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Started the Annihilation Score which only supports the conclusion so far. Maybe it will get better, but starting it I found it a bit hard to sympathize with Mo so far. We'll see how it goes.
Annihilation Score was the last one I read. I was not terribly impressed with it, and since I didn't think Rhesus Chart was all that great, either, I saw no reason to keep going.
I can't imagine giving someone dating advice that consists of "list all your fringe interests that won't impress women at best and turn them off at worst and plug away for years with little success in the hopes of attracting your one true love".
Nobody is giving that advice. They are saying "if you like something, it's fine to put it in your profile", because they believe (correctly imo) that those who are put off by that are people you don't want to date anyway. There's no need to obsessively list everything which might be a red flag for someone somewhere, the point is to just be yourself and not worry about those who don't like that.
particularly obnoxious violations (like, saying "obviously we all know that [woke position] is wrong...")
I find OPs framing to be even more obnoxious than your quote because it buries the assumption of agreement until mid-post and never makes it explicit. So I was expecting to read a very different type of post, and was unhappy when I realized what was going on. At least when someone starts off "obviously we all know..." you know where they're coming from and can read/skip accordingly.
But it is adding extra meaning, is my point. "Optimal" does not carry an asterisk that says "given other constraints not mentioned here", you have to add those constraints if you intend to communicate them. As far as beauty goes that's subjective, but IMO obscuring meaning precludes beauty. The point of communication is to be clear first and foremost, and "the optimal amount of fraud is not zero" isn't clear (as proved by the very fact that this discussion is taking place).
They aren't at all synonymous imo (nor are the two you cited, for that matter). That bit of elision significantly changes the meaning of each variant.
His distinction:
But the power to decline to enforce a statute just isn’t the same thing as the dispensing power; the former does nothing to alter the potential liability that those who violate the statute might face; the latter at least purports to render them formally immune.
Seems both threadbare and tremendously wrong, though. The various and length delays to the ACA's individual and employer mandate were not only retrospective, nor accompanied by anyone panicking that they could face future liability had the government changed its mind afterward. The DACA authorizations left specific people immune to civil litigation even well after a different President was elected specifically on the matter of changing the rule, and courts stayed those changes!
I just don't think that there's a loss here. Profile space is not scarce, so if you're worried that someone will find it a dealbteaker then put it in. It's better to go on zero dates than on one date which goes nowhere.
My perspective on the Irish part of it is that it is part of this movie's attempt to subvert the typical blacksploitation narrative. The villains are white, but vampirism eliminates the racial divide. The Irish are pop culture's whitest victims, so making the vampires Irish redeems their whiteness. Vampirism is not exclusively evil in the film - Stack and Mary are happy at the end.
But it's Irish through a black American lens - no division of North and South - every Irish person is a rebel obsessed with Dublin, always. An ancient vampire could be so old he pre-dates Christianity but also he gets kicked around by the English no matter what - because he's Irish. What @Tanista said about Americans larping as Irish on Saint Patrick's day is on point - that's the version of Irish in the film.
Ah, Kodaka's works, one of my favorite subjects.
But this phrase, that an artist should "express themselves", makes me nervous, increasingly nervous, for reasons that I don't fully understand myself and have never been able to entirely articulate.
That's because the implication, which is "[express themselves] within the service of a greater whole", has been lost. (Can't imagine why that would be more likely to apply to artists from highly conformist cultures at all, or why audiences from those cultures would be more likely to see it that way.)
This is also the problem with 'modern' art, by the way: when the creation of a thing is not only fundamentally selfish (it isn't interested in how you'll view it), but the work itself doesn't serve any other aesthetic purpose. It's the "doesn't owe you femininity" of the art world.
Ever notice that, especially evident with how the Western world interacts with other Kodaka VNs, that 'how the presentation will be perceived' is a central element of every ambiguous-gender character (Chihiro [Danganronpa] and Halara [Rain Code])? Progressive critique falls over itself complaining about what pronoun to use [which is the exact opposite of this], but most of their character arcs again involve that perception and service to a greater whole, where their presentation is merely an incidental/a tool to do other things.
Made in Abyss is also a pretty good example of this (and an even better one if it makes you uncomfortable)- it's extremely offensive to Western sensibilities, and it would be to mine as well if the work was just one big centerfold of a naked limbless Riko- but the fact the author thinks that way is harnessed into a narrative that flat out doesn't work if the main characters either aren't children or have the invincibility child characters usually have.
(This is also something Kodaka does when he can get away with it re: Ultra Despair Girls; Omori does this too in its own way [if you compare the Omoriboy comic, the tissue box serves the same purpose in both works, but in an extremely meta sense in the game compared to the comic]).
I got weirdly obsessed with one of the girls and wanted to waifu her
Which one? The first one, the tomato, the tomboy, the onii-chan, the girlboss, the swordswoman, the one that makes fun of the audience for being Danganronpa-obsessed, Hulkamania Sister!, the ahegao-faced one, the secret one, or the enemy (not that one, the other one)?
I can remember a time when males with long hair were… seen poorly, and usually tilted progressive. But beards seem to have been just unfashionable and not particularly lib coded.
I understand what you're saying, and I'm happy for you, but GP was giving generalized advice. Like I said, most people aren't that selective. I can't imagine giving someone dating advice that consists of "list all your fringe interests that won't impress women at best and turn them off at worst and plug away for years with little success in the hopes of attracting your one true love". It's not what most people are looking for. And while I understand not wanting to get too involved before finding out it's a dealbreaker, it's not like you're going to keep it a secret. Like I said in my post, when you're online dating, you are your profile, and you're going to be your profile until she meets you in person. The profile is to get your foot in the door; after you actually meet, you're a real person, and discussing hobbies and interests is fair game for a first date, and you can tell her whatever you want on that front. And if you think that one date is too much of an investment to be worth the risk, then online dating just isn't for you, period.
A shifting part of the culture war: beards and long hair.
Once upon a time, having a beard or long hair meant Something, and usually meant being a leftist/liberal. Even by the early 2000s when I was in college, facial hair was still coded as an academic/liberal kind of thing. Outside the university, anyone who had either was definitely left-of-center.
Now, though, if I meet a guy with a beard or long hair, those features tell me very little if not nothing about his political positions. Radical anarchists, normie libs, Joe Rogan listeners, fervent MAGA types, and just about every other political type could have a beard or long hair (the major exception being devout Mormons). Clothing, tattoos, general level of fitness, and other features are much better indicators now than facial/long hair. The mustache/goatee combo might be slightly right-coded because it’s popular with certain types of boomers and early Xers, but even that’s a weak indicator.
I suspect the change was in full swing by 2010 since Duck Dynasty started airing in 2012. All of the major male characters have long, shaggy beards, and most have long hair as well. This article from 2015 notes the upsurge of beards among the right. That means we’re at least 10 years into the change.
As big as the change has been among regular people, though, perhaps the even bigger change is politicians. I don’t remember any major politicians having facial hair prior to 2018ish. I remember Al Gore growing a beard, but that was only after he was VP.
JD Vance has a beard, and is the first Pres or VP to have facial hair since VP Charles Curtis (Hoover’s VP), who had a mustache. Vance had a beard when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, Ted Cruz has grown a beard since being a senator (but was clean-shaven when he initially ran for senate), and Ruben Gallego (D) of Arizona ran for U.S. Senate in 2024 with a beard.
Article about Vance’s beard
I think this comment probably sums it up:
“There’s not a single millennial out there who would find the question of whether a politician has facial hair to be relevant,” said Republican consultant Brad Todd. Is the stigma against beards subsiding? “I think it’s completely gone,” he said, “due in large part to the Silent Generation moving out of politics.”
With the WW2 veteran generation gone and the Silents almost gone from politics, their aversion to facial hair appears to have gone with them.
This article on politicians and beards has this interesting comment considering the former association of beards with leftism:
”The right has been leading in the beard movement recently, and I think the left has been trying to play catch-up,” [Professor Oldstone-Moore] added.
Obligatory link to “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. (Isolated bassist camera for those who want to see Entwistle's master class in playing)
The parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
Indeed, once you clear the dozen other hurdles and expectations she'll have too.
I'm just pointing out that if you optimize for the 'wrong' thing, you could end up in a local maxima that gets you more likes in general, but actually filters out the women you'd really be happy to have.
And hey, if you get one and have to 'settle' a bit, its not so bad.
But if EVERYONE is optimizing for the same set of things, and the pool of women is fixed, you're really just creating a zero sum game that means you can get nothing at all despite (because of?) giving up on the things you really like.
I repeat, the pool of women is mostly fixed, so why do you want to optimize for the same thing every other guy is optimizing for?
At which point I pointed out that only white people generally have the power of enabling that to happen, so the issue is not with Indians or Mexicans and so forth
But white people don't have the power to enable it (his point about them voting against it proves that). If you want to say it's not really the Indians' or Mexicans' fault I more or less agree, but I don't see how you can make that claim with resorting to advanced racism.
It was more than that, but not much more (...) and the right's reaction had all the hallmarks of a moral panic
Several European countries passed gender self-ID laws, last year the town hall where I live was draped in "TRANS DAY OF REMEMBRANCE" banners, the whole "Gender Affirming Care" thing is a fiasco based on no evidence, and a failure of scientific institutions to do proper filtering, there's people being harassed by the police or outright arrested for not buying the gender ideology, or for mild jokes... Yes please go on and tell me how these things are indicative of a moral panic. I guess it's completely normal for sweeping reforms in accordance with a specific ideology to take place, when the influence of said ideology is nothing but a moral panic.
And at the national level, this rhetoric was soundly rejected within the Democratic party.
No it hasn't. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, probably not even you, has ever rejected it. What happened is that Democrats noticed that it's losing them the election, so they're trying to turn the volume down, but they did absolutely nothing to reject it.
Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement. It is not the case, for instance, that the experts in western history, literature, or philosophy were more likely to argue against the mass movement in any substantive way. This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
Probably shouldn't have let so many activists and grievance scholars critical of Western civ into the henhouse.
Maybe this is where being Western gets you into trouble. Others would accept that, while their beliefs are true, education is a matter of indoctrinating people into viewing those alleged facts through the right lens. Westerners think argument will lead to the correct conclusion so why does it matter? Some people allowed themselves to be anesthetized by claims of institutional neutrality.
Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
People did sense it, the ones in spaces with the activists just had to be terrified. The "why not transracialism?" argument everyone uses online, for example, led to a huge shitstorm for Rebecca Tuvel. I think someone like Weinstein didn't know what he was getting into, and Peterson just has a naturally grandiose personality and an ideology that reacts very badly to being shamed (if you're charitable, his psychological background makes him very suspicious of moral tyrants)
The other problem is that a lot of the more established people in institutions who could say something hate the enemies of the modern social justice movement more than they do the socjus types (agreeing with them on what they think are the important points and being baffled when it's not enough), and would rather be in denial than grant them an inch . Trace more or less summed up the dynamics when one set of consistent deniers ran into problems getting hired elsewhere (I suppose when you already have a job and seniority it doesn't seem worth it to rock the boat)
What lesson can be taken from this? Don't fall asleep at the wheel while the pipeline for educating your kids and new elites is taken over by your enemies. That's about it.
Yes, this. This is who I am, this is who I deliberately signaled that I am. The kind of person I filtered for is someone who not only doesn't have a problem with this, but sees it as a positive. The woman who I eventually found and married is the kind of woman who sits around the house all day and doesn't get out much. We have literally never gone out on a restaurant date just the two of us, because neither of us enjoys that environment and only go in a group when socially pressured by friends and family.
I thought my girlfriend and I were the most introverted couple out there, but we like going to restaurants and visiting scenic sites. Though I admit, there's a lot of "watch youtube on the couch."
It's interesting that a lot of dating advice is "be attractive" "be extraverted", and introverts have a hard time dating. I wonder at times how introverted women are meeting men. Perhaps the answer is "they aren't"; I have a theory that introverted women make up a majority of the "women going their own way" and not dating. I don't know that I've ever dated, or seriously considered dating, or asked out, a woman I would consider extraverted, and I wonder at times whether this contributed to my limited success back when I was on the market.
"Even assuming I agree, that only goes for Blacks. How does it go for Indians, Jews, Asians, Arabs, Mexicans and every other nationality colonizing America and carving it's founding stock out of it?"
Coils initial post I responded to was about white people specifically starting to choose to hire white people only (among other things) and discriminate against other races, I pointed out that had been done before and led to where we are now. He then countered that the founding stock was being carved out by other races (quoted above). At which point I pointed out that only white people generally have the power of enabling that to happen, so the issue is not with Indians or Mexicans and so forth. He then countered that actually white people voted against more immigration but the government gave it to them anyway, at which point I countered by pointing out most of said government was white as well.
So the race of the people making decisions is very relevant in the conversation we are having. Anyway you slice it, it is white people who are carrying out the agenda he doesn't like. And it is them he needs to persuade/stop if wants that to change. No point targeting black or Mexican communities, they don't have the power to force affirmative action or immigration if the mainly white ruling class doesn't want it.
Disagree with this. Carriers have been performing extreme maneuver drills on a regular basis with planes onboard since they first were created, and the Nimitz class has been doing it since the first one was commissioning in 1975. Planes don't usually fall off during these drills.
Yeah, having gotten some more info from people in this thread, I'm coming around to it just being a spectacular fuckup by the guy towing.
Thanks, absolutely banger song. Gonna listen to the rest of the album now.
For years, on this very forum (well, fine, you have to come buck to the /r/SSC days), whenever someone pointed out the advances of the SJ movement, the response was something to the effect of "it's just a couple of crazy kids on college campuses / Tumblr", or alternatively there'd be an attempt to "steelman" the movement to make it look more reasonable than it actually is ("defund the police doesn't really mean defund the police"), something later dubbed "sanewashing" by other elements of the left.
It was more than that, but not much more. There was a lot of media rhetoric from the left and teeth gnashing on the right about certain things, but in the end it doesn't seem to have amounted to much. But beyond some limited effects at the local level, most of the media coverage from the left amounted to little more than trend pieces (where a fringe phenomenon is puffed up into something bigger than it is), and the right's reaction had all the hallmarks of a moral panic. I can't tell you how many arguments in bars I got into where someone would insist that this school district just down the road was teaching kids that white people are bad blah blah blah and can you believe what these kids are hearing about gay people only to find out that they got this information from their neighbor's cousin's kid, or something, which is the equivalent of them just admitting that they got it from some dubious social media post. I have yet to talk to anyone with actual firsthand knowledge of any of this who could reproduce lesson plans or anything.
And at the national level, this rhetoric was soundly rejected within the Democratic party. Regardless of how the Republicans would like to portray them, there are few woke Democratic elected officials. The Squad is the most notorious, but those are a few House reps in safe seats, and even some of those got primaried the last go-round. AOC may be nationally known, but it remains to be seen whether she's that popular outside the Bronx. And when woke politicians do get the opportunity to go national, they fall flat on their faces. If there was ever an election where wokeness could triumph over the Democratic establishment, it was 2020. The woke lane was there for any Democrat who wanted to take it. Who did? Kirsten Gillebrand and Beto O'Rourke. Arguably Kamala Harris, though she wasn't very convincing about it. The Democrats ended up nominating Joe Biden, about as an establishment candidate as you can get. Hell, Mayor Pete made a convincing run as a moderate and even led early on despite being the mayor of a town most people couldn't point to on a map.
and not knowing this poster's alleged prior history
There's your problem.
On top of what cjet says dude always nukes his posts and account after people figure out it's him. The behavior is all the more bizarre, since, as you say what he posts isn't really objectionable, if he just gave the whole "hiding your power level" shtick a rest.
fwiw, and not knowing this poster's alleged prior history, the OP doesn't seem like an objectionable top level post.
Ok, well one of my red flags is "this person judges people maximally uncharitably based on one liners in their profile". So if something filters out those people, that's a great thing for me! The point isn't to get dates, it's to get dates whom you actually like.
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