domain:alakasa.substack.com
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
6d ago
Yeah that's supposed to be the official explanation, right?
And then within a week planned and carried out a bio-weapons attack? And the Israelis claimed that an Iraqi spy supplied a 9/11 hijacker with anthrax at a meeting in Prague- total fiction. Does not add up at all.
cjet79
6d ago
@Primaprimaprima is correct. Write about a paragraph of original thought and you are fine.
I wrote this up thread:
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
jeroboam
6d ago
Attempting to reach this goal by conducting a war of annihilation
I'm going to get accused of being a "Putinist" surely, but Russia is not waging a war of annihilation. They are conspicuously avoiding civilian casualties.
As usual, the worst victims of war are the men actually doing the fighting, whose lives are treated as worthless by basically everyone.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
Write too little, and you get a lot of "This isn't what we like to see from a top level post" mod warnings.
Warnings for effort on top level posts are handed out pretty rarely. I made this very short post about Iran's attack on Israel (over half of it was copy-pasted quotes) and I didn't get modded for that. The bar is pretty low.
In fact, posting virtually any topical bit of news often gets you a "boo outgroup" warning
Going through last week's top level posts, the Eurovision post didn't get modded, the Mike Cernovich post didn't get modded, the summary of Trump's trials didn't get modded, the post about DEI at MIT didn't get modded... there are lots of topical posts that don't get modded.
I definitely don't agree with all the mod decisions here. But it's also false to claim that the mods are paralyzing all discussion, because it's just a fact that the vast majority of posts don't get modded.
cjet79
6d ago
I wrote this up thread
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
There is a definite problem where people skip step 2. And part 3 sounds like "The protestors seem evil, it would be nice if they were shot." Yes that sort of post will get you dinged for boo outgroup.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6d ago
Warnings for effort on top level posts are handed out pretty rarely.
That's because people avoid making them. Some weeks we go 12 hours without any posts on the new thread at all.
incognitomaorach
6d ago
I really liked Busan the two times I visited- nicer climate than Seoul, although in summer it becomes overrun with a spring break type atmosphere. Beaches, near to more historic/rural parts of the country as well. The night life felt more relaxed and the food was more varied. In terms of opportunities, its the centre of the main industrial zone (with Ulsan/Daegu). It's also a bit different politically. For the number 2 city to be 3m/7.5m metro in a country of 50m sounds pretty large to me!
After nearly a decade of commenting on this sort of stuff, I don't think there's a lot more to be said about any of it.
True. Which is why the people who comment about HBD are also the people who discovered it like last Tuesday and have all of the same bad takes.
Then random people on the other side pop up saying "my dude, all the races have the same IQ, it's science", apparently having missed the entire conversion or feigning ignorance.
It's Eternal September.
So it gets boring. At first HBD felt exciting because it was "forbidden" knowledge. Now, the HBD thesis seems so obvious and settled that it's not really worth debating. But every September more young rationalists will have to make that journey again, walking over well-worn footsteps.
NelsonRushton
6d ago
A claim that Soviets killed 10-15 million instead of 40-60 million would be an exceedingly odd one from a point of radical leftism, since it's still far too many killed people for communists to be comfortable with it, and anarchists and others would presumably not care that much either way, since they would see Soviet Union as a bad thing either way.
I don't think it's odd at all. They can't completely whitewash the numbers in one generation, but they want an excuse to (1) quibble with anyone who points out the atrocities by disputing their numbers, (2) use that as an excuse not to listen to them, and (3) doctor the numbers so that they can say that Naziism, or the Westward expansion of the United States, or something else besides the philosophy they espouse killed the most people ever.
To steelman the original case against cultural appropriation, you really have to understand the context in which it appeared. Think back a couple of decades to when America was maximally hegemonic and arrogant. When I was growing up, it was accepted wisdom in Hollywood that any film that adapted British source material had to be set in America with American children, and the source was often mutilated to make that work: see The Seeker (an adaptation of my favourite childhood book) for a particularly egregious example, but they even tried to do it with Harry Potter.
It's not fun to see your culture stolen or made into a theme park version of itself because Hollywood execs didn't believe that their audiences could tolerate anything too exotic. And it's worse knowing that, because American soft power outmatches yours by an order of magnitude, your children will grow up with the American version of your culture as the default while the original dies a slow death. In the same vein, Hallowe'en is now a much bigger deal than Nov 4th in the UK, and spell-check + Grammarly is slowly killing British English. I can imagine it's even worse for smaller, weaker countries and cultures.
Of course, the anti-cultural-appropriation movement overreached, mostly by refusing to see any difference between genuine appreciation and chauvinistic snatching. But in an age of increased migration and greater communication between cultures (via the internet) it's more likely that, say, Arabs will get upset about American girls using their national costume to slut it up.
(Obviously I'm simplifying and cherry-picking, see for example the chinese dress brouhaha where actual Chinese people didn't give a damn. I'm trying to give a sympathetic explanation of one reason why people started pushing back against cultural appropriation. I enjoy dressing up myself.)
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6d ago
Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.
Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
Yeah, they did that - it's right there!
I don't think it's a good post, but it's a fine area of discussion, everyone is already familiar with the basics, and the bar to ride the ride shouldn't be that someone has to personally have a novel take. Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia or quoting the New York Times would not improve this post.
gattsuru
6d ago
Was literally pointing a gun at Rittenhouse, whose friend claimed he said "His only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him" (later retracted, tots honest), and who was illegally carrying a concealed weapon after his carry permit had either expired or been revoked.
Yep.
cjet79
6d ago
[2]: Yes cjet as you say every single time anybody complains about this topic there is no length requirement. And yet: yes there is.
Does the NBA have a height requirement? It doesn't but also it does. They have a good at basketball requirement, and height helps a lot. Likewise, we have a 'decent post' requirement and length helps, but I think it helps less than height does in the NBA.
If you held my feet to the fire I could give you a minimum length requirement: three sentences. I just don't often say it, because its not really about the length its about the content. And three sentences doesn't mean you have satisfied the requirements. Its just impossible to have enough content in less than three sentences, and I don't want people pointing to this and saying "hey I wrote three sentences like you asked". Which someone will do, and I will laugh along with them and give them a temp ban for being so funny.
All you need: Context of the thing. Interpretation and analysis of the thing. An opinion on the thing. A very good concise writer could do that in three sentences. It wouldn't be a very good or interesting top level post but it would satisfy my personal "low effort" rule. Five sentences would be safer. One context sentence and then an average of two sentences for the analysis and opinion parts.
If you don't want all three of those parts then about ten sentences is good enough. But these posts tend to get dinged for other problems. An opinion only rant tends to run afoul of boo-outgroup and waging the culture war.
incognitomaorach
6d ago
Britain is really lopsided in that London might as well be a different country economically speaking, with vastly higher wages, economic opportunity and so on, but by any reasonable definition London is only 3-4x larger than Manchester. It's just a boundaries definition, a bit like when Paris gets reported as having a population of 3m. Greater Manchester is ~3m people and Greater London is 9-12m depending on the source. There's a case to be made that the Liverpool-Manchester urban region is a Ruhr equivalent conurbation, with bad transport holding back the economic integration.
How could you see this and not be reactionary?
Answer: Boomers.
Boomers don't see it because they are the beneficiaries of it.
Imagine a boomer living in Monterrey. Their house is worth $3 million. They pay almost no tax and in fact receive large checks and free health care from the government. Services are high quality because of an army of low-wage immigrants. The town isn't crowded despite its magnificent natural environment. Nothing has been built in 30 years.
There's an eerie lack of children but that's a small price to pay.
It's like when all the old union workers sign a contract to grandfather in their benefits while screwing the new workers. And it's why the Democratic party is now the party of the old, upper middle class whites. The high/low coalition makes the present comfortable for these wealthy boomers while replacing their society wholesale over time.
No_one
6d ago
At this point, I don't understand why Ukrainians simply refuse to move when 'recruited'. Unless they start killing them, getting a beating is preferable to getting blown up, and they can't maim recruits because that'd defeat the entire point.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
I think a lot of people are radicalized by being priced out of the place they grew up (I've had coworkers who certainly were) but it's not clear to me how this translates into support for Trump. Mostly I think this translates into support for YIMBYism, which I think is on the rise across the country.
Shrike
6d ago
By "war of annihilation" I (perhaps unclearly) meant "destroying all their hardware and killing all their personnel to reduce their ability to fight" not "killing all their civilians."
KMC
6d ago
It's like we have become allergic to actual news or something.
RIP Bare Link Repository.
Don't you know? We're not allowed to talk about the news, we have to post about it.
This place is best when it is a link aggregator in addition to a discussion site. Unfortunately the mods don't seem to agree with me, and seem to resent it being used as an aggregator.
Technically this does have points 1, 2 and 3. I get why the mods aim to have an effort filter for top posts but this isn't spicy and seems to have stimulated discussion effectively enough.
No_one
6d ago
Endgame ?
This or next year, Ukraine folds and accepts territorial loss and permanent neutrality (Finlandisation- no NATO, no EU membership). NATO is ran by idiots simply wasn't able to provide the armaments necessary for victory. Might be some fun (meaning FPVs into NATO political leaders) out of this when Ukrainians with their half million dead are going to be given no rebuilding assistance [1].
EU (specifically the centrist fraction of EU parties) is mulling a union-wide draft law, supposedly voluntary at the start, so recruiting at most 10% of age groups. So there might be remilitarization. It's required in the mid run anyway because America is likely going to go down.
Russia reforms their military procurement in preparation for WW3 (new defense minister looks up to the task) and will probably take over the Baltics out of pure vengeance when US hegemony collapses following the China war. It's nice real estate, but I guess most the young people there will flee and Russian hydrocarbon funds will go to pay for those pensions too.
[1]
"On the question of NATO's role in the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war. The first thing I will say is that first of all, you need to ensure that Ukraine prevails. Because unless Ukraine prevails, there's nothing to reconstruct in a free and independent Ukraine.
We must be able to help Ukraine prevail because it's important for Ukrainians. But also because every day this war drags on, of course, the more destruction and the more expensive, the more resource demanding it will be to do reconstruction afterwards."
stuckinbathroom
6d ago
Fair enough, I did know that the New Testament claims very explicitly that there is no salvation outside Jesus Christ.
Thanks for the cite.
For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
More options
Context Copy link