domain:alakasa.substack.com
hydroacetylene
46m ago
Ranching, farming, and aquaculture are a lot of full time work requiring serious expertise. The key to making money off of wind and solar is to have the company lease use rights to the land from you, not to actually do the job yourself. It’s unclear and not terribly likely that you can make the land pay for itself that way, even if it’s only $100k. I’m skeptical that there’s any economic use for land priced at ~$333/acre. Are you looking at someplace ridiculously deep in the Mojave?
Unless this is prime hunting territory for some reason, you can’t make your money back. And living off grid is very expensive over and above the cost of land.
No_one
21m ago
The funniest thing would be, if they truly wanted to address 'disparate impact' meaning proportional representation in everything desirable, that'd de facto be a return of the Jewish quota too. Despite falling off a bit due to intermarriage Jews are still over-achieving quite a bit over basic whites, so any legislation that'd truly remove disparate impact would be in essence also a quote on Jews, if they chose to identify as such, no ?
SlowBoy
1hr ago
There's the inconvenience of being reorganized. All the employees on the healthcare plan, who've moved across the country for this job for their family, who've put effort and sweat every day to make the company better (and other such sympathetic narratives), are suddenly shuffled into the labour market without their consent.
If the company isn't making money, there's an argument that these people's working lives are being wasted. Moving across the country with family, effort and sweat every day to make the company better, all in service of something that is valued as a net negative to society. It's not a charity, it's not a social cause, this isn't a job that gives society virtues immeasurable. It's a mid-casual restaurant chain that could be easily replaced with another. It's losing money because it isn't worth anything, and I hope workers get to work at places that are worth something, even if they're mid-casual restaurant chains.
There are other practical problems here, kicking people off insurance and making them find new jobs and all the hardship and drama. But that's not really the responsibility of the PE guys. Ideally, the government taxes those guys on the wealth they've freed up and made more efficient, and we use those tax monies to provide for the social good of the people effected. Something like this even happens in real life, we just spend a tremendous amount of money on all the wrong programs and welfare.
What temperature zone is the land? What kinds of things are currently growing there? What's the soil like? What is the water source? All these things matter a lot for what you're able to do with it.
Pecan groves are nice, but take a long time to establish.
I have strong negative feelings about solar and wind farms. Solar farms make the whole area hotter, more glaring, and worse, are placed exactly where the electricity is least needed, and I don't know if they're easy to maintain or not, but wouldn't expect so given the kinds of minerals that go into making them.
The water source is important for a farm or anything aquatic.
Ranching is very common, but also doesn't seem that great a lifestyle, unless you're into that specifically, which it doesn't seem like you are. Desert ranching, especially, seems to be a lot of trying to find the cattle and hoping they don't overgraze the land, lots of driving pickup trucks, hauling stuff around, moving heavy objects. I like this guy https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Soil-Familys-Regenerative-Agriculture/dp/1603587632 but that isn't desert.
Edit: If you're allowed to build a well, but there isn't one yet, research that first! Someone in my area just said they spent $60,000 on digging a new well when their previous shallow well was depleted.
2D3D
2hr ago
WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS
When buying remote out of state property ALWAYS make sure you confirm the extent of development you are allowed to make on your 'own' land. You can make your own outhouse, pay for a macro cell comms tower, but you cannot live without water.
Shrimp farm in the desert sounds....uh, insane? Covered farms still suffer from evaporative heat loss and shrimp die notoriously easily even in unlimited water scenarios, which you will not have even if water rights are not an issue. Farming also sucks, you need warm bodies and thats a challenge onto itself. Solar farms require good grid connections. Weird outdoor off-grid rehab center might be the best of your current options.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6hr ago
I don't have an insightful answer to your question but I hate tats myself. A lot of my friends, even if roughly my age, have them, and the tattooing stories all sound inane to me.
The popular belief about Japan is that tattoos are a signal of organized criminal membership (Yakuza) and this has been my own experience. The view that Japanese therefore find tattoos "scary," however, I'd take issue with. Japanese are very aware generally that tattoo cultural norms are different outside Japan, and seeing a tattooed foreigner isn't particularly traumatizing, but probably does seem like a class signal. In other words because the yaks generally attract the socially disaffected (e g. burakumin or Zainichi Korean, etc.) and then gang members have the irezumi (traditionally tattooed with bamboo needles) sleeves and back-tats etc., to be seen tattooed is to be unconsciously associated with the dregs of society. Like seeing someone with a gold incisor, even if you know they're not in some gang or whatever.
For this reason many places where all or part of the full body is on view such as pools, hot spring resorts, or sento (public baths) have signs everywhere that tattooed patrons are forbidden. (Although I've seen at least one Japanese man at a hot spring with a tattoo on his shoulder, and to my awareness nothing was ever said to him and he certainly was not kicked out. Then again he was a big dude and onsen staff are generally dainty women or old spent dudes. If tattoo guy had the stones to wade into the hot spring without fear of social rebuke, he pretty much was home free.)
There are also sento baths that do not forbid tattoos and these are usually straightforward, no-nonsense public baths in dingier areas.
I was raised to see tattoos as trashy. My dad was in the Navy and apparently this view lodged in his mind. He also liked Catholics, though wasn't one himself, because he said the Catholic guys were the one group that didn't immediately visit brothels at port. (I cannot verify the accuracy of this.)
Back on topic: Lots of young Japanese women now seem much more interested in tattoos than their parents, but only seemingly those already immature in their social development or mildly out-of-step anyway (e.g. they are also interested in foreigners.) For guys if you're a musician or otherwise resolved to stay on the fringe (artist, bar owner, etc.) you can get away with tats, probably.
No_one
25m ago
Disparate impact is only an Anglo thing. It's almost completely ignored in Europe, where we only have to contend with environmental laws and bureaucratic bullshit.
Also you made my heart rate spike to cca 150 for a sec. In other thread I posted a photo of a girl calling herself 'Pasha'. I log back in, what do I see. Uff.
hydroacetylene
36m ago
I heard him speak English and French fluently; fluency in Italian would be a prerequisite of his level of influence within the church; his life would be extremely implausible if he didn’t speak Lithuanian, German, Russian, and Kazakh all extremely well and over a broad range of topics. I suppose it’s possible that his literacy in Latin used a dictionary or other translation assistance, but I heard attestations that he didn’t need it.
As far as JPII goes, I have no direct knowledge, but the consensus seems to be that he really was fluent in eight languages, although granted that’s partly by counting Spanish and Portuguese separately.
PierreMenard
37m ago
The problem with a lot of material targeted at kids is how sanitized it all is. Whether it's superheroes or robot-animals or what not, the solution is always some magic or techno-magic, never an actual practical skill that kid-behaving-like-adults would develop.
You'll never learn how to gut a fish or dress a deer by reading an 'adventure in the woods' type of book. You'll never learn how to make bombs or makeshift weapons or how to bribe an official. You can watch 1000s of hours of pirate cartoons and barely learn any strategy or tactics.
zoink
1hr ago
Because he spoke heresy. And in fairness if Butker he wouldn't be a principled defender of free speech either.
The problem with positing an "original wrong" is that the 1948 war was started by the Palestinians and their Arab allies, and subsequently they lost. So the search for an original wrong already has a wrong that came before that origin. Yes, you can arguably repeat this process for pre-1948 wrongs, but the "original wrong" you suggest is definitely not correct.
Another counterargument seems to rest on something like statute of limitations (like, the Palestinians and Israelis alive nowadays are not the ones who got robbed and their robbers), which would be more persuasive if Israeli settlements were not still expanding, and there weren't still Palestinians who are quite directly being made to suffer at the hands of the Israeli men with guns for no other reason than that they do not accept the "become Bill Gates's domestic servant" deal.
Stopping the settlers would fall far short of Palestinian aims. It has repeatedly failed to be a sufficient concession in prior peace talks. And even when tried unilaterally by Israel, made things worse, not better.
If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you. To claim otherwise, to me, seems to amount to claiming that you can be absolved for arbitrary wrongs if you just amass enough power to make effective resistance impossible, and I don't like that even before we start taking into the account that the targets of Hamas terror were intended and more often than not happy beneficiaries of the original wrongs committed.
Do you apply this principle evenly? Does it apply to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII, for instance? Are they entitled to carry out unrestrained acts of revenge in Western Poland in response to being expelled? And since this applies to any arbitrary wrong, as you have written it, to beat my usual drum, are victims of vaccine mandates and lockdowns entitled to carry out unrestrained non-hypothetical fedposting? Are Trump supporters wronged by being under the wrong government, as Palestinians living under Israeli rule would be, and thus entitled to fedposting? And, of course, does this apply to Israelis who are wronged by Palestinian attacks and, therefore, entitled to seize justice by committing their own revenge?
Maybe you do think this. In which case, this position is just more might makes right (despite you objecting to might makes right), using arbitrary violence instead of precise violence to try to maximize the might they can exert from the weaker position.
More likely, you do not think this. But if so, you are missing any particular reason why Palestinians are uniquely entitled to engage in unrestrained terror tactics, and I'm yet to hear a good one. If it's the degree of political repression, then the majority of the world's countries including many western countries are on the fedpost list for some form of repression or another. If it's being ruled over by the wrong ethnic group, then it's ethnostate for thee but not for me, because I am also ruled over by a Prime Minister of a different ethnicity, and I'm not entitled to kick out all the foreigners. If it's that Arabs were turfed out by Jews after they legally purchased the land from absentee Ottoman landlords, consider the ethnic makeup of London and the financial impossibility of living in London for many natives. For every justification I've heard, there's been a parallel elsewhere where any resistance was considered unthinkable, let alone random acts of terror.
AFAIK this statistic was from the GSS in 2018. The statistic in 2021 shows the reverse.
The very first graph on the page you linked yourself shows male sexlessness being a decent amount above female sexlessness in almost every year since 1989, other than a small slice at the end that you have chosen to exclusively focus on as a lame "gotcha". What in your original post indicates that you were only judging people's behavior past the year 2021 or so? This problem only started then? If we're only talking about a problem that's barely lasted/evolved for not even 3 years, then obviously it's not a particularly big deal (or at least not nearly as much as you're making it out to be), since it could just be complete statistical noise after all, and there's not much reason for us to even be talking about or for you to have posted about it (or at least not with the apparent seriousness you did). And if all of those prior years of greater female promiscuity (which I highly doubt have ended at all, but I'm not going to play online citation duel over it when I know the social sciences have been almost entirely broken and malevolent post-Floyd anyway) get a pass, then I guess all of the years of alleged selfish NEETdom and low employment that men have supposedly engaged in also get a similar pass, right?
Of the 7 age buckets they look at, women only cheat more than men in one (18 to 29 years old), and only by 1% (10% of men vs 11% of women). Every other age bucket has a larger gap in the opposite direction.
Even if I pretend not to know that women obviously lie out their ass about this subject way more than men (as anyone who has ever been even tangentially aware of the full-court presses of PR manipulation bridal parties will engage in after wild bachelorette parties, as just one example, can attest to), this still means we're allowed to call out young women for their selfishness in this area right?
Or how about one clear demonstration of promiscuity that no manipulated data could even try to refute: the percentage of people (particularly younger and more attractive ones of course) in each gender who are featured publicly half-naked online? Obviously there are far more women (including relatively "normal" ones with "regular" lives: nurses, secretaries, retail workers, average college students, etc.) who have curated generous galleries of softcore (or more) pornography of themselves (including on relatively mainstream platforms such as Instagram and TikTok) online than men. (Source: Any casual perusal of online media-sharing platforms.) (And this isn't even getting into what they often quite readily send out semi-privately on platforms like Snapchat either.) Are these women being selfish with that behavior by subverting society's long-term sexual norms that have guaranteed its stability throughout history for some temporary dopamine hits of attention? Can we say it's a greater indication of selfishness on behalf of the female gender that they do it far more often than men? Or...?
Instead of trying to torture the truth (that women, particularly of course young and attractive ones in any given generation, are obviously responsible, and probably more responsible than men at least within the past 10-20 years, for significantly contributing to the breakdown of traditional familial/sexual mores) with cherry-picking "Akshually you forgot to check this random survey every year which suggests recently that a long-standing trend for decades may have mildly reversed in the past 2-3 years." stat citation-mining gotchas, just answer the core question: Are women to be held account for their selfishness in your formulation or not? Or just men? And if they are, then why only target men in your original post? You don't think women's contributions to a greater culture of selfishness are worth highlighting or what?
Because if your solution to a "culture of selfishness" is that men (and by that I mean basically only White and some Asian men, as of course based on their average level of social/economic development throughout history, and the general culture of low expectations that has evolved in response, most men of the darker races clearly aren't going to be held to much account by anybody, much less by themselves in most cases) need to quit worrying about/not cooperating with a system that's obviously biased against them and simply get back to thanklessly slaving so that they can simultaneously be attacked for being the core problem of society by that same society that incessantly demands their devoted labor then, quite frankly, you can stuff it.
PS: If you wanna talk stats, how about the fact that women's labor force participation rate is below men's overall almost entirely across the board (with, from what I'm seeing, like one or two statistical noise exceptions where they're favored in certain very young age groups by a percentage point or so), including again almost all age groups (even younger ones who would presumably have very little chance of being part of the shrinking residual demographic of purely domestically-bound homemakers), despite the fact that they've been almost entirely unmoored from any obligations to eschew independent employment in favor of strict domesticity?
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
So again, why only call out men specifically when the main alleged problem with men that you highlighted is literally worse among women? Simple and exactly as I stated in my view: You think of men as slaves who need to get back to work, even if they're not receiving any of the benefits they're supposed to from it anymore. Meanwhile women are the anointed ones who society exists to serve, not be served by, so that they are more guilty is irrelevant, because they are incapable of actually being guilty in the first place.
If you're so worried about supposed male selfishness, consider this perspective: It is actually your selfishness in not giving a shit if these men receive any sort of meaningful compensation or esteem for keeping the ship afloat that is causing the alleged problem of selfishness on their end that you're perceiving. Fix yourself and work to fix society, and you will find a lot of eager men who are more than happy to selflessly tire on behalf of an actually functional, honorable, and reasonable society, same as they literally have all throughout history. Until then, why would you expect them to rush to perform emergency surgery on a bloated corpse when people like you are swarming around additionally and might as well be actively stabbing it and the remaining few men who are trying to help in the face?
Tophattingson
2hr ago
Feigned ignorance of Islamist motives is approximately the official position of law enforcement in Britain so it shouldn't be too surprising for it to be widely espoused.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
I see a much bigger rise in prevalence in women and assume the usual causes, for instance I've had a number of female friends and family members asked me if they should get a tattoo, if they'll be judged for it, will men hate it etc. I say nothing. Which is the same approach I assume most people use. The judgement for tattoos is still there, but saying anything that can be interpreted as critical to a woman is such a bad idea that people say nothing and the gap in preferences goes unchallenged.
PierreMenard
50m ago
Well this is an English-language website on a European-created internet, populated with educated people familiar with the Western mindset. Antisemitism was historically very common among that group.
If we were sitting in a circle in Papua New Guinea then the pros and cons of cannibalism may be more common.
You'll have to forgive me if there's something a little counter-intuitive in the idea that the best way to decrease the number of rants about the Jews is to have more rants about the Jews.
No, there are other ways to decrease the absolute number of rants about the Jews, obviously, but we're talking specifically about the Motte. If you're sick of reading this content, there's still plenty of space on the wider English-language internet that is more or less curated of Jews-rants (for now). It's too bad for you that people that have interesting things to write about also seem to have a strange obsession for Jews-rants.
Perhaps we could have a separate Culture War Roundup Thread where talking about Jews would be allowed. We could have all the Ukraine, Gaza, NYC, Biden admin, Trump lawfare discussion in that thread, and for everything else, keep it in the Jew-rant-free thread, with the occasional link to a comment on the other thread if an user somehow thought that a discussion would be improved by adding an appropriate Jew-rant.
Coleman Hughes puts the case for the Israel beautifully in this 2 minute video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHekt7WLo
This is missing something important that can strengthen the case, because this is not an ad-hoc argument used exclusively for Israel-Palestine, but instead has precedent. One much stronger than analogy. Consider child soldiers. Killing children in war is wrong. Willfully killing children is a war crime. Along comes some military genius who decides that because you're not allowed to kill children, he should recruit them into the military, and use the power of their anti-child-killing war-crime-fields to make them invincible. They can shoot you. You are not allowed to shoot back. Genius.
The typical policy on this, however, is that child soldiers are offered no special protections, and that the use of child soldiers, rather than their killing, is the war crime. This is because to allow for special protections for child soldiers would act as a perverse incentive for their use, beyond the morale effects that fighting against child soldiers already has. The ideal world is one in which child soldiers get gunned down with complete indifference, just as any other soldier would be, to deter their use.
Similar must apply to a state that treats the lives of it's own civilians not just with total disregard, but as a currency that could be spent for generating sympathy. It's a perverse incentive. There's just no more direct parallel because not even some of the worst regimes in history have attempted this (and even if they tried, getting e.g. Japanese civilians blown up even more would have generated very little sympathy).
Lewis2
1hr ago
Yes, I am actively involved in one ethnic heritage organization and occasionally help out with a couple of others. Each one is having trouble gaining new, younger members (if they’re even trying), so I’m not hugely optimistic about their futures. I sometimes wonder if I’m wasting my time by getting involved at all.
dasfoo
6hr ago
In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end.
But what if it's self-induced suffering, gamified to achieve victory on the scale of "who suffers the most?" Is that still "The End?"
Lewis2
57m ago
Eh, I know a number of Lutheran clergy who speak multiple languages fluently and additionally have a reading and sometimes writing knowledge of several more. It’s not at all uncommon to come across pastors who speak fluent English, German, and one or more of Spanish, Italian, one of the Scandinavian languages, Afrikaans, Russian, Japanese, etc. These same guys can generally also read Koine Greek without much difficulty, maybe ancient Hebrew (if they retained it after graduating from the seminary), and frequently also Latin.
The ministry is one of the few professions that still heavily emphasizes the learning of foreign languages, so it’s not altogether surprising that it attracts people with a propensity in that direction.
No, leftists are consistent in that they actually write papers about how free speech is a white supremacist social construct that must be abolished etc. etc., see Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado. You have to give them credit for that at least.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/rights.htm
Current freedom of speech doctrine accords protection to commercial speech and pornography, limits governmental regulation of private contributions to political campaigns, and forbids sanctions for hate speech. Such rules operate in the often-stirring language of individual freedom, but their effect is more likely to be regressive than progressive
"We need to play dirty to win More Progress" is their stated principle.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
This, of course, is exactly the same thing that leftist, or members of any other group, tell themselves -- when They break their stated principles for expediency, it's because They are treacherous faithless hypocrites; when We break our stated principles for expediency, it's because We really need to play dirty to win.
I don't see any assertions about "we" or "they" in the post above. One can conclude that "principles" are no longer maintainable without needing to apply any judgement on the outgroup. All that is needed is a recognition of fundamental conflict.
SteveKirk
7hr ago
Imo, and sorry to say this, but I've always thought "affirmative action doesn't matter that much" was just a cope along the same slippery slope as "it's just some kids in college.".
"It's just the VP of DEI, not a big deal"
"It's just the entire marketing and project management staff, who cares"
"Wait a minute all the internal promotions I was looking at are marked White Men Need Not Apply, what happened?"
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4hr ago
But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure Western governments are not above bribing them to backstab each other.
jeroboam
5hr ago
They try, but they're just so bad at it. Part of it is unavoidable. The U.S. is the world's top oil producer now.
But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas. In other news, apparently one of the helicopters sent to aid the rescue of the Iranian President has crashed with multiple casualties.
Two things:
First, Figure 1 is the share of under 35s who have not had sex in the last year. Figure 2 is the same, but only samples from people have have never been married, which is more relevant and shows no meaningful gap.
Second, you're responding to
When you're replying to a discussion about recent trends like antiwork, NEET-dom, shoplifting, and Red Lobster closures, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume the trends you're choosing to bring up are on a similar timeline.
I'm not condemning men. I'm saying you're, at best, massively exaggerating your own complaints about women.
You claimed the statistics supported you. Now that they don't you're claiming the statistics aren't accurate. Why did you claim they supported you then?
I don't think it's appropriate to focus on a 1% difference in one age bucket and ignore the far larger differences in every other bucket that point in the opposite direction. Doing this falsely represents reality in an effort to push a particular narrative.
I agree there are more women actresses/subjects in pornography.
This is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that the statistics your post claimed supported your position do not, in fact, support your position.
I think that's a pretty reductive explanation. There is greater demand for pornography featuring women, and women respond to that. I don't personally think that women "more selfish", any more than men making more money than women makes them "more greedy". But these words are poorly defined enough that I'm not going to argue there is much objectivity here.
I've made one post apart from this one, which pointed out the statistics did not show what you claimed they showed. That's not targeting men, that's targeting, at best, shoddy research.
You seem to think I'm some sort of white-knight SJW. I'm not. I've criticized women before. I've criticized progressive policies before (e.g. affirmative action, believe all women, live experiences, etc.).
I tend not to do it here, because that stuffs in the water supply.
It's rather grating that you insist that I'm being unfair to men when I've said nothing negative about men this entire conversation.
I also haven't agreed with the "culture of selfishness" thesis.
Again, I've made the very simple point that the stats that you cited don't support the thesis that you made. If you'd like to defend the other two statistics you claimed support you, you're welcome to.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. Please stop saying I'm blaming men for anything.
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