domain:betonit.substack.com
zeke5123a
5m ago
The influencer looked hot. Didn’t mind it. I’m sure the Irish didn’t mind it either….
sliders1234
5m ago
My issue with his post was all those issues seem beaten like a dead horse already.
For the DR it’s funny but Milei claims he’s a little Jewish. And seems to have all but officially converted.
I have accepted my Jewish overlords. May they be kind to me.
sun_the_second
18m ago
Visiting brothels sounds like failing at the social role of a husband to me.
And if it's fine because husbands weren't expected to be as faithful as wives, then this is again evidence of inequality.
johnfabian
29m ago
There's an obvious political motive to this. From a casual scanning of the academic literature historians generally do not consider the Holodomor a genocide (but this doesn't really change the moral aspect of it much).
johnfabian
30m ago
Rummel was writing before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of its archives to western historians. There was a good 15ish year window after 1991 where western historians got a good insight into the history of the Soviet Union and that deflated a lot of the more extravagant numerical claims with respect to the death toll of the Soviet regime.
johnfabian
33m ago
Describing the approach the communist leaders adopted towards their enemies as "identity politics". As I and many others use the term, "identity politics" refers to politics based on immutable identity characteristics (race, sex, caste, ethnicity etc.). It appears that (with the possible exception of the aristocracy, depending on how hereditary privileges worked at the time), none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description: kulaks can sell their land and immediately become non-kulaks, industrialists can sell their factories.
I would too hesitate in calling it "identity politics" (feels intuitively wrong), but I would not say the rest. In the Soviet system the circumstances of your birth were not so easily washed away. One might become a "reformed" ex-noble or ex-bourgeois who is a true believer in the promise of Communism, yet somehow these people always tended to be the first ones swept up in any new or recurring wave of paranoia. There were also in practice discriminatory measures applied against people who had "class traitor" backgrounds, even multiple generations past.
Also the Soviet state effected very real ethnic discrimination, either purposefully or via other less deliberate means. Ethnic minorities were perpetual sources of paranoia and distrust; in the lead-up to WWII and during for example there were a number of purges, forced displacements, mass imprisonments, killings, etc. that might not qualify as genocide but come very very close (and morally deserve little distinction). The Holodomor is the most famous but there are probably some you've never even heard of like the Polish Operation or the deportation of Tatars. These are just some of the more notable ones, there was a whole history of "population transfers" which sounds like a sort of benign planning thing but in reality was often a very brutal form of ethnic violence.
And this is without getting into the more passive bigotry within the Soviet system of preferences towards certain groups over others with respect to everything from university spots to food allocation. Systemic racism is kind of a big deal when the system is a totalitarian one that controls almost every aspect of your life.
stuckinbathroom
34m ago
The irony that the bible could not be more explicit that Christ-denying Jews were not grafted into the Tree of the Covenant is just the cherry on top
This is news to me; in fact I’ve never heard the term “Tree of the Covenant” before. Can you please cite chapter and verse?
FormerPothead
36m ago
That sounds interesting. Those anthrax attacks were very odd and in retrospect does seem like an intelligence op. Let’s see what you have.
johnfabian
43m ago
This is also where the term "terrorism" originated, even though it has shifted from its original meaning of state-driven activities to that of non-state actors.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
50m ago
I can work on a post about new compelling evidence implicating Israel in the anthrax attacks of 2001 if that interests anyone
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
53m ago
In some sense the weekly thread format is vestigial at this point, but, I still like it and I wouldn’t want to change it. It draws everyone into one conversation, it encourages people to read posts that they might normally not, and it creates a FOMO effect which spurs engagement: if you want your reply to have maximum visibility, you have to strike while the iron is hot, because you only have about a day before a post gets buried under new top level posts and not as many people will see the old posts.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
I get the "gunpoint" part, but why "spermjacking"? Is there a "Bambie" among the various women who've impregnated themselves with stolen semen, or something?
Botond173
1hr ago
Well, yes, this is a classic misunderstanding. Cads aren't johns per definition, they're men who prioritise casual sex and other forms of hedonism and avoid the social role of the father, the husband, the provider and worker. It's not a matter of visiting brothels or not.
Botond173
1hr ago
Very obviously the bear vs man meme is about the threat of rape, torture and murder, not about weirdness being icky. The main characteristic of a bear isn't that it's weird, it's that it's a mortal threat. Let's not fool ourselves. The reason the feminist commenter above brought up "weirdness" instead of "attempted rape/murder" is due to his intent of portraying the average woman as living in constant fear of something mundane and widespread and yet horrific (supposedly).
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
One difference, however, was that the French pogrom was labeled a "Reign of terror" in hindsight by its detractors, while the Russian version was called that by its own architects as they planned it out.
Um.
The aristocrats of Internal Affairs are since many days meditating a movement. Oh well! They'll have it, that movement, but they'll have it against them! It will be organized, regularized by a revolutionary army that at last will fulfill that great word that it owes to the Paris Commune: Let's make terror the order of the day!
-Bertrand Barère (translated), September 1793
If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.
It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is not the lightning of heaven made to blast vice exalted?
-Maximilien Robespierre (translated), February 1794
The term "Terror" as a description of the period (note that in French it's simply called "the Terror") does seem to have descended from these and other invocations by the Terror's architects, even if it wasn't the official name at the time.
Folamh3
1hr ago
Any recommendations for free AI video generators that can generate 1080p footage at 24fps minimum? Preferably ones which can be accessed through a browser and don't require me to install anything.
sun_the_second
2hr ago
patriarchal societies enact slut-shaming, which is more or less true. What is left unsaid is that there existed the parallel practice of cad-shaming.
If being a john was seen as (relatively) normal yet prostitutes were pariahs, then this parallel practice of cad-shaming wasn't as prevalent as slut-shaming, and the feminists are justified in leaving it unsaid.
Rape is an extreme. I'm not about to revive the debate of whether it's about lust or about power, but it's clearly an opportunistic act. You don't pick whoever's most attractive, you pick whoever's most vulnerable/available.
The poster above is talking about weirdness, which is a more tame and regular thing that doesn't need to factor vulnerability in as much (it is less heavily prosecuted and the men have fewer reasons to believe they're committing an immoral act in the first place). Safe to assume that weirdness would be more correlated to attractiveness than rape.
Folamh3
2hr ago
Far Cry 2 did very little for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed 3 and have been meaning to replay it.
I've never heard of Intravenous before, it looks interesting.
I've tried playing SWAT 4 numerous times and invariably give up no later than the fifth or sixth mission. Great game but it is haaaard.
Folamh3
2hr ago
I watched a video review of it years ago, I wonder if it's been patched into unrecognisability since.
Botond173
2hr ago
It would though. Not because of the state of war, but because all people of Japanese ancestry under US government, with or without US citizenship, were interned. In contrast, the ethnic operations of the NKVD during the Great Purge did not target nationalities as a whole, with the exception of Koreans. The Soviet forced resettlement of 'traitor' minorities in wartime, however, did.
stav
2hr ago
It's because of how the site is moderated. Having everything in this one long thread is ridiculous. It made sense on a subreddit as a containment zone so these topics didn't takeover everything. Now we're on a website that is the containment zone and those topics are all this thing is for yet still one long and unwieldy thread. If the mods don't rethink how this site is organized then it's just going to die.
2D3D
2hr ago
I alluded to it in a previous comment, but I have seen high tea luncheons and to a lesser extent charity committees function the same for Chinese wives who wield their husbands fortunes. There are a large number of management corporations in London and Vancouver where blocks of flats are owned by these wifely consortiums who often rely on a relative staying there to act as the property manager/agent. These also are tens of millions of dollar size deals arrived at over shit conversations men would gnaw their leg off to avoid.
Different people want vastly different things out of TheMotte.
A few times over the years I've seen people share their lists of their all time favorite Motteposters. Some names are expected, other names make me go "...wait, what? That guy? Why?". Sometimes people will list someone who I find to be totally uninteresting and whose posts I skip over as a matter of course, because they write about topics that aren't relevant to me. This doesn't mean that I or them have bad taste. It just means we have different interests and we want different things out of TheMotte.
For my part, I'm not particularly interested in a play-by-play of current events, unless the event is particularly earth-shattering, or the post has a novel theoretical take. I don't really care that Canada introduced new hate speech laws for example, but if you have a new argument I've never heard before for why hate speech laws are actually a good thing, then that could be a post worth reading.
As usual, you are the forum. If people aren't writing the kinds of posts you want to read, then you should write more of the kinds of posts that you want to read.
EDIT: Why do you think the response to your post about abortion was abysmal? I think the response was pretty good. It generated a decent amount of engagement for a top level post and it prompted some interesting replies from @RandomRanger and @self_made_human about transhumanism, so, job well done, mission accomplished.
Not to answer for @VinoVeritas I suspect he's referring to Romans 11.
What are branches? Some are broken off, others grafted on.
Christ denying jews being outside the covenant is news to you?
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