin Flames Universe to determine why members are mostly women. It seems like the marketing and messaging about spiritual counterparts, inner healing, emotional transformation, etc. appeal to women more than men.
It seems like there is an opportunity to improve upon this model. Once you have a lot of lonely single females in your cult it seems like you could pivot the marketing/messaging to attract lonely single men to keep the gender ratio in balance. You need to have different roles for the men that are more appealing, instead of trying to force all members into a model that appeals mostly to females.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
I still don't understand the economy. The volume of this can't be large - I never actually witnessed anybody buying anything, I assume that somebody does, but not that frequently. The clothes themselves seem to be pretty standard ones, similar to what I see in every store, not some junk or second hand ones, so they must cost something? How these costs are covered? How are they ensured against loss or theft? How much can they be sold for to make it viable - I mean, I can just go to the store and buy the same, so it has to be significantly cheaper than in the store, but it's not that expensive in the store already. I mean, I can buy a shirt at Costco for something like 10 bucks or less, if price is what I'm after, how much lower can they go and still be profitable on low volumes?
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Well, he was trying to hire what he believed to be a 15yo sex worker, not luring 8yo's into his van.
While I think that putting him in a person with authority over minors (e.g. teacher, youth pastor, pediatrician) would be a bad idea, I also think that jobs where he just might have occasional contact with minors seem non-problematic. Car mechanics typically do not spend a lot of time alone with kids, for example. Nor do construction workers.
In most jobs, you have fewer opportunities to groom minors during working hours than you have once your shift is over. Even working in a supermarket would be fine. Sure, there is some chance that he ends up with another 15yo alone in the market, but "trying to get random 15yo girls to do sex work" is much stupider than "trying to hire a 15yo sex worker".
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
That's exactly why I said "not your keys, not your coins". If you keep the keys, none of the blowups can hurt you, ever (well, if you keep away from shitcoins and NTFs, of course) - whatever happens, if you owned 1 BTC, you'll still own it as long as you have the key (and nobody else does). If you play speculative games (like, trade shitcoins, etc.) then well, it gambling, and you may lose all your money at any moment. So coming at it, decide if you're there to invest or to gamble. Both can be done, but the way they are done are very different.
Ah I liked it better before the edit. Alas.
What a touching read.
If nothing else I hope the readers get a sense of the very sincere courtesy which I am attempting to extend.
Anyway thanks. I don't think I'm actually saying anything our forefathers didn't already know; only, they seem to have dropped the ball on actually saying it and people have clearly forgotten.
The question of why this should be is a really good one. Next week's chapter sheds a bit of light, and we get to the next proximal answer in about a month or so, but the true answer doesn't come until... I'm not even sure if it's book two or three, yet.
You had asked before how I managed to come by this perspective without apparently relying upon the same literature you did. Perhaps you withdrew the question because you sensed, correctly, that the less I say about myself the better. There's a reason people don't talk about these things, and it's a compelling one.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
What do you think of "gym muscles"? Referring here to the idea that musculature bought in the gym is less effective than muscles bought by manual labor.
Less effective doing what? Manual labor? Well, yes, you'd do best what you do a lot. And yes, the guy who spent years hitting, would hit better than the guy who spent years lifting metal things, but never actually hit anything. But yeah as others noted, if you work out, you'd get stronger and better in other things where strength matters, even if training for those things specifically would have made you even better.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
USA actually uses way more freight rail than comparable countries. It's just mostly a different basket of goods getting hauled that way- and partly to different places, the rail system was built when population distribution was way different.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
I know on repositioning cruises (where the goal is to keep costs low) they travel at about 16 to 18 knots so 13 under sail power would be a pretty substantial portion of the propulsion fuel needs.
Similar to this, I'm always surprised more US goods aren't long hauled by trains, too. It seems crazy that it's worth 50 people to haul two containers each rather than one train to hail 100 cars but the busy interstates suggest I must be missing something.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Wasn't there a matchmaking cult which forced a bunch of members to gender transition because the gender balance was off?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Faking AI-generated video/images. In other words someone somewhere will film/capture something but for reasons of legality, morality, or popularity will claim that the captured moment/thing is AI-generated, when it is not, in fact, AI-generated. To some degree you already have people pretending to be robots, so this, only more so.
What a touching read. Your discussion of evolutionary phenomenology is new to me and absolutely enlightening.
I'll add a couple relevant links:
- Aella on chimpanzees vs bonobos is your island lizard example irl. Two populations of the same species were separated by a river; one territory is bountiful, the other isn't. This is a natural experiment in evolutionary psychology of the sort you describe; their patterns of behavioral and sexual differences are fascinating.
- The discussion of gene polymorphism reminds me of Razib Khan's oeuvre at Unsupervised Learning. Not one blog post in particular though.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
A cult feels a lot like a "committed affectionate relationship" to people who are vulnerable to or already in a cult.
And, for that matter, a lot of cults have used assigning or controlling partnerships that are otherwise "normal" as a method of control. In our future cult of incels and femcels, zoomers incapable of forming relationships will submit to the will of the Master, who will assign them a fellow initiate as a partner, on pain of having the partner revoked if you misbehave. Which, after all, isn't that far from a normal religion anyway.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2hr ago
But is there no difference to you between actively creating these beings vs letting them be if they happened to come to exist on their own?
A minor difference, but nothing to lose sleep over. At the end of the day, I see it as a moot point, we're unlikely to be creating clades of human mentats when AI is here.
I would submit the possibility that in order for a system to have the capacity for general intelligence, it must also have the capacity for suffering, boredom, desire, etc. We don't have to give it if it emerges on its own.
It seems clear to me that this is unlikely to be true. If you give a human meth, they're not going to be bored by much. Even without drugs, plenty of people who meditate claim to have overcome suffering or desire. If that state exists, it can be engineered. I see no reason why we can't make it so that AI - if it has qualia - enjoys being a helpful assistant. We have altruistic/charitable people around today, who still aim to be helpful even when it causes them a great deal of physical or mental discomfort.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
I've recently finished:
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger. Continuing my journey through Junger, I enjoyed the book but felt like I didn't understand it as deeply as I should have, it just felt like Animal Farm to me. If anyone who knows more could link me an explainer I'd love it, I feel like there is a lot of depth I'm not hitting.
Coup d'Etat by Edward Luttwak. Deeply disappointing, I like Luttwak and this is positioned as his best and most fun work, it was mostly pretty banal advice and analysis. Not bad, just not earth shattering.It's presented as a handbook for how to launch a coup, and it does have interesting views on what is a coup versus a revolution etc. It's inherently a "fun" book as a practical manual, and an easy read. I got a later reprinting that contained some updating to talk about later incidents, I think that might have made the book weaker, if you want to read this I'd recommend trying to find the original version.
JFK Jr. An Intimate Oral Biography An oral history of JFK Jr's life, as told by his friends and those who knew him. My wife wanted to read it so we read it together. I have OPNIONS on JFK Jr. now, which I think I will share soon.
The Sun Also Rises: I love Hemingway, and finally got to this one. A brilliant examination of masculinity, while also being a really fun book. If you haven't read it, you should.
To Have and to Have Not: I was on a Hemingway kick, so I picked this up at our library's annual book sale. This one is...not a masterpiece. It's a fine enough little noir set in the Keys, but...it feels kinda flat compared to Hemingway's best works like For Whom the Bell Tolls or The Undefeated. The lead is a classic Hemingway Hero without any of the conflict or interest, and just kinda floats through. I'll also say that while I'm normally not offended by racism or language, especially where period accurate, this one kinda feels over the top. Blacks are only referred to as niggers, both in the abstract and to their faces, while chinese are chinks and to be betrayed and murdered for no apparent reason as a matter of course. IDK, just didn't hit for me.
Currently, I'm kind of in the middle of:
Band of Brothers I have a personal connection to the subject so I've always meant to read it, finally started it the other day while bored and motored through half of it...only to find that the libgen copy I had gotten was only half the book. oops. Gotta find a real copy now.
I'm planning to start Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola. I've been Evola-Curious, and this seemed like a good place to start. And then on the flip side I've been listening to a lot of Daryl Cooper and he talked so much about how evil Eldridge Cleaver was that I downloaded Soul on Ice just to see what all the fuss was about. I'm also looking to read more by Ernst Junger, after enjoying Storm of Steel and Marble Cliffs, if anyone has any other recommendations. I'm probably going to start Hemingways Over the River as I picked that up at the book sale as well. I remain in the middle of Infinite Jest as part of a book club with a friend of mine.
KingOfTheBailey
2hr ago
You don't need to do this. You just need to ban pedophiles when people report them. Which Roblox seems to be refusing to do.
This is the bit that baffles me. I remember the whole Ashton Challenor situation on Reddit and how much pressure it took for Reddit to crack. AIUI, the people doing this on Roblox aren't even employees or mods or anything.
Zephyr
2hr ago
I mean, also as a Canadian - I’d definitely take “Invasion by US military under Donald Trump” over “Liberals import 3% of our population per year.”
YMMV.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I preface this by saying that I'm happier not being on discord or knowing very much about it.
But isn't the whole thing driven by adults entering a child's life with ill intentions? Like isn't that the definition of grooming? I'd suspect that the request for nudes comes when the relationship is already underway.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
We're going to see a surge of neo-religious sex cults over the next ten to twenty years, as the friction between wanting sex and getting sex reaches levels possibly never before seen in human history, and both male and female adherents will be happy to turn their consent and loyalty over to some new Manson or Jim Jones in exchange for being given permission to just get laid.
It's interesting because women vulnerable to cults mostly do not want to 'just get laid', they want a committed affectionate relationship. Obviously, the psychologically healthy reaction is to enter committed, affectionate, sexual relationship with a man. But for cults that's dangerous because it reduces dependence on the leader.
Lewis2
2hr ago
But as far as these kids know, the person asking them to send nudes is roughly their age. They don’t know they’re talking to a 40-year-old. Plus, I would say that, in general, kids are desperate for the approval of the adults who are already in their lives, not of random adults whom they’ve never met.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
Kilts become A Thing in at least some blue tribe cities by 2050. Sneered at by minorities and the red tribe.
I'll do you one better: Kilts become a thing in the Blue Tribe by 2030, and by 2050 the kilts that came into fashion in 2040 are Red coded, the ones like that are "Youth Pastor Kilts" and show that you are hopelessly out of date in NYC or whatever. There's a type of skinny jean today that I would have been scared to wear in seventh grade for fear of being called a faggot, and that when I see them today it's a lame real estate agent or something.
My predictions:
We're going to see a surge of neo-religious sex cults over the next ten to twenty years, as the friction between wanting sex and getting sex reaches levels possibly never before seen in human history, and both male and female adherents will be happy to turn their consent and loyalty over to some new Manson or Jim Jones in exchange for being given permission to just get laid.
Major legislation on electric bikes is going to become necessary in the United States, either at the state level becoming standard across most states or at the federal level. I'm noticing a huge surge in biking in my area, as electrical assist bikes make it easier to get up hills. At the beach I started seeing a ton of electric bikes though, and a few electric adult tricycles. People are going to get themselves hurt, and it's going to result in legislation.
The USMNT will continue to protest that the NEXT world cup cycle is "our year" through at least two more times that the US hosts the world cup before ever making the final four.
Washington DC will go into a near full death spiral as a city over the next decade-plus. It will be 2040 before anyone considers living there again.
In imitation of Ronald Reagan, within five years the US will take part in a Panama or Grenada type tomato-can war to prove something or other. It won't go as planned, first as tragedy second as farce.
An NFL team will be accused of using AI for major coaching decisions this season. It will never be exactly clear the extent to which AI was used, and the results will ultimately be mixed.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
There are plenty of people who are no particular danger to children in their care despite making rather poor life decisions overall. Very few custody agreement violations present much danger to the child, even if at some level they need to be enforced.
Considering what's on display, it doesn't seem very complicated to boss them around. As they look to be captive by the same process that most others are captive by. The belief is that the ingroup needs to sacrifice to make amends with the outgroup.
People who hold this belief feel it is their moral right to sacrifice other peoples children to make the bigger picture come together. And considering it has been decided as an economic policy to move vast amounts of third world browns around, and Europe has built a justice system based on European peoples and their comparatively more peaceful and redeemable criminals, what else is there for these judges to do? Just like the government and journalists in Sweden who hide the knowledge of race based crime statistics from the public in the name of solidarity and progress. It's literally the only play that makes sense when holding oneself to egalitarian priors.
Judges being people doesn't seem to be a problem at all. It actually looks like a perfectly functioning limb of an unassailable system that one can't be against without being literally Hitler.
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