domain:cspicenter.com
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1m ago
I got a good laugh at the man ping ponging across the river after dropping off the goat.
To clarify, I've never been reported to the authorities for asking a girl out either. I'm not arguing that any man who's less than maximally attractive who asks out the wrong girl will inevitably end up with his career destroyed and his life in ruins - that's preposterous. I'm merely arguing that there has been a concerted effort among feminists to stigmatise male dating behaviour which would have been seen as perfectly innocuous a generation ago; that the most severe consequences for a social media cancellation campaign can be disastrous for men targeted by them (e.g. the Shitty Media Men List, the more recent "Are we dating the same guy?" Facebook groups); and that this produces an inevitable chilling effect on the behaviour of socially awkward men who are aware of the new norms (which is most of them). Much as cancellers cancel people who contradict woke orthodoxy in order to send a message to onlookers, the cancellation of men for being "creepy" (i.e asking out a woman who isn't interested) is intended to send a message to socially awkward men. It may well that your risk of professional repercussions as a result of a particular socially awkward man asking out the wrong girl are only 1 in 1,000, or 10,000, or a 100,000 - but if it makes him 10 or even 5% more risk-averse (and if every socially awkward man is making the same calculation) that will have massive knock-on effects on the dating economy, the loneliness/sexlessness epidemic and the fertility rate.
Thinking about the past, it makes me smile how much it was common to hear, until twenty years ago, that women are very uninterested in politics, unlike men. For my generation, this idea looks absurd. Men do not care about politics at all.
Yeah, well, look how it's working out for 'The West'.
Absolute shambles. In the 'Great Game' of global hegemony, the 'West' is the drunk guy who thinks he's playing checkers, but he's so drunk he doesn't understand he's actually playing chess, against a guy who's perfectly sober.
Meanwhile, in China, you're only supposed to care about politics if it's literally your job. Any random civilian caring about politics is viewed (rightly) with suspicion, perhaps partly genetic due to the millenia of rebels getting executed.
So, you had an absolutely typically female hysterical reaction to Ukraine war, with sanctions that resulted in exports to Russia crashing, and exports to Russian neighbors booming. Russia is still chugging along with the war, meanwhile European economy doesn't look too hot.
But a less well known example: 1 million 244: The 40 year long rare earth mineral boondoggle.
TL;DW:
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rare earths are crucial for renewables (wind turbine magnets etc) and nice for electric cars.
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processing them is very hard, harder than uranium enrichment actually to be cost-effective at it. It's a whole bunch of chemically very similar elements that occur together.
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China having little energy has a strategic interest in energy production and e-cars that actually makes sense. They went into this in early 1980s
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'The West' gimped rare earth processing companies in 1980s with a nonsensical rule change that put 'thorium', byproduct of RE processing on par with uranium. I'd love to know whether this preceded the Chinese strategic decision to aim for e-cars and so on.
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all the processing was outsourced to China. China stole and improved upon all the IP. They also subsidize RE processing and control the market. RE processing, thanks to their subsidies, is unprofitable everywhere. IF you try to set up your own industry, they'll tank prices just to make every startup go bankrupt.
This is all very funny because:
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rest of the world doesn't really need most RE. Renewables are a scam. Chinese mandate electric cars ( you won't even get a car plate) unless the car is electric, in preparation for WW3 and the naval blockades.
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e-cars don't really need them, but it's apparently mildly easier to make them good if you have ample RE.
YE_GUILTY
22m ago
Are there women on this forum?
There was a time (not after 2018-ish, I think) when the broader community of Scott Alexander's commenters seemed to me to be so, so heavily XY-chromosomed that it seemed safer to assume that, when someone said "as a woman," what was meant was specifically "as a trans woman," and when someone said "my husband" or "my boyfriend," what they were implying was that they were a gay male.
It would take much stronger evidence than that to budge my priors: they'd have to speak of doing something that only double-X people did, like "being pregnant" or "reading fanfiction."
I no longer think that the tilt of this community is this extreme; perhaps it's more of a change in me than a change in the community. But I do recall not being the only one to observe this in the broader rationalist community: I vaguely remember (some EA luminary?) saying that they had less of a gender gap than they had an assigned-sex-at-birth gap, but I don't know for sure.
practical_romantic
26m ago
lol at atlanta or chicago. Miami is a far far better setting IMO, something about tropical weather, large coastline and whatnot.
No_one
27m ago
You'e talking as if developing replicator technology and getting as far and as fast off from the rest of you humanity wasn't the default position of every person with an ounce of self preservation.
People are insane these days due to being disconnected from actual material reality. It's going to get far, far worse with more wealth. Either we get thought control and become some weird hive mind, or people will be getting ever more insane because they can and because our minds were not designed or evolved to cope with modernity.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
28m ago
Being really really pro-Ukraine (ie. above the usually required level in Western societies) is pretty male-coded too, though, in my experience. Most NAFOids don't seem to be female.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29m ago
I don't think that Musk is particularly a contrarian figure. He has drifted to a certain viewpoint and crowd - 'alt-lite', for the lack of a better word - and rarely seems to take an opinion that doesn't fit to that mold. (Indeed, he's already a meme for not taking a firm opinion on stuff where he seems to be doing so at all - "Interesting", "Looking into this" and so on.)
An actual contrarian in the sense that I'd mean would be someone like Michael Tracey, who has a tendency to drift into a certain crowd and instantly start taking viewpoints contrary to the ideas of that crowd, just to challenge them. Ie. when Tracey seems too close to the right he starts shitting on them, when Tracey got too appreciated by pro-Russians he started saying Russia is not right about everything, so on.
No_one
31m ago
But I can’t say I ever expected Ukraine to come out on top.
Given the pushback I've been getting here over the last years, there's a good few people who expected it. One would think so, except it's apparent the entire military procurement sector in the West is vastly more corrupt than in Russia.
aqouta
32m ago
That'd need to be some strong cause, or maybe you could at request give 1.1x the rate to the general tax fund so you'd need to really want to spite them.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
33m ago
Intellectual humility is not code for "I'm going to maintain my preconceived notions prior." Your take is not to find the data, it's to dismiss the data presented that directly contradicts your implication that Israeli fertility vs Japan is due to women in Israel working more part time.
In fact, your claim was that it's "obvious" that this is the case, which doesn't sound very intellectually humble to me, so it's a little strange that you are turning around and using that cudgel against me when it turns out that it's not so obvious after all.
No_one
33m ago
Funny, short video from the province of Airstrip one. Savage in that breathtaking way only those people are capable of.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
36m ago
The anti-Covid protests in Europe drew hugely from the related altmed and new age spheres, which are/were populated chiefly by women. This has had interesting sociological effects, for instance I've personally noted that shortly after this there was a new influx to churches (like my local Orthodox church) of women (and some men) from new age circles, and while I don't know if it's directly related to Covid stuff, one might guess it's at least partly related.
RegularlyExpressed
36m ago
Why ii) no longer works is explicable by the same dynamics Scott complained about in "Untitled": yes, workplace sexual harassment policies are written in an extremely sweeping fashion, and yes, men who are charming and socially adept and who are interested in one of their colleagues will probably just ask her out, without worrying about whether it's technically in violation of the policy or not. But conscientious socially awkward men will worry about this, as well they should given that they're the only men likely to be reported for violating it. (Yes I'm trotting out this meme again, I don't care: I was effectively shunned from an entire community and industry for the crime of politely asking a girl if she wanted to get coffee sometime and I'm still mad about it - anyone saying "just ask her bro, the worst she can say is no" is full of shit.) Regarding iii), some of the same dynamics as ii) apply,
I believe you when you say you've been treated unfairly but I think this is an exaggeratedly bleak depiction of modern in-person dating. I'm a milenial and I've asked out colleagues, classmates, hit on girls in public or who I've only met once etc and I've never been reported to the authorities for it (that I know of). And I'm definitely closer to the bottom guy than the top one in that meme - I'm sitting here posting on the Motte after all.
sun_the_second
43m ago
Why do you think is it called "pimping her out" as opposed to "pimping for her" or something?
jeroboam
44m ago
Currently trading at 2.73 which is up 65% today but down about 98% in the last 12 months. 52 week range 0.04–117.36. Insane.
I wonder what would happen if they let bankrupt companies keep their tickers? Like BBBY was still allowed to trade with literally no assets except the ticker. And their prospectus said something like "We owe creditors 5 billion dollars. If you buy our stock we will issue shares and use them to pay our creditors. This stock has no value". And then people bid it up to crazy heights.
Goodguy
45m ago
I think this is cherry-picking. Revolutions against established Order have not, historically, been dominated by women more than by men. The rise of Islam and of Protestantism, as far as I know, were not mainly driven by women. There was nothing female-dominated about the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. The 1960s social revolution in the US was not female-dominated either.
Goodguy
49m ago
Did this functional social covenant between governments and people ever really exist to the extent that you think it did? Take America, for example. In 1776 and then again 1861, tens of thousands of people in America rebelled against the government because they thought that the social covenant was being violated. Then, the late 19th century and early 20th century was the heyday of communism in America, with a massive labor movement that viewed the government as being allied with their enemies. Government-citizen relations got a bit better with the New Deal and then post-war prosperity, but huge numbers of people still rejected the covenant and rebelled against the status quo, fighting against the Vietnam War draft for example.
Goodguy
53m ago
I'm not sure this makes sense. Many men admire murderous, rapey barbarians too. Right-wing Twitter is full of odes to romanticized Indo-European chariot riders replacing the original populations of Europe and India.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
59m ago
But in that particular case, Winston was wrong!
Skulldrinker
1hr ago
Because every time I tried meeting anyone, I ran into the full Covid gauntlet of Bubbles and Taking It Seriously, stuff that women mysteriously stopped caring about once it stood in the way of fucking him.
And because he had become a hollow skinsuit of upward-mobility who spoke entirely in progressive talking points, to the point where it reminded me of the guy from Nightcrawler. And had a pathetic fucking meltdown where he tried to hold his girlfriend hostage by locking his door with her keys in his room, plus all the emotional abuse before. And he tried to steal the lease out from under his roommates. And he'd poison people against his roomates by calling us racist. And he collaborated with the landlords (to steal the lease), and simped for them massively despite them calling him racial slurs behind his back, which we informed him about in our bid to convince him that they were bad people whom he should not make deals with, especially with him valuing his Blackness so much. So he was a Queer (straight but wants to fuck leftist chicks who hate straight men) Black (ish,) Feminist (who abused women) Communist (who sold out his prole roommates). Eventually he had some sort of psychotic break and attacked me with a fire axe, I maced him and got a restraining order to get him removed from the place. And to this day I have former mutual friends who won't talk to me, because he's Black and Leftist and I'm a straight white male who called the cops on a Person of Color. And wherever he is now, he's undoubtedly balls-deep in some chick he met at a pro-palestine protest, while I still can't get anyone to fucking turn up for fucking coffee after getting my heart mutilated in 2019. Because people are so fucking retarded that they misinterpret me as some kind of monster, while he's the Jesus of their new religion.
That is why I hate the world.
SSCReader
1hr ago
Well I am not a libertarian, but whether some pimps do that, doesn't invalidate pimping as being valuable. Anymore than the fact some cops being corrupt invalidates law enforcement entirely.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
I assume the "parasite" sentiment comes from the fact that pimps don't always allow their services to be refused. Do you think it'd be a good libertarian world if enforcers showed up uninvited at your office and let you know that either you hire them for the price they set, or something might happen?
Closedshop
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
1hr ago
So far, season 2 of Smiling Friends is living up to the hype. The Gwimbly episode was probably the best episode in the show (The CEO is maybe the best one off character so far). Mr. President episode was full of those deep dank references and jokes that I really like (a great one is Mr Frog's economic plan). Smiling Friends is probably my favorite show that's on right now.
Reminder: Squiggly Miggly didn't kill himself.
Until I put my fingers in the nail marks, and put my hand in its side, I will never believe.
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