domain:mattlakeman.org
SteveKirkland
7m ago
That's exactly the response I expected, don't know why I bothered
2rafa
9m ago
The argument re. London / England is indeed largely bullshit but the evidence that perhaps 5-10% of Lisbon was black in the 16th century is not inconsiderable, the Portuguese were in part the progenitors of the a European slave trade to the Americas, but the effort started with slave plantations in Madeira which was settled from the early 15th century. After the ravages of the Black Death Portugal was a weird place and, again, modern Portuguese do have significantly more sub-Saharan ancestry than other Europeans (including Spaniards, so this is not simply a matter of mixing during the Moorish era), including those in very rural parts of inland Portugal that have seen no major immigration for centuries, which is further evidence for the hypothesis.
temp
21m ago
Anyone here lose interest in the entire genre of complex games that they used to love?
Had the day off and decided to load up some old games. Opened up Rimworld, Divinity Original Sin 2, and Fallout 76, on which I've collectively spent probably 1,000+ happy hours years ago. Quit each within 15 minutes because they all felt overwhelming to figure out given the numerous different systems and controls. My goal going into it had been to relax and have fun, but the prospect of playing them felt like work. Back when I used to play them, I recall really enjoying all the optimization and googling/redditing, but now I don't think I will ever go through that again. Guess it comes with growing old.
I do have one theory, though. Ten years ago, or maybe 20 years ago, the world felt simpler, maybe because it was less connected and people were less tribal due to social media, and as a result, we savor complex games as a way to add spice. Today the world feels crazier, and our mental cycles are drained by things optimized to capture our attention, and so simpler games that don't demand as much are relatively more enjoyable.
2rafa
24m ago
I think your rational concession is likely correct. When very stressed or busy it is easy to make it to the evening without eating anything; over a prolonged period in many people this will mean a calorie deficit and therefore weight loss.
cjet79
26m ago
I agree that there should be enforcement
Then we don't disagree with each other, but we do disagree with the policies some cities have chosen.
The rest of your post seems to flow from that misunderstanding, so I don't really feel that it applies to me.
temp
30m ago
Has anyone made the personal observation that they lose weight when they think harder?
I'm convinced this applies to me, even if the science appears to suggest that the brain consumes only negligibly more calories when it works hard. But even over the course of a day, I notice that I weigh less than expected if I spent the day on more mentally demanding work than otherwise.
I concede that rationally, it's more probable that my body doesn't defy science, and that when I have to think harder, it's correlated to pressure at work, and stress suppresses appetite etc., and even if the mental stimulation is positive because I'm really drawn into a project, then that same passion can deprioritize mindlessly snacking or something. I suppose to someone who wants to lose weight, this nuance might not matter? They could just commit to some project that requires a lot of thinking, and voila, weight loss achieved.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
36m ago
I think any persuasive case would have to include some sort of theory for why instigating a divorce would be in any way beneficial to the conspirators. Is it known that non-divorced right-wing comedians are less desired by social media outlets?
It's pretty obvious to me that influencers pushing Right Wing trad values should have happy marriages, and if they don't it's a significant blow against their credibility. This is just personal, I hold the old fashioned view that if a person can't practice what they preach it throws significant doubt on their system.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
40m ago
...So "they" made him take the Benzos?
SteveKirkland
40m ago
Thanks, that's something to chew on. I was only going off the novel, looks like I was on the right track about his takes on religion.
SteveKirkland
43m ago
Jordan Peterson is a case where we know he was targeted for destruction, because the people doing it said they were doing it. The mob helped, natural social media mechanics helped, but there were malicious actors with an open goal of "neutralizing an influencer radicalizing young men by any means necessary."
fishtwanger
46m ago
In some ways, it seems like a game, or most other types of job. It's an artificial toy system, but as long as it's kept contained, there's nothing horribly unusual about molding a bit of your brain into a shape that reacts to the output of the system. (Whether doing so is "good" is a different question, but it often seems to be necessary for modern life.) But yeah, there's a huge problem when you start altering your basic personality and political views based on artificial outputs, especially if you're not aware that that's what you're doing.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
49m ago
Do we have any information about the divorce? Anything that would indicate that this makes sense? I'll cop that I have no idea who this is, so maybe it's obvious.
I googled briefly and all that came up was a bunch of hit-piece articles and reddit discussions of them, which all aired grievances that ranged from the cringe-inducing (he didn't show up to the birth of his kids) to the maybe-horrible-but-probably-just-a-bad-day (ring video of him berating his pregnant wife for taking the car when he needed it or something) to the milquetoast and probably exaggerated (workplace gossip that he was sending around pictures of his penis to other male staff).
The divorce appears to have been filed immediately after the birth of their twins.
I find it far more likely that YouTube personalities typically are already, and nearly always become, obnoxious people to be around. Jordan Peterson is sort of the Platonic Ideal of watching the degradation of a human being exposed to too much culture warring in real time. From this to this in just a few short years.
fishtwanger
59m ago
spruke
Is that a version of this word? I never encountered either before, but the context seems right...
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
or anything resembling belief in an almighty God
I don't know; from where I sit, there's not a huge difference between "the arc of history" and "Divine Providence." Plus, the way some talk about being "on the right side of history" sounds rather like being "right with Jesus."
There's also the whole "paladin" instinct to moral crusading I discussed here as a "Puritan" trait.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Ain’t nothing natural about this feedback. A is taking a trip into weird corners of the psyche even before B starts pulling the rug.
The converse is when people talk about social media as addictive, promoting gambling, and so on. It’s a crazy artificial environment we hooked up in pursuit of…cred. Money. Connection? Weirdness should be the default assumption.
To_Mandalay
1hr ago
They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.
Very few if any leftists have expressed support for Hamas' political, religious, and social program while also being pro LGBT+ which would actually be contradictory. A portion of them will express support for Hamas insofar as they fight the IDF without supporting their social program, which is a consistent position. A greater part of them will refuse to say either way, because they view calls to condemn Hamas as bad-faith attempts at distraction (the standard line being "I'll condemn Hamas when my government sends them billions of dollars").
Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza."
fishtwanger
1hr ago
Depends on the type of game, but largely agreed.
Also, voice acting is a mistake. Too many resources get locked up in creating art that only applies to one or few paths. The result winds up being either a bad movie that stops every so often so you can press buttons or play a minigame, or a game that cripples itself to cater to the needs of the bad movie that's been grafted onto it like a second head.
fishtwanger
1hr ago
I've seen the first episode, and am unsure whether to keep watching. (I've read the book and seen the 1980 miniseries, a few times each, and like them both, and am not worried about spoilers at all.)
It felt a lot like a certain failure mode often associated with Internet fan-fiction, where the author fell in love with so many of the side-characters that they wind up killing the pacing and narrative structure by ballooning out character "development" with empty scenes that could have better been collapsed into a throwaway reference or a single glance. (GRRM was very good at managing this in ASoIaF, at first. But after book 4 or so, it got beyond his ability to control.)
Despite the claims that various people involved never watched the 1980 miniseries, it was interesting to see how many casting and costuming choices mirrored it and played with it. I especially liked the new interpretation of Rodrigues; he seemed like someone who hadn't exactly gone native, but had adopted a pick-and-choose attitude toward philosophies of life, making him no longer fish nor fowl. And I pity the actor who has to follow in Toshiro Mifune's shoes, but he seemed to be doing a good job. I did not like Yabushige's characterization, but that's on the writers, not the actor. (And why did they alter the name? I searched for a while but found nothing.) I didn't like the actor for Blackthorne - partly because he looks so... early 21st century North American action movie - but maybe he'll grow on me.
Putting aside the annoyance I have at the various interviews that criticize the originals for culture war reasons, I did think there was a lot of promise in the idea of presenting the story from the Japanese viewpoint. The early part where the ship showed up out of the fog was spooky, and the samurai boarding it reminded me of space marines boarding a derelict hulk. But I think to do that properly, they'd need to view Blackthorne as something like a space alien, and the series overall as a "second contact" story with a new alien species that tells you that the "benevolent federation" that you've joined isn't quite so benevolent after all. But instead, they give us enough of his POV that this doesn't work, but not enough of his POV to really get into his head. They left out some bits that provide motivation for his actions, and sped through bits where he should have been working on communication difficulties.
drmanhattan16
1hr ago
Another point to consider - for all the talk of Flowerman and his ilk, where is the proof that he was the reason for the outcome? All we have is that Flowerman was explicit about wanting to propagandize ordinary Americans and that Americans today generally display far less in-group bias/ethnocentrism. The article sets out against the notion that Jews aren't a fifth column, but it doesn't make any convincing case that they are.
Jews have the notion of "never again", but they're not the only ones who have bones to pick with American bigotry. You don't need a Jewish conspiracy to eliminate in-group biases in the dominant culture when that culture did harm to others, but it seems quite a few people really want the Jews to be consciously involved in these attacks against the dominant culture.
non_radical_centrist
1hr ago
Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.
There are two types of crimes really. Crimes made impulsively, and crimes that are planned. We can use corporal punishment to deter planned crimes, especially planned crimes that are so minor that sentencing someone to even a day of prison would be overkill but hitting them once with a cane is appropriate, like shoplifting. For crimes made impulsively, like a person having their mother insulted then committing assault against the insulter, we use prison to keep them off the streets because we just can't have them as part of society.
2rafa
1hr ago
Completely agree, this was the most progress on illegal immigration since the 1990s and the GOP squandered it to pander to Trump who might not even win in November and won’t be able to do something better even if he does.
Yes I agree with this. Well. I think that different people have different problems as well. "people who will take agency and apply focused determination to solving the little problems along the way" are going to be your best category, getting them to help from the inside is essential to making progress. I agree with that. But there will also be people who aren't in that category who can be moved to that category with just the right strategy, one conditioned on them. But not any of the many wrong ones. There will also be people who are lost causes. Such as the permanently brain damaged and the exceptionally obstinate.
Though... even the latter may be transmutable. The minds of the mentally ill are often like Cobble's Knot. A giant tangle of issues that layer on top of one another, that you need to find one loose end of to even get started.
2rafa
1hr ago
It doesn’t matter. Unless Trump has a trifecta with an unrealistic senate majority (which isn’t going to happen) this was better than ANYTHING he can accomplish in office. It is truly an unbelievable blackpill that the bill didn’t pass, it represented a huge concession from the Dems in an election year and the GOP were unfathomably retarded to reject it.
ArmedTooHeavily
2hr ago
There are some timeless pieces of wisdom passed down from generation to generation that unfortunately the majority of people are doomed to re-learn for themselves in incredibly painful ways.
This time, it's "Don't stick your dick in crazy."
Best of luck.
I still occasionally enjoy these complex games. But I also often crave simpler mindless titles.
Stardew Valley is a fun way to cleanse your palette. It can be played either as a fun cute little farming game, or you can go hardcore with twenty wiki tabs for the game open while you optimize crop planting and gift giving.
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