domain:betonit.substack.com
gilmore606
29d ago
me too thanks
TowardsPanna
29d ago
Envy and jealousy tend to have to do with status seeking. Are you unhappy with your status relative to peers? Have you been marginalised or wronged? Is engaging in envy and jealousy helping you to improve your status? Or would you be better served setting up specific, reasonable targets for specific ways to improve your own status? To the extent it's even necessary to worry so much about this stuff - maybe you need to decrease the emotional stakes you put into this, too.
Can anyone explain to me what's happening exactly?
I decided I'm at the point in life when I can/should start "giving back". Of course, giving money is one way. But I thought I could volunteer my autist ML and Data skills too, I'm pretty sure charities all over need some numbers crunched and visualizations made. I decided to do this because me (and people with similar skills) are going to be too expensive for most charities and what I can offer will be thus relatively high leverage.
Not a single local or global charity got back to me. What gives? Do they not need numbers crunched and visualizations made? Or they just don't have the bandwidth? Or am I overestimating how much I can actually help or how much of my help is required?
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
29d ago
Come to rDrama, we have fun over there.
Yeah, right now we have Donkey Kong December going on too so there's extra special flavour (yes, I know it's April, don't ask).
FarNearEverywhere
29d ago
I'm saying they should learn from the mistakes we made.
FarNearEverywhere
29d ago
Yeah, because your step-mom married to your step-dad is your adoptive sister is a much better look 🙄
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
My sister in laws kids still end up in one on one meetings with their priest and so on.
If this is true, it needs to be reported to the parish's safety coordinator (assuming she's in the US.) The only circumstances where that should be happening is during confession, and now the standard for children is to have confession in a place that is visible from the outside (like through a window or in an unblocked corner of the church) or completely physically separated, like an old-style confession booth. Now, the sister-in-law might be bringing her children to a normal (adult) confession time, but if there are no specifically-labeled confession times for children, it is within her right to schedule a child-safety-compliant confession for her kids.
"If there is a need for a confidential discussion or training session with a minor, it should occur in a location that is in view of other persons, and the minor should have first and immediate access to the exit."
RegularlyExpressed
29d ago
I'd take out puts on France, Spain and Canada before I took them out on the UK, perhaps even Germany before the UK (their demographics are down the toilet, average age is approaching 50).
I'd be somewhat inclined to go long on Canada (over a longer time frame admittedly) purely based on geography - with all that habitable land and and the natural resources that are going to get more accessible as the planet warms it's hard to think things could go seriously wrong for them.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
29d ago
The housing prices are due to many more factors including higher Texas property taxes (as a percentage) and more desirable climate in California. So there are factors going both ways.
cjet79
29d ago
Lol, that's cute.
Don't do this. Its a very annoying thing to do in a conversation.
You meant to say TAXONOMY not taxidermy.
Pretty sure I meant meant taxidermy. But the difference is trivial. They were a bunch of weird nerds that shared around stuffed animals. The taxidermy is what allowed Taxonomy to advance at the time. Its a lot easier to do taxonomy if you can look at a bunch of taxidermied specimens right next to each other. So the guy that advanced taxonomy did it via taxidermy. Seems accurate to say he did either thing.
And just so you know, Aristotle was a huge nerd and spent his free time studying and collecting mussels in the Mediterranean.
Imagine how much more he might have learned if he was surrounded by a leisure class aristocracy interested in "natural studies". Alas, not our timeline.
And yes, I'm only criticizing Darwin for his theory of Natural Selection.
I'll reiterate that I think this is strange because its one part of a larger text he wrote on the Origin of Species.
Creatures survive because they can reproduce and survive in the environments where they live.
And why is that? Well, because of Natural Selection of course! Now change Natural Selection for "God", and how does that change anything?
There is a difference in saying "because of [symbol without a defined meaning]" and saying "because of [symbol with concrete definition]". I think you are kind of equivocating between the two.
Sort of like the difference between a cop answering why they pulled someone over with "because they were driving 15mph over the speed limit" and "because they looked suspicious".
Natural selection adds more evidence to the "god didn't do it" pile.
Pretty sure this has gone in circles. I'll read any response you post to this specific comment, but I think I'm done with the conversation and won't respond here anymore.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
29d ago
I knew I would get some deep cuts here. Thanks for the analysis, it just didn't seem to make sense on the face of it and I was having trouble googling that deeply for some reason.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
It's a line from the film The Princess Bride, which I have shown to my two sons, albeit when they were younger. A fun movie. (You may already know this )
Having written that, I admit that the line does resonate as a bitter truth, but not in any sort of complete version. For some, I have little doubt that life is almost completely pain, unforgiving, constant, merciless. I would like to think even for those people there are moments of calm, or peace, even happiness--or, if I really push it, beauty, though that may be too optimistic. And certainly I have had years, particularly my teens, where everything seemed rotten inside, people seemed rotten, false, groups even worse, all the world a shithole, full of liars and thieves and brutality. And you do not need to look far to find people, even adults, who will nod in agreement to all that.
I'm not going to attempt to lay out the glory here or convince you of life's endless bounty. But having kids--even when I know someday one or both of them may have to watch me, as I watched my own father, die in a weakened, much diminished state--provides, or has the possibility of providing (it provides me, let's say that) a great deal of seemingly boundless joy--bundled of course with pain, frustration, anger, etc. Like life itself.
roche
29d ago
You're touching on a concept that was summed up nicely in Beiser's Weltschmerz -- the problem of evil. The fact is, from a materialist lens all suffering is inexcusable. All discomfort is tragedy. When something bad happens in 20XX, we consider it a suboptimal move like we're chess engines analyzing life and trying to build the perfect path. The result is ennui. A game developer once said, "Give players the means, and they will optimize the fun out of the game". The same applies to life. Your favorite art was influenced by experiences that were almost certainly terrible. There is no Lord of the Rings without the second World War, yet if any of us were asked, "Does LOTR justify the war? Does Remarque justify the war?" none of us could answer in the affirmative. We bemoan the artificiality of the current world, but when presented with opportunities to really experience adventure, us conscientious adults shirk back in fear.
Look, the secular world view doesn't have to be this way. But when you place "comfort" as your guiding star, that's what happens. You become a chess player. You are a Hamlet in a world fashioned by Quixotes. You sit, you stand, you stare at your watch. There is nothing else to do. Hamlet is apparently terrified of death, yet he does nothing the entire play but make droll, apathetic remarks to people he doesn't care about. Is such an existence really worth protecting? Even before the old king's death, do you really imagine he lived well? No. Death was never the issue for him. Hamlet is terrified of life.
The one good thing Hamlet ever did was forced on him by complete chance. The real Hamlets of the world never have that moment. Parenthood is the one test of our ability to value something beyond ourselves. It's 2024, and everyone is failing. We're all Hamlets, and the world is dying.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
29d ago
Your last paragraph touches deeply on what I picked up on watching a marathon while my knee heals up. The weird dichotomy between his brash world traveling wealthy lifestyle and his use of almost "poverty porn" to make a living.
You could see that both he and some of his hosts were sometimes visibly very uncomfortable due to the obvious wealth and status gap. I think we should maybe give him a little more credit for introspection due to that. Yeah now I can see how he was possibly boxed in by his own ego and it felt like there was no way out. Thanks for the writeup!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
Congratulations in any case, to the mother down the road (years, perhaps). As a dad I could never share my wife's physical upheaval during those years. Even now (when our sons are teens) I suspect in moments of the inevitable subterfuge and insolence that she feels differently than I do. "Your mother carried you in her womb for nine months, is it too much to ask that you take the goddam plates to the sink?" (I do not say this, certainly not in this way.)
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
29d ago
Oh no, you don't get to duck out that easily.
You started this, and you started it with multiple, very specific, very damning statements about a very specific person (JK Rowling) which you claimed were obviously and provably true. And when I took on the challenge and went down the list of every one of your accusations, you suddenly play "Oh well, that wasn't my point, I don't actually care about Rowling"?
No, dude. You clearly do care about Rowling.
I will say that 'carefully litigating every word JK Rowling has ever said to determine whether it is about X of just mentions X' is exhausting and frustrating.
If we're talking about JK Rowling (and we are), it actually matters what she actually said. I mean, if you were accusing me of being a Holocaust-denying white nationalist who also thinks we should abolish the age of consent, and you based that on my saying some things that Holocaust-denying white nationalists who also think we should abolish the age of consent say, you can bet I would care a lot about carefully litigating the words I actually said, because if you are accusing someone of holding reprehensible views, it matters whether they actually said the things you are accusing them of! You don't get to just accuse them of believing all the things the very worst people in their "faction" say!
Frustrating because it's really super irrelevant to my larger point about the rhetoric and factions involved here, which is the relevant thing I actually care about, which few have bothered to respond to
I directly addressed your entire "This is what her faction believes and this is what her rhetoric inevitably leads to" argument! If you disagree with me, go ahead and point out where my reasoning is flawed, but don't claim I didn't bother to respond to it!
I find it frustrating that you make specific, provably untrue statements (for example, repeating bullshit about how Troubled Blood is about a serial killer who pretends to be trans and tries to sneak into women's spaces, as evidence of how much Rowling hates trans people) and when this is contradicted by people who actually read the book, you don't even acknowledge it, you're just all "Oh, I don't actually care about Rowling."
So many of the comments are nit-picking about whether I'm being 'fair' to Rowling, and I frankly don't give a fuck about one person like this and what they did or didn't say, the interesting issues are the larger factional concerns
I mean, we can all agree Rowling has FU money and immense popularity and can't actually be harmed by anyone saying mean and dishonest things about her. The reason we're arguing about Rowling is because people much less wealthy and powerful than her who say similar things (the people in her "faction" as you keep calling it) are suffering tangible harms, harms which you apparently believe are justified. So yeah, if you claim that JK Rowling wants a trans genocide, or that her "faction" does and she's abetting it, then that has implications for people who are not JK Rowling and that's why you are being challenged, not because everyone here is a JK Rowling fan.
I'd be happy to just say 'sure, whatever, Rowling is a perfect angel who has never done anything wrong, if that's what you want to believe;
Transparent straw man. Stop this kind of disingenuous whining.
can we please talk about my actual point though'
Yes, let's. It's your turn.
SSCReader
29d ago
Ahh. An optimist! I think the problem is I am not confident the Catholic Church was initially wrong (or has actually made real change, but that is a different post).
As you point out the predictions were true, admitting the issue was indeed used as ammunition against the Church.
We evolved these social defense mechanisms for a reason. That many people are not good with base rates, that it really did damage the Church significantly. A better solution (from the point of view of protecting the Churchs mission) might have been to close ranks while internally trying to reduce the problem.
As long as you have a Catholic church some priests (and people pretending!) are going to do bad things. The only thing you can control is what level of bad things are worth its continuing mission. And the same applies to trans people. Some number of either real or fake trans people will do bad things. What people say, or have said is mostly irrelevant to the current situation.
If the pope said that no priests would ever abuse a child, the fact 0.000001% do, may not be a good argument for dissolving the clergy even given the pope was strictly wrong.
Usually, I write George Bataille esque diatribes about the unrelenting awfulness of the universe.
2rafa
29d ago
He is self-worshipping; he cooked himself an identity in Kitchen Confidential and was too blinded by pride to ever revise it. Bourdain wanted to be the cool Western individualist loner, enjoyer of all but adherent to none. He attended every place’s ritual meal — each one a eucharist, essential, consuming God — but only as the aloof tourist, the narrator. It was this pride and absence of self-reflection (one’s real needs and obligations) which is the deepest reason. He let his heart be captured by an exotic woman to fulfill his own self-image, the idol he worshipped, which led to his demise.
I really think there’s something to this. I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him’, but I do think that’s the key to it, in a way. People who have this particular sense that they’re unique, that they stand above this mass of parochial humanity, beyond it, viewing it almost objectively are very vulnerable to obsessing over a romantic partner who they feel is like them, also ‘separate’ in some way. It both soothes their vanity and feeds into the ‘favorite person’ complex that is pretty common in people with some personality disorders like BPD.
Bourdain clearly thought Argento was something of a kindred spirit according the documentary, a fellow traveller, someone who had suffered as he had and become strong and funny to cope.
Losing someone like that, or worse realizing that they’ve left you, bored of you, tired of you, is much worse than breakups are for psychologically stable people who lack this perception of their own intellectual apart-ness from community, identity and so on. That’s why even though Bourdain was on vacation with his close friend in a picturesque little town this wasn’t enough to save him, because nothing can replace this person. The sense of loneliness is absolute and profound, exacerbated by the inability (as you say) to self-reflect and conclude that maybe they were projecting large aspects of the image they’d created of themselves onto someone else.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
29d ago
Plenty of bad behavior happens among the Silicon Valley elite.
As much as I find the statement itself reprehensible, I think there's a kernel of truth in an infamous quote from a former president:
And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
High status lets people (almost exclusively men, in this case) get away with a lot, in part because people are willing to put up with more to be with someone high status: Christian Grey's romance plays don't work for anyone who isn't a hot, young billionaire. The quid pro quo is implicit, and rarely spoken about, although I seem to recall a few blow-ups in recent memory where it seemed part of the drama involved (by deceit or misreading) mistakes about how high-status one party was.
And nobody really complains because it's hard to declare that behavior with "groupies" (for lack of a better word) is categorically non-consensual.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
29d ago
"There's nothing worse than being forgotten by someone you could never forget."
HaroldWilson
29d ago
that integration doesn't make the negro child equal to the white child.
That is irrelevant, whether or not it is true. Segregation need only to have adversely impacted the education of black children in any way, and to any non-zero extent, in order to be impermissible (and, also, one cannot criticise the Brown decision on the basis of putative information not available at the time). There was every reason, and still is now, to believe that segregation ipso facto prevented the provision of an equal education. For one thing our prior should be very high that segregated education impacted outcomes - would it not be quite astonishing if integrated and segregated systems merely happened to produce the same outcomes? In turn, the African-American was always going to come off worse in the latter system. Put it this way. Is there anywhere in the South you can point to that had established a reasonably equal segregated education system by the time of Brown? If none of them achieved it within well over half a century, it was quite plainly never going to happen.
The (pretty well unanimous) conclusions of research conducted prior to Brown into the issue of the impact of segregation and institutionalised discrimination on the development of black children is well summarised here, from p. 139 on.
https://archive.org/details/personalityinmak0000midc/page/138/mode/2up
it was chosen by the voters, as is their right to do in a constitutional republic
Segregationists did not give a damn about rights in a constitutional republic, nor about the will of the people, hence their systematic attempts to disenfranchise black voters. The South has only itself to blame - segregated education was never going to be equal when managed by unrepentant racists. Segregation may have been chosen by the (white) voters of the relevant states, but its abolition was likewise chosen by the nation's voters at their federal elections, as is their right.
The Supreme Court of the UK is essentially a government department that rules on whether policies, laws or sentences violate primary legislation passed by parliament. The House of Commons itself can overrule or abolish the Supreme Court at any time, convict or free anyone of anything, or do anything else by simple majority because it is singularly sovereign. Technically the Commons can be limited by the Lords and the King, but the lords have been neutered for a century and the monarchy had its last vestiges of genuine influence removed by the early Victorian era.
“Constitutional” therefore is a kind of legalese thing where a law or policy gets struck down because it conflicts with previous law passed by parliament. The Constitution is, to some extent, whatever parliament in Westminster passes, plus some procedural stuff. Of course the government can just ‘make it legal’ with a majority vote, but if they don’t explicitly override or repeal the previous legislation then they need to go back and do so.
In Scotland’s case constitutional questions related to devolution involve stuff from the original 1707 acts of union, huge amounts of precedent in the following centuries and the official devolution enacted by Tony Blair. The Supreme Court ruling Scottish law as unconstitutional is essentially the government (and thus parliament) saying that the law itself violates UK law.
The thing is that the UK’s protections for free speech in the law are pretty limited, largely either longstanding precedent or just incorporating the ECHR (which has carve outs for speech rights) into law. It’s not clear, therefore, that this Scottish law is ‘unconstitutional’.
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