domain:mattlakeman.org
Mewis
4mo ago
Man who isn't President doesn't die. Is this what passes for Things Happening these days?
epohon
6mo ago
I am a hlynkian right-wing progressive, and I don't recognize any of you as such.
Politically, my preferred outcome would be to exalt White bisexual antitheistic males above all others and make this identity the pass to being treated as aristocracy. I don't want meritocracy, equality of opportunity, judging the content of someone's character. I certainly don't want any retvrn. All I want is progressive stack with me at the top, laughing as I kick those below.
Aesthetically, I subscribe to everything my enemies love. Promiscuous girls with tattoos and one side of their head shaved make me go crazy. Some of my favorite sci-fi series are Ninefox Gambit and Gideon the Ninth (the same number in the title is not a coincidence, because nothing is ever a coincidence — the author of that reference is hardly a tradcath himself). I adore skyscrapers and strive to spend as little time in nature as humanly possible.
Does this describe anybody else here? And if it doesn't, you are not progressives with a palette swap, as alleged. And does this describe anyone anywhere at all?
From my moderator note the last time I posted here, on the subject of the convict Donald Trump.
I'm actually happy to see someone defending the verdict and pushing back on what's clearly a dominant opinion here (this is completely orthogonal to what I personally think of the verdict) and it's unfortunate that the only pushback is coming from someone whose responses can mostly be summarized as "Neener neener."
I have half a mind to post this on a substack because I don't think it will get a fair hearing here. Out of respect for what TheMotte once was, I'll give it a try.
There's a problem with this inability to recognize evil as evil that is endemic here.
A felony is a kind of serious crime.
It means that a person has crossed a certain line of civility. A transgression against the nature of truth.
Trump is a liar. He lied about something to such a serious degree that twelve citizens were firmly convinced that he is guilty.
If you care at all about law and order, at some point you have to stop endorsing the person who attacks law and order.
I've been the victim of an SJW hate mob. It's one of many things that made me comfortable at a place where people were willing to talk about the deficiencies and self-righteous indignation of lefties.
But you, as in you the people here, you the people reading this message, are not better than the SJWs in this specific way: you demonize rather than argue. If someone makes a short argument, that's somehow bad and unfair and against the rules.
How is that supposed to be tolerating disagreement? How is that supposed to be free speech?
Trump is a bad person. And it's time for him to go.
And if you can't accept that, fuck you.
Any forum in which I'm not free to use my speech like this isn't a free speech forum.
I'm a classic 'law and order' conservative and Trump lost me on January 6th.
We have rules in our society, and he broke them. And your grudge against SJWs, which I share, is no justification for avoiding cleaning up your own shit.
Our entire society is predicated on some amount of trust. Some amount of truthfulness. We have laws about campaign finance. We have laws about falsifying business records. We have laws which brand a person a felon if they are a threat to the public order.
TheMotte became a performative space where people were allowed to tell themselves the story that they were 'grey tribe' neutral at the same time they bitterly denied and resistance any news which made their actual side look bad.
My only side is America. My only side is the Constitution. I am against lawlessness and disorder, and though many Democrats are corrupt criminals, and many SJWs are hysteric shit-flinging busybodies, none of that matters if we can't hold Trump accountable.
guesswho
8mo 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.
gosouthyoungman
1yr ago
Why is Lex Fridman single?
(I apologize if this is brief for a top level post. I just want the community's take on it.)
GematriaUnlimited
dependariat
1yr 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
11mo 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".
Sky
Russian Demigod
1yr ago
The Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis is based upon flat earth mathematics.
It would appear the guys-n-gals at Quantumville recalled the high-school formula for determining the surface area of a disc consists of its radius squared times pi (i.e., r² × π) and how the greater surface area of a sphere consists of its radius squared times pi times four (i.e., r²π × 4).
Thus a disc with a radius of 1 will have a surface area of pi (i.e., 3.14) and the same disc converted to a sphere will therefore have a surface area four times more than the original disc (i.e., 12.57). Applying this mathematical thinking to the terraqueous planet we all live on their abstractive minds effectively reduced it to a flat disc which has been expanded four times.
Then they mentally painted this flat earth black.
Thereupon they reduced the (measured) insolation of the oblate spheroid known as Planet Earth to a quarter of its real-world strength – and directed it to impinge upon every square millimetre of their phantom planet twenty-four-seven forever and a day – thereafter applying a radiance versus temperature constant and thus they had their flat earth temperature of -18° Celsius.
As this is at odds with the +15° Celsius real-world temperature they confected the “greenhouse effect” to account for the missing 33° Celsius.
This is where the weirdity of a blackbody flat earth bathed twenty-four-seven with quadruply-weakened sunbeams turns into utter bizarrerie as they deemed some trace gases in the frigid upper troposphere, busily absorbing infrared light radiating from the blackbody surface and emitting it in all directions, to be thus radiating some of it back to the heat-source and thereby raising its temperature via this ‘back-radiation’ thaumaturgy the requisite thirty-three degrees (from -18°C to +15°C).
Moreover, this sci-fi scenario conveniently ignores how the other atmospheric gasses constituting some 99% of the air we all breathe – which are heated at ground-level by conduction and thence by convection as hot air rises and cold air sinks to such an extent as to dominate in determining the thermal structure of the lower atmosphere (troposphere) – are also emitting infrared light in all directions.
Furthermore, no externally heated substance – be it heated by conduction (direct transference from the heat source), by convection (heated gases rising and mingling and mixing with sinking cooler gases), or by radiation (via the heat source emitting infrared light) – can actually raise the temperature of its heat-source (let alone to such a precise degree as 33° Celsius, no more and no less, provided some specified trace gases remain at pre-industrial parts-per-million levels).
(This real-world matter-of-factness does not apply to all the phantom planets in the noncausative quantum solar system, of course, which are busily raising the surface temperature of its central star – the heat-source for all those blackbody flat planets – above 5778° K via a massive-scale variant version of this phantasmagorical ‘back-radiation’).
To summarise:
-
The physical earth is not flat.
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The physical earth is not black.
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The physical earth is not static (it is constantly rotating).
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The physical earth is not bathed with quadruply-weakened sunbeams.
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Sunlight does not impinge upon every square millimetre of the physical earth twenty-four-seven (only during daytime).
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Sunlight does not impinge with equal intensity upon every square millimetre of the daytime hemisphere (most obliquely at polar latitudes and dawn-dusk regions).
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All atmospheric gases are heatable (not just several trace gases).
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All heated atmospheric gases radiate infrared light (not just several trace gases).
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The physical atmosphere insulates the daytime hemisphere from heating-up to unliveable temperatures (unlike its nearest neighbour the airless moon).
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The physical atmosphere insulates the nighttime hemisphere from freezing to unliveable temperatures (unlike its nearest neighbour the airless moon).
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In the physical world no externally heated substance can raise the temperature of its heat-source.
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In the physical world some specified trace gases can (as evidenced in notable past eras) exceed by several thousand parts-per-million those several hundred parts-per-million pre-industrial levels deemed sacrosanct by influential doomsayers and/or panicmongers.
tl;dr: there is no “greenhouse effect” in reality (nor “greenhouse gases” either).
droog
2yr ago
After the constitutional referendum in 2020, Chileans elected more than 150 people to write the new system of rules. Independents won more than half the seats, including lawyers, academics, journalists, two actors, a dentist, a mechanic, a chess master and a bevy of left-wing activists, including one who became famous for protesting in a Pikachu costume. Seventeen seats went to Indigenous people.
bruhhhhhhhhhh
imagine robespeirre going to work with a clown nose
how do you get elected and
not have real clothes to wear
this is awesome
the highly publicized behavior of some of the convention’s members that might have repelled Chileans even more. One constitution member was revealed to be faking a cancer diagnosis he had used in his election campaign. Another took a shower with his camera on during a remote vote.
lmaoooooooooo
Mewis
4mo ago
No. This is drama, not things happening.
The real joke is this stupid fucking discourse. Trump got a "cool" photo taken. That's news? Could give him a boost in the polls. That's not news, that's conventional wisdom, repeated. Republicans are already complaining about Biden's "bullseye" comment. Already, this non event is just more discourse fodder.
I honestly think there's nothing to discuss or learn here. Of course, it's also fun to say Nothing Ever Happens.
Templexious
4mo ago
fabricating
Not having read your article, and in isolation of whether or not this is actually a "problem", per se, this seems like a bad-faith article. If you go back and read old lesswrong articles and their comments, you will find now-known neoreactionaries like hanson posting on lesswrong, including roko.
Additionally, breitbart in 2016: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
In your defense, even lesswrong somewhat disagreed
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
Hawaii98
11mo 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?
GematriaUnlimited
dependariat
6mo ago
Trump was convicted by a jury of our peers. I trust their judgment. He's guilty.
He's a guilty politician convicted of a crime. A felony.
He's a convicted felon.
Facts don't care about your feelings.
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.
GematriaUnlimited
dependariat
6mo ago
I don't wish to add fuel to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election by engaging you in disagreement.
Questionmark
9mo 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.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
China covid policy is (was?) an immense success unfortunately the rest of the world is too inept and criminal to react efficiently to covid entry points and therefore millions of humans die and quality of life, worldwide intelligence level and lifespan are put at an extreme and yet unknown risk. How many times will people catch covid in their own lifetime? How many percents of neurons/synapse lost? This is extremely worrying.
China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany
China is the biggest exporter of vaccine worldwide (2 billions ?), while occident was keeping them all for themselves and did not allow other countries to produce patented vaccines (well it maybe was allowed very late I don't recall exactly the timeline) china saved the majority of mankind regarding covid deaths.
While their vaccine was a bit less effective, with the newer variant it is on par if not better? (I haven't looked at the viral load metric, where mRNA vaccine have become entirely useless) see https://old.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/zq0x2h/after_2nd_and_3rd_dose_chinas_sinovac_reach/
Of course the best vaccine would probably be a combination of distinct ones. Also, let me remind the world that the Russian main vaccine is very competitive and was denied out of pure racism, although nowadays we have the ukrainian war narrative.
As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.
As for anti-sino racism, while on the digression, I'll ask the reader who caused the Great Chinese Famine.
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.
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