Lewis2
1mo ago
You could approach things from the opposite direction and just go by your username. It’s long, but at least it’s pronounceable.
Has the idea previously been raised and rejected, or is it something that’s just never been considered here? And if it was raised previously, did that occur when The Motte was still on Reddit? If so, some people’s opinions might have changed now that we’re on our own site.
You know, it really wouldn’t take too many people to make some kind of meetup feasible. I think DSL’s usually only have around a dozen people. It would just take a small nucleus of attendees and careful initial planning.
(To be clear, I’ve never been to an SSC or DSL meetup before, despite considering it, and I’m guessing I probably wouldn’t end up going to one associated with The Motte either unless it were National Park-based, and even then, it’s doubtful. Adjust your view of what I’m saying accordingly.)
Lewis2
1mo ago
This one happened a few years before, during the whole NYT SSC fiasco. Very shortly after Scott took SSC offline, a group of regular participants in SSC’s open threads converged on bean’s Naval Gazing blog and decided to spin up a replacement community, since it wasn’t clear how long SSC would be dark. By the time Scott started ACX, the group had enough momentum to keep going as a separate site. Like this place, the userbase is generally pretty anti-leftist but is at the same time far from being a conservative echo-chamber. At least a few people regularly participate on both sites.
Lewis2
1mo ago
The crowd at Datasecretslox, a sister site to this one, have annual in-person meetups, and I gather many of the commenters also participate in a loosely-affiliated Discord channel. Possibly as a result, they seem to have quite a bit more of a community feel over there. You might give them a shot.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Oh, I agree. Like I said, I don’t find it convincing, but it is a few I’ve encountered several times in the wild, always from Americans of German descent. I imagine there is a bit of motivated thinking as a result of their ancestors’ ethnic background.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I imagine this is an extremely fringe view even among Holocaust revisionists, but I know a few people who deny that the Germans ever intended to exterminate the Jews, because the Germans are just too civilized to commit such barbarism. When pressed about the large number of Jews who went missing during the war, they blame the Russians. Everyone knows they’re bloodthirsty and evil, and we know they committed genocides against other groups. Clearly they must be to blame.
I don’t really find it all that convincing, but it is a view I’ve encountered several times before.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I’ve never heard of that before, and Google isn’t helping me out. Do you happen to have a source handy? I’d be interested in learning more.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Eh, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m clearly not that happy.
I will say that I enjoy the absolute bafflement on some people’s faces and in their voices when they learn just how disconnected I am from large sections of modern life. I don’t have home Internet, I don’t have a TV, I refuse to download all but a very few mobile apps, I’m forever forgetting my phone at home or in the car, and these days, I’ve almost entirely given up radio as well. Other than news I pick up from IRL conversations, my connection to the modern outside world is mostly through a handful of websites, including this one.
There are some things I am not happy about in life, but my voluntary semi-seclusion from modern life isn’t one of them.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Thanks! I don’t pay any attention to different types of phones, and I don’t really trust that anything Google would serve me wouldn’t be bought and paid for by some company or another, so I really appreciate the feedback.
One question: when you say that the SE has five years of support left, has Apple stated that somewhere, or is that just your best estimate?
Lewis2
1mo ago
It’s rather fascinating to me that confession is seen as a draw to converts, given the strong resistance to it among many members of my own church body. When the denomination was organized, congregations were initially required to introduce private confession wherever possible, but that provision was dropped within a decade or so due to massive pushback from the laity. I wonder if the difference is just that private confession seems “too Catholic” to many Protestants, while pagans have no such hang-ups, or if there are other factors at play.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Yes, static, mostly text-only sites like this one don’t use much data, so it’s not a problem for me to participate here. If I want to stream anything or otherwise use the Internet more extensively, I either stay late at work or go to the library. It isn’t a huge imposition given my lifestyle, and it saves me hundreds of dollars per year.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I don’t have Internet at my house, nor do I have an unlimited data plan, so I make reasonably extensive use of my song collection. I also don’t trust that everything I like will always be available, so I greatly prefer to have locally saved recordings.
Lewis2
1mo ago
The screen on my nine year old iPhone just cracked, so I’m finally facing the prospect of purchasing a new phone. I’m very pleased with the longevity of my current phone, so I’m planning to stick with Apple (yes, I know Android is supposedly better, but I’ve never heard of an Android lasting so long without any issues). Anyone have an opinion on the benefits of getting an SE vs. a 13/14/15? I’m hoping to get a decade’s use out of whatever I purchase, but I’m also cheap, so I’d prefer to spend as little as possible to accomplish that. (I assume the cameras for any iPhone on the market will be head and shoulders above what I have now, so I’m not worried about getting the best camera available.)
Lewis2
1mo ago
sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.
What sort of services are you thinking of? It can’t be the mass, surely, since that wasn’t permitted to be celebrated in the vernacular until post-Vatican II. Or were exceptions made for Latin America?
Lewis2
1mo ago
No, but I don’t think Boniface would recognize the current crop of German Catholic bishops either. All of the major churches in Germany are transforming into something that wouldn’t have been deemed Christian a century ago. The only difference is that the EKD is a bit ahead of the RCC.
Lewis2
1mo ago
But the split happened in Europe. If that made Christianity stronger why would the effect be more pronounced in the US?
As aardvark2 pointed out, Europe has traditionally operated on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which eliminates the competitive spirit that proved to be an advantage in America. Aardvark2 is also correct in saying that attendance rates differ dramatically between Europe and the United States, even if nominal church membership is similar.
I hate to dip my toe in the pool of “lived experiences,” but I do think that might be at the root of our disagreement here. Your country recently (within living memory) witnessed decades-long violent strife over a tangled knot of politics and religion. In that context, I can see why sectarian divisions would seem like a definite weakness. From my American perspective, however, things look differently. Calls for “church unity” in this country have historically led to the creation of groups like the United Methodist Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, denominations whose founding mergers were accomplished by ignoring the real doctrinal differences between their predecessor church bodies. In other words, unity has become synonymous with laxity and indifference. I don’t think true unity of doctrine was possible in 16th century Europe, which means the only other options were superficial unity (a la mainstream Protestantism in the US) or forced unity (hence the wars of religion).
As I see it, the zeal that drove armies to kill each other over the existence of purgatory is the same zeal that led thousands of missionaries to convert the populations of North and South America, and Africa, and East Asia, and India, and so forth (some with greater success than others). Today, few Christians have that zeal, but many Muslims do. The very fact that Muslims aren’t willing to paper over their differences for the sake of a superficial unity is proof that Islam is still a force to be reckoned with.
Lewis2
1mo ago
In the past 400 years, Christianity became practically the universal religion in two new continents and made massive gains in a third. If by “Islam is dying,” you mean that it will thrive as a major force for the next half millennium before eventually weakening, it seems to me that your claim is pretty much meaningless. On a long enough time scale, every religion, ideology, and nation could be said to be dying, since none will survive the eventual heat death of the universe.
Now, I don’t think you mean that Islam will thrive, grow, and eventually decline, but instead that it’s already on its way out. If my understanding of your claim is correct, it seems to me that Islam’s divisions are actually a clear point of strength. For comparison, look at all the mainline Protestant churches in the US. Almost all are in fellowship with each other despite their doctrinal differences, and almost all are in absolute free fall in terms of membership and attendance, much more so than their more cantankerous theological cousins, who take their confessional distinctives seriously.
Would Christianity have been stronger or weaker without schisming?
My viewpoint is probably a minority one, but I actually think it was a strength, sociologically-speaking, as the divisions fostered a competitive zeal among the different church bodies. This is most obvious in America, where Christianity is, despite its decline, still doing undeniably better than in Europe.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.
I don’t have an opinion on the future of Islam, but the end of this paragraph seems to contradict the beginning. Islam is disunited precisely because it isn’t dead. The Shiites and Sunnis, and ISIS and the Taliban, all care so deeply about their religion and about the proper interpretation of it, that they are willing to physically fight and die for it. Citing that as evidence that Islam is dying is like citing the Thirty Years’ War as evidence that Christianity was dying 400 years ago.
Lewis2
1mo ago
In a post-nuclear world, do you really think issues of free speech and wokeness at Harvard will be primary concerns? I’m pretty close to a free speech absolutist, and that is a value I hold pretty dear, but even I wouldn’t expect to care about it much at all in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack.
Lewis2
1mo ago
What’s with “Scranton Joe?” Is it meant to be some sort of crack about his humble roots?
Im going to plant my flag in the ground and say that dresses as a general class are awesome, and I would wear them in a heartbeat if it were socially acceptable to do so. By “general class,” I would include things like robes, kilts, togas, vestments, opera capes, and so forth. These are all much more aesthetically pleasing than modern clothing, even if they’re not always as practical. I hadn’t ever thought about it before, but your comment makes me wonder if some transgender people (those on the transvestite end of things) just feel the same itch and find that women’s dresses help them to scratch it. If so, it’s just too bad that wearing clothing styles of 200+ years ago just makes you look like a twat.
Actually, a second thought on that point: men used to enjoy dressing up in fancy dress in the Masons, Shriners, Knights of Columbus, etc., but now young men have no such outlet. Maybe they should.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Whether it is technically legal or not, a male-bodied teenager who comes into a job interview with lipstick and a dress is likely not going to get the job.
This doesn’t seem to me like that much of an imposition. “I really like wearing dresses, putting on makeup, and doing up my hair.” Okay, great, do that on your own time, not at work, and especially not at a job interview. I really like dressing casually, not caring what my hair looks like, and only shaving every couple of days, but I wouldn’t dream of going to an interview wearing blue jeans and sporting two days of stubble, and if I did, I definitely wouldn’t expect to get the job.
There’s this idea floating around that you need to be your “authentic self” 100% of the time, and everyone around you needs to accommodate that, which is absolute nonsense. Anyone who’s ever had a non-PC thought or who’s ever enjoyed a dirty joke knows he can’t get away with expressing either one at most work places, and everyone accepts that that’s right and proper. Or, going back to clothing, take that episode of The Office where Jim showed up in a tuxedo. The writers of that episode relied on the audience knowing that a tuxedo is inappropriate attire in an office setting. But if Jim had instead come in dressed like Marilyn Monroe, somehow that’s supposed to be fine. No. Wear a tux, wear a dress, or tell an inappropriate joke on your own time.
(And while I’m grousing about clothing, Zoomers need to stop wearing pajamas and athletic wear in public. Sweat pants are fine for lounging about the house, but there’s no reason you should be wearing them at work or out in public. Show some self-respect.)
Lewis2
1mo ago
That’s not how unfalsifiability works. If Cirrus’s predictions for this summer (no major CW events, DOW and S&P hitting certain numbers) turn out to be incorrect, that will be evidence that his theory is wrong, so it’s hardly unfalsifiable.
I don’t agree entirely with Cirrus’s theory, but sarker’s response was a low-effort cliche that doesn’t even apply.
To what does this refer? It seems to me that the Ukrainians are no more eager for a negotiated settlement than the U.S. is. Now, it might be in their national interests to negotiate a peace, but they still have to want it to go down that route.
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