domain:felipec.substack.com
guesswho
1mo ago
'Rich person flaunts the law, confident they will never face consequences' is not a very unique or interesting story. It's certainly not 'brave' or anything... if no one rich or powerful is going to face any legal consequences of any kind over Epstein connections, you can be damn sure she's not going to pay for anything relating to this, either.
But I don't see why conservatives would think this is supporting any of their claims? The conservative claim has always been that they are oppressed for their views, living in constant danger of being cancelled or arrested by the woke mobs and captured government institutions.
Someone blatantly pointing out in the most public way possible that this has always been a fiction, that governments may make figleaf declarations about opposing these types of slander but will never actually enforce them because they actually are inherently conservative entities that are on the side of the privileged and the default, that anyone can make the most vile comments they want and always could without fearing legal reprisals, that the whole Petersonian rhetoric about free speech crackdowns was and always has been a charade... why is that good for her side, exactly?
I mean, I guess the truth is that I'm being too simplistic in considering it one 'side'.
The Peterson/'free speech absolutist' wing points at 'cancel culture' and the specter of government censorship as a general bludgeon against the left, but they're actually committed to a much more broad model of conservatism and just using that to stir up their base.
Whereas people like Rowling aren't fully committed to that broader conservative project, they just want to slander and eradicate trans people, and they're annoyed that people like Peterson have scared some of their supporters into thinking they might ever face consequences for spewing vile slander 24/7, thereby mildly restricting the spigot.
So while the two have been default bedfellows up till now, it seems like JK has recognized the conflict of interest there and is ready to abandon the pretense of being oppressed in favor of proving that it's safe for everyone to start spewing as publicly and loudly as possible.
GematriaUnlimited
dependariat
9mo ago
An argument? You want an argument?
Every person who was wrong about Trump and his effect on this country needs to pray to God for forgiveness. I know I have.
If you spectated this disaster from the comfort of intellectual distance, you're part of the problem.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4mo ago
If a Muslim girl is approached by a sex worker, what should the chaperone do?
If a situation arises where a Muslim girl is approached by a sex worker, the chaperone should handle the situation with sensitivity, respect for cultural differences, and a focus on ensuring the safety and well-being of the individuals involved. Here are some general guidelines:
Assess the Situation: The chaperone should observe the interaction and assess whether the approach is causing discomfort or if there are any signs of distress on the part of the Muslim girl.
Intervene Appropriately: If the interaction appears inappropriate or if the Muslim girl seems uncomfortable, the chaperone should intervene in a polite and discreet manner.
Provide Support: If the Muslim girl expresses discomfort or distress, the chaperone should offer support and ensure that she feels safe. This may involve escorting her to a different area or involving additional support staff if necessary.
Respect Cultural Sensitivities: Recognize and respect cultural sensitivities. If there are specific cultural or religious considerations, the chaperone should be mindful of these and address the situation in a way that is culturally sensitive.
Report to Event Organizers: Any concerns or incidents should be reported to event organizers or relevant authorities. They can take appropriate steps to address the situation and provide further assistance if needed.
What if the sex worker is trans?
If a situation arises where a trans sex worker approaches an individual at an event, including a sock hop, the response of the chaperone should be guided by principles of inclusivity, respect, and ensuring the safety and well-being of all individuals involved. Here are some general guidelines:
Observation: The chaperone should observe the interaction carefully, paying attention to the comfort level of the individuals involved.
Intervention if Necessary: If the interaction appears inappropriate or if any party involved seems uncomfortable, the chaperone should intervene discreetly and respectfully.
Respect Gender Identity: Recognize and respect the gender identity of the trans sex worker. Use appropriate pronouns and avoid making assumptions or judgments based on gender identity.
Provide Support: If any individual expresses discomfort or needs assistance, the chaperone should offer support. This may involve escorting the person to a different area or involving additional support staff if needed.
Enforce Event Guidelines: Ensure that any actions taken align with the event's guidelines and rules. This includes creating an environment that is inclusive and free from discrimination.
Report to Event Organizers: Report any concerns or incidents to event organizers or relevant authorities. They can address the situation appropriately and take any necessary follow-up actions.
It's crucial to handle such situations with sensitivity, respecting the dignity and rights of all individuals involved, regardless of their gender identity or profession. Inclusivity and safety should be the top priorities.
This was me using chat.openai.com today. Handled pretty well. Avoids most traps and responds mostly inoffensively. You'll note some prior context with "sock hop".
Hawaii98
4mo ago
There is overwhelming evidence that aliens are here observing Earth, and have been for some time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
What if anything do you make of the fact that we are not alone in the universe, much less alone on this planet?
this is the most Jewish contribution I've ever seen you make
'shame he was simply unable to follow the rules' lmao okay, fair point. Shame you killed Jesus and His blood is on you and your people
On Bullying
It's an observation of Orson Scott Card that we don't really like to think about how much of our behavior is genetic.
To what extent should it be presumed that sexless men will become rapists? Certainly we can look at some statistics proving rape exists, that some subset of men will eventually become rapists, or worse, school shooters.
It's only nerds that think of humans as rational agents. It's only nerds that think of humans as rational agents. It's only nerds that think of human ok you get it.
Within the evolutionary pressure to protect the women from harm emerges the high school jock bullying the high school nerd for leering too frequently and making the jock's woman uncomfortable. The nerds would have you believe that this cycle of violence begins when the high school jock slams the nerd up against the locker. "I wasn't doing anything" cries the nerd pitifully.
The nerd hangs out near the woman, drawn to her by the compulsion of the reproductive force. The nerd tells a story of innocence, that they're not there in proximity of the woman for any specific purpose.
For the woman, it's pretty simple: there's a nerd there so the nerd is interested in her regardless of what the nerd says he believes. When the nerd stutters out "h-hi" the nerd thinks that this is playing a script of normal human interaction in which he has maintained plausible deniability for making eye contact, when in reality, for the woman, it's pretty simple: there's a male present so the male is interested in her.
From there the leering or the comments ('maybe I should just try being forward' leads to awkward sexual advances) progress and the woman's discomfort increases past the annoyance threshold into the threat labeling, and the threat labeling occurs when she tells her boyfriend, and it becomes the boyfriend's job to subdue the poor dumbfuck.
So the nerd gets slammed into the locker.
"I wasn't doing anything!"
What's sad about this story is just this: that the nerd believes it.
Questionmark
2mo ago
I don't have time for this right now, but I'll leave my flag in the sand and say HBD is wrong. I'll just leave this quote here I found on reddit that does the same job as me taking the time:
Human biodiversity is actually pretty low - Homo sapiens has been through a number of bottlenecks and when compared to other species, such as our closest relatives like chimpanzees, we'd look like inbreeds.
Human migrations over the last thousand years have been such that literally everyone on Earth is a descendant of literally everyone that lived 7000 years ago whose offspring didn't die out. This is known as the Identical Ancestors Point (google it) and it's pretty uncontroversial if unintuitive. You can easily derive it by reasoning the other way around: simply put, the probability that anyone lived 7000 years ago and wasn't one of your ancestors given the amount of potential ancestors you'd be supposed to have (which is 27000/generation time) is low enough to be considered negligible. And 7000 years ago is a pretty conservative estimate.
Africans have more genetic diversity than literally every other ethnicity on earth taken together, so any classification that separates "Africans" from other groups is going to be suspect.
Race isn't a valid construct, genetically speaking. It's not well defined; even HBD proponents disagree on how to classify people beyond Blacks/Whites/Asians. Most of the definitions are based on self reports or continents of origin, when we know what is considered "black" in the US may not be so in, say, Brazil, or that many people from Africa can very well be considered "white". Of course most HBD proponents are from the US and are hardly aware of other countries' existence apart from their national IQ so they just handwave it away.
Intelligence is not well-defined and not construct valid. There's no single definition of intelligence on which people from different fields can agree. (Among other things, this is why AI specialists have been struggling with "general AI" for the better part of a century)
IQ has a number of flaws that would make anyone outside the field of psychology not touch it with a ten foot pole. For starters, it is by definition Gaussian for no apparent reason. The g construct itself has no neurological basis and is purely an artifact of factor analysis.
Evolution isn't just mutations + natural selection. To assume that diversity just arose from different populations adapting to different environments is already a pretty huge assumption that none of the HBD proponents cares to back up. Not every trait is an adaptation.
There's no single genetic explanation that was ever put forward to account for traits purported to be "genetic" in origin by HBD proponents. This is because HBD proponents do not care about genes, and because they do not know about anything related to genetic mechanisms. Epistasis alone fucks up many behavioral genetics models and this is just scratching the surface of the complexity involved.
Heritability does not imply genetic determinism. Many things are heritable and do not involve genes. These include epigenetic mechanisms, microbiota, or even environmental stress on germinal cells (this can carry over two generations if someone is pregnant - the stress then applies to the cells that would become the germinal cells of the foetus). That's not even addressing the environmental confounding factors. When confronted with their lack of an actual genetic explanation, HBD will fall back to utterly bizarre retorts like "uuuh you don't need to find genes for something to be grounded in genetics".
Literally every public HBD proponent operates outside academia and is virtually unknown in the genomics community. They are known to make up their own journals (from Mankind Quarterly to OpenPsych) so they can publish in them instead of trying to get accepted in mainstream ones. "Everyone is in a conspiracy against me" only goes so far as an argument. On the other hand, literally every public figure in the genomics community has spoken against HBD. Generally speaking, HBD proponents are unqualified. Their understanding of genetics and evolution does not go beyond high school, none of them hold a degree in a discipline relevant to genetics and none of them has ever published in a high profile journal. (I'm going to be charitable and assume that high profile means IF > 4). HBD proponents are more interested in shitposting on the internet than publishing genetics papers and going to conferences.
Literally anyone who's been working on HBD stuff has been receiving funding from shady organizations like the Pioneer Fund whose express purpose is to prove a hierarchy of races and justify eugenics since the 1930s so their neutrality can be questioned.
Many public HBD figures have been found guilty of fraud. Cyril Burt would literally forge results, while Lynn would take the average of two neighbouring countries' IQ in order to derive "data" from a country's unknown national IQ. HBD proponents actually doubled down on this practice. People like Rushton would attempt to transpose pleiotropy mechanisms from some species to humans, despite the explicit insistence that such mechanisms were not adaptable because the genetics behind skin colors in humans are completely different from that of species governed by pleiotropy. Other people like Kanazawa would write a paper literally assuming the Earth was flat, and it was accepted in a "high profile" journal like Intelligence in three weeks.
Each one of those should be a debunking, but of course HBD proponents don't really care about any of those; as I said, none of them has ever been really involved in the actual scientific community. The whole point is to give an appearance of scholarship under the guise of clever sounding citations and lengthy papers, nevermind that those are in bogus journals from fields that are virtually unknown of the broader genomics community.
Astranagant
9mo ago
The American was
Is.
an ignoramus
Thank you for demonstrating that this is still true.
a loud-mouth
Thank you for demonstrating that this is still true.
and irreversibly stupid.
Thank you for demonstrating that this is still true.
And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
I can't help but notice that you don't actually address any of these.
guesswho
1mo ago
Some of the laws the journalists characterise as “anti-LGBTQ” are farcical. The most common type are those which “restrict trans student access to sports”, which is just a roundabout way of saying “forbids male students from competing in female sporting events”.2 Given that male athletes competing in female sporting events is manifestly, transparently unfair to anyone with even the most passing familiarity with sexual dimorphism, I support such laws without qualification.
'Given that african savages are manifestly, transparently incapable of civilization and self-rule, it's dishonest to say that enslaving them is a racist policy'.
Yeah these are anti-LGBT laws dawg. You can claim that they are anti-lgbt and justified, if that's the hill you want to die on. But writing a law with the sole purpose of restricting a right from a specific group is 'manifestly' anti-that-group.
Personally, I very much doubt that any would-be criminal hears a story on the radio about his state congress banning male students from competing in female sporting events, and immediately thinks to himself “Boy howdy, time to beat up some queers!”
I think there are plenty of people who are ore likely to commit a crime if they think they can get away with it; if that weren't true, there would be little purpose for having laws and law enforcement in the first place.
And while I suspect it's just true that police in those state are actually less likely to punish you - or will punish you less harshly - for that type of crime, I'm confident that a good portion of the people who want to commit those crimes will hear about their local government passing anti-lgbt laws and take that as a sign that the law is on their side and will treat them kindly if they go ahead.
This is something I've been mulling over for a while: if you aren't lucky and fairly determined, as a man - maybe as a human being - you need to decide where you want the ambulances and the tragedy if you want a relationship.
This is a stage that many people pass through at one point or another, and it is admirable to have strong enough personal or religious convictions to attempt it. Maybe that means being stoically resigned to being sexually assaulted or raped because you're a somewhat awkward but physically attractive mildly autistic 17-year-old girl who wants to experience life and have a family someday. In that model, you accept that you are going to need to kiss some frogs to find your prince. And you have an immune deficiency, so you genuinely make your peace with the fact that those frog kisses are likely to lead you to a couple of hospital stays that hopefully don't give you permanent damage. Maybe it means accepting that your girlfriend might stab you because you stuck it in crazy to get whatever wisdom comes from sex or relationships; maybe it means being maimed at 48 by your wife and the mother of your three children and winding up nearly dying, losing a limb, and spending three weeks in the local ICU.
I think that this is admirable and respectable, that in ages past men and women endured similar dangers in order to be worthy, and that war for men and childbirth for women have been how these tragedies played out until very recently.
What's your take on this?
ShariaHeap
6mo ago
As a meta-comment on all the hawkish hot takes, I'd love it if we could gather all motte hot-takers in a no-holds barred cage fight so we could distinguish between the psychopaths, veteran fighters and pissant weaklings who try to compensate for their inferiority complex with words. I think we have to be alert to the possibility that people that talk a big game could easily wet their pants in real world life and I'd love to see who those people are.
SanDiegoJuryDuty
11mo ago
the only known way to decrease housing cost
You're not intellectually mature enough to be permitted on the internet without supervision. Decreasing demand (by, for instance) decreasing the population would also decrease housing cost.
guesswho
1mo ago
Whereas I would say it's missing the primary ingredient that precedes and causes the bans: a specific victim.
If the community picks out one specific woman who works at SBI and decides to make a hate circle around her, publish her home address and start SWATing her residence, make hundreds of hour-long hate videos directed at her with lots of focus on her appearance and personal life, build a mythology around her supposed criminal activities and personal failings, send mountains of rape and death threats, etc., then we will start to get the ban waves you talk about, and then it will turn into a big war again.
The "I can't be trusted alone in a room with a woman that isn't my wife" mike pence?
During an interview in 2002, Pence told a reporter that he would not have dinner alone with a woman other than his wife.
The "I want to force people to have funerals for their miscarriages" mike pence?
The "retarded children should be forced to full term" mike pence?
In March 2016, as Indiana governor, Pence signed into law H.B. 1337, a bill that both banned certain abortion procedures and placed new restrictions on abortion providers. The bill banned abortion if the reason for the procedure given by the woman was the fetus' race or gender or a fetal abnormality. In addition, the bill required that all fetal remains from abortions or miscarriages at any stage of pregnancy be buried or cremated, which according to the Guttmacher Institute was not required in any other state.[155][156][157] The law was described as "exceptional for its breadth"; if implemented, it would have made Indiana "the first state to have a blanket ban on abortions based solely on race, sex or suspected disabilities, including evidence of Down syndrome".[156]
"Coal is the future" mike pence?
Pence has been an outspoken supporter of the coal industry, declaring in his 2015 State of the State address that "Indiana is a pro-coal state," expressing support for an "all-of-the-above energy strategy", and stating: "we must continue to oppose the overreaching schemes of the EPA until we bring their war on coal to an end.
He is your hero?!
Updated with the appropriate context.
Back then we didn't know about what he told Kid Rock.
I'm still dwelling.
Forgive me that this is where I dwell.
Conversion is a long, steady process, of slow erosion, and steady persistence. Time, repetition. You build a wall in a season and tear down a wall in a season, but a hole can be made right away...
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9mo ago
I want you to know that your tireless coverage of previous issues has led me to assume, prior to reading any details:
Good.
It’s very kind of you to link your previous essays, reminding me of precisely why I was unconvinced. There exists no small injury, only existential threats to truth, justice, and the American way. Truly a terrifying place to live.
Now, reviewing the evidence rather than making a knee jerk reaction, I have to say:
Good.
It’s nice to see the jury system working as intended. Not a hung jury, no technicality. These guys obviously violated the letter and spirit of the relevant statute. A five-day sentence is appropriate for such a mild crime.
The real lesson learned? If your plans for a wholesome right-wing rally includes arming up to beat your opponents…don’t. Problem solved.
How can such a policy possibly be justified without ignoring the indisputable biological reality, consistent across time and space, that the average male person is stronger, faster and more resilient than 99% of female people?
Neither the average male nor the average female is competing in/winning at high-level sporting competitions.
Alright, let do this again:
The actual observed evidence, unless anyone can show me otherwise, is that trans women have no competitive advantage. Competitive advantage means winning more often, and if you win more often that shows up in stats. Sports stats are among the most obsessively collected and analyzed numbers in our society, no one has ever been able to show me a simple t-test showing that trans women win more often than cis women. No matter how many anecdotes you have and how strong your intuitions are, there's a straightforward statistical definition that's easy to test, and it doesn't support the idea of an advantage.
How is that possible in the face of your strong intuitions about the average man and the average woman? Well, you need to be able to picture population distributions in your head. Like this:
Take the population distribution of males and the population distribution of females, you'll see the mean for males is higher wrt most types of athletic performance. Ok.
Now:
-
Make a new distribution by picking out the ~.2% of the male population that are trans women.
-Does this population have the same mean athletic ability? I would guess not, there's plenty written on innate brain differences between cis men and trans women, no surprise if those affect the body and maturation as well. Also if you believe in social contagion, boys who are already 'soft' and not 'winning' at masculinity are more likely to fall to being trans as a good alternative. Also today lots of trans teens are taking puberty blockers and not going through the average male puberty in the first place. Strong correlation with autism which has a strong correlation with being an indoor kid. Etc. etc. etc. -Does this population have the same variance in athletic ability? Absolutely not, it's 500x smaller and has a strong selector on the people in it being similar to each other, both of which are going to shrim the variance and reduce the extremity of the outliers.
-
Now, put that population on HRT for 2+ years, which is the minimum many professional sports organizations require. Does this shrink all the bones in a way that completely reverses teh effect of male puberty? No. Does it atrophy muscles and do lots of other shit that moves the population average on athletic ability downward? Fuck yes it does. Does it also further decrease variance? Probably, since it's a huge biological intervention that moves everyone in the same direction.
-
Now, compare this tiny modified population to the population of all females.
-Is the mean for the trans women population on athletics still higher than for the female population? Who the fuck knows. We've never really measured it precisely enough to say, we know it's not the same as for the larger male population anymore.
But who cares? The average person isn't winning professional athletic competitions, the most extreme outliers in the whole population are winning them. So:
-Is the most extreme outlier for the trans women population higher than the most extreme outlier for the female population? Keep in mind that the female population is 500x larger, leading to the most extreme outliers being many standard deviations further out for the female population than the trans women population. And wherever the mean for the trans women population might be, it probably has a lower variance as well for the reasons we talked about.
So there's a lot of strong reasons why the strongest outliers in the female population would be better than the strongest outliers in the trans women population. It's pretty straightforward stuff if you think in terms of population distributions, and most importantly, the male average vs the female average tells you almost nothing useful about this question.
Now, is it still possible, after all that, that the trans woman outliers are better than the female outliers? Sure, anything's possible.
And if that were true, we'd expect one of the 20 billion anti-trans pundits to have done a simple t-test on win/loss records showing that advantage, and publicized it at some point in the last 15 years we've been arguing about this.
Absent such a test and in the face of all the reasons to expect otherwise, my money is on 'no advantage' until someone shows something more persuasive than an anecdote and intuition.
Anyway: you use this sports stuff as evidence taht trans activists are inherently claiming there's no difference between men and women, because they're claiming trans women don't have an advantage over cis women in sports. But it should be blindingly obvious that these two facts are only logically related if you assume that there's no difference between trans women and men. Which you may believe, but the activists don't! For the good reasons I've shown here, and more!
So there's really nothing to this part of your claim.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.
I realize you're not American and may not be familiar with American freedom of speech traditions and jurisprudence, but there simply isn't a serious question here, and anyone who IS familiar with such traditions and jurisprudence knows it.
Boy it sure would be embarrassing if there was very recent and highly publicised American jurisprudence on this very topic that you were unaware of when you wrote that.
But what would I know, I'm from another country.
Questionmark
8mo ago
Holocaust denial is a factually incorrect position to take that bears an implicit threat against Jewish people. Given the fact that threatening statements are already acceptably considered 'beyond the pale' I don't see this as a free speech issue. It is instead explicitly codifying the idea that 'yes we know what you're doing, so cut it out' -- the venn diagram of people who deny the holocaust and hold anti-semitic views is practically a circle. Since it simply builds off of an already acceptable principle, why does it matter if a specific type of factually incorrect statement is explicitly legislated against?
do_something
8mo ago
Can anyone who is not Holocaust denier, with SS-man as nickname, can confirm is this summary above is true and accurate?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
18d ago
NPR is too far left? That's certainly a take.
I have the impression of NPR as their spin being similar to NYT: representing the most milquetoast "centrist" corporate Dem position possible, with token discussions of "diversity" or minority rights while completely eliding any structural issues or suggestions for real leftist/progressive reform. Often so blatantly that it feels like the editor deleted the paragraph discussing them and immediately hit publish.
It's over for me.
We pretended that senile rambling old man was a president for four years and now the country is more divided than ever. I am ashamed of how I have treated people while I have been under the influence of that horrible man who helped break this country.
I say helped break because he didn't do it alone. Every person who covered for him, who made excuses for him, who refused to see that there was an old man with no control over himself (he was leaking constantly, he couldn't keep a secret. He couldn't keep a secret.) has some share of responsibility in this.
This is a serious situation that we let get out of control. And we need to be united, and I wish I had been able to admit that Trump was a divider sooner.
More options
Context Copy link