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ActuallyATleilaxuGhola

Axolotl Tank Class of '21

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joined 2022 September 08 09:59:22 UTC 

				
User ID: 1012


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Axolotl Tank Class of '21

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 08 09:59:22 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1012


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IME people who complain about their hobbies being "uncool" are actually just bad at talking about them and might just be bad conversationalists in general.  I think there's a right way and a wrong way to introduce "low status" hobbies:




"So are you into board games or card games?  You are?  Nice, which games?  Yeah, I like that one too.  These days I mainly play MTG with friends, have you ever played?  Oh really?  We should play sometime, I could show you the ropes."




vs.




"Hobbies? Well, I'm really into Magic The Gathering.  I was in a tournament last week.  I usually play with control decks, usually blue/black, but I've been experimenting with some new deck types lately.  I'm really excited for the March of the Machines. Do you like Magic?"




In the first example, the speaker gradually established that the other person was interested, while in the second example the speaker just sort of spaghetti'd all over the place with no concern for whether the other person was interested.   Just this past week I got into a conversation with a normies female coworker about anime over drinks and I ended up talking about some really niche shows.  The conversation was light-hearted and bidirectional, and she seemed to come away with an impression of me as "funny and quirky" rather than "creepy and nerdy."


It's all about how you steer the conversation and about whether you can laugh at yourself and handle little shit tests.  For example if in the above MTG example, she were to say something like




"Magic? Ugh really? My dorky little brother plays that."




you could respond with




"I dunno, he sounds like a pretty cool guy to me.  Maybe he'll let you borrow his deck so we can play.  So what sort of games do you like?"




instead of getting flustered or embarrassed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  • 

    Safety razor with a bunch of blades.  Cheap, sanitary, and does a better job than plastic razors.
    

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    Obsidian Sync for storing all my notes and ideas and syncing them between my devices (you can do it for free with git but I like supporting Obsidian)
    

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    Plastic pan scraping squares.  Cleaning pots and pans has never been so easy.
    

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    A dozen small glass bowls for storing small amounts of leftover food or for temporary ingredient storage while cooking
    

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    If you're poor, an all purpose hot sauce like Frank's Red Hot makes everything edible
    

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    Pour spouts for your liquor.  Way less mess and wasted booze, way easier measuring.
    

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    Better than Bouillon, best stock/bouillon substitute ever (only available in America maybe?)
    

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    Kitchen chopsticks. These are giant chopsticks connected by a string for story frying stuff.  Much easier to use than a spatula but might take some practice.
    

    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades.




As someone on a work visa, no, not really.  They knew what they were getting into.  I've been living in this country for many years with my wife and kids and the.government of this country could tell us to fuck off at any time, as is their right.  It's a risk a I consciously take.  If I decide I no longer want to take that risk, I can just go back where I came from.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It wouldn't work.  What constitutes "prejudice" or "discrimination" doesn't in practice follow coherent principles, it's merely "who, whom" because anti-Catholics (in a broad sense) control all media by which the message would be delivered and can thus mute o, even better, skew or taint the message.


It is a highly effective strategy.  When I think of someone on TV complaining about anti-Catholicism, I think of some crackpot or blowhard that has been brought on as a slow news day sideshow, and I'm a practicing Catholic who believes anti-Catholicism is a serious problem!  I know for a fact that there are many highly articulate priests and professors who could give an excellent rundown of anti-Catholicism on TV, I've personally seen many of them speak.  But they would never be allowed on air for fear that they might actually sway some folks (look up Fr. Coughlin), so instead you get Bill Donahue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is this new? I don't think I've been in a Target since Covid.  I don't remember Target or Walmart stocking LGBT themed stuff even in places like the greater Seattle area.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bonus quote regarding "the Raft," a mass of floating trash and boats inhabited by millions that circulates on the Pacific current, picking up the global poor as it passes Asia and dumping them by the hundreds of thousands on the shore of California (cf. migrant boats/caravans):




"So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent.






"Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean."






"I've heard the expression, yes."






“That’s my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know–it’s a piece of information–data–that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America’s like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel.”






"Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier."






Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy.






"That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way."






"Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's too good not to post:




When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:






music






movies






microcode (software)






high-speed pizza delivery




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Go to a park or trail that is a very easy walk and has few people.  Turn your phone off.  Don't bring anything you have to carry, like a bag or water bottle.  Try to notice as much as you can about your surroundings.  What color are the leaves?  Is the terrain sloping?   What's swimming under the surface of that pond? What sounds can you hear?  How does the air smell?


I personally prefer walking along ridges or along the edge of some body of water.    There are also some small valleys near where I live that feel pleasantly insulated.


When you get to quite, isolated spot, take a short rest and soak it all in.  I like to say a few prayers of gratitude at this point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
RIP. That story makes me smile every time I read it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I guess Leftist propaganda has done a number on me because when a new book about the Holocaust or Racism or whatever comes out in $currentyear (although admittedly this one predates mass TDS by a few years) I steel myself for the inevitable parallel between Conservatives/Christians/White males/etc and the not-so-subtle implication that people who oppose immigration are literally SS guards or that people who are not in favor of "trans rights" are little Bull Connors.  I'm still willing to read stories about the Holocaust that were written a decade or two after the fact, but I treat anything written later with extreme skepticism, because at some point (maybe during the 60s and 70s?) the Holocaust was elevated from "terrible thing that happened" to "the worst and purest example of evil in human history" and assumed near-mythical qualities.   The Civil Rights Movement on the other hand seems to have undergone the transformation to myth almost immediately so I am extremely selective and skeptical when consuming anything about that period.


When a book about the Fall of the Roman Empire comes out,  I expect it's going to be a dry history, maybe revealing a few new discoveries or advancing some new theories.  There are books that try to draw parallels between the British Empire/American Republic to claim that we're repeating history, which by this point is quite a tired and trite comparison, but they're not usually imbued with the same moral outrage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's true.  Books and films on these topics makes instruments of Leftist moral education.  But IMO racism or mass killing of perceived enemies are not the ultimate sins (though they're certainly not good), so these sorts of books are grating to me.  I imagine a Leftist would feel the same about, say, The Passion of The Christ.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not to mention the banality of Rotherham.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing.  But I'm nearly as tired of Holocaust-themed morality plays as I am of the Civil Rights Era-flavored ones.  Has anyone under age 70 not been bludgeoned through their entire lives with "Prejudice is bad!" and "The banality of evil!" and "Never again!" etc?


I don't understand people who write books on these themes in 2014.  Is there even the thinnest residue of stunning bravery to be mined and exploited by speaking truth to a (long vanquished) power?  I have to imagine that even blue tribers would yawn at yet another Holocaust tear jerker or To Kill a Mockingbird clone, "don't they know trans persecution or MAGA terrorism are where the points are scored in 2023?"  And even dispensing with the cynicism, is there really anything interesting left to say on these topics?  I'd wager that nearly any book you could write on them has already been written.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I haven't seen that discussion, but it sounds possible.  Places like that are usually exactly what you'd expect, some combination of:


    

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    Extremely small
    

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    Filthy and/or damaged
    

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    Old
    

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    Structurally dangerous (predating latest earthquake safety laws)
    

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    In a natural disaster high risk zone (flood/tsunami/landslide)
    

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    Terrible location (far from public transit, or next to factories/noisy train station/graveyard/sewage plant etc)
    

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    Tainted by association (usually a suicide or high profile crime)
    

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    Shitty neighbors (almost by definition)
    

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$150/month might still seem outrageously low given the above, but I again have to emphasize that these are usually basically pod "apartments" that would probably violate building codes in the U.S. for being so small.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Housing in Japan isn't affordable.  Houses are small, probably roughly half of the sqft you'd get in most of the U.S. for the same dollars (my "huge" house in the countryside that shocked my co-workers was just over 1400sqft and it had 4BR, lol).  The construction quality is shit, very poor insulation, crappy building materials that degrade significantly in the first 10-20 years.  And all this for the low prices of 30,000,000 to 45,000,000 JPY if you want something new, or 25,000,000 to 35,000,000 if you want something used.  And get ready to live in a 1000sqft "house" with maybe 1-2 meters of "land" surrounding your house, if that.  (Yes, even in the countryside -- they build houses 1 meter apart even in the midst of massive open spaces.)  AND! You get to pay for it with your Japanese salary, which PPP-adjusted is worth about half of an American salary.


As for why this is, the most plausible reasons seem to be that


    

  1. 

    Brain drain to the cities is extreme and WFH hasn't taken off nearly as much -- most people are still trying to cram themselves into Tokyo
    

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    Home construction is a racket -- There are a handful of massive national level builders that sit on top of a truly insane byzantine network of contractors, sub contractors, and sub sub sub contractors so that building even with shitty materials becomes horribly expensive due to the sheer number of parties taking their cut.  This also makes QC'ing your house nearly impossible because there's no single "contractor" to hold accountable, it's buck-passing all the way down
    

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    Penalties for sitting on land are very low -- the attitude towards owning property here seems to be "sit on it and hope you win the lottery."  I personally know people who own land in the countryside and who have zero plans for it -- it's just there, it's costing almost nothing, and maybe someday someone will want to buy it, who knows?  And of course there's the famous inheritance/ownership problem, where a piece of land gets passed down to half a dozen grandchildren, only some of them cannot be located (and might even be purposely avoiding being located in order to dodge taxes) so nothing can ever be legally done with the land and it just sits in limbo forever.
    

    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Google search is almost entirely SEO blogspam for me in the last year.  I've started using Yandex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here it is from Gillette's official account: https://youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it can go over quite well, but you have to own it completely.  I've told crying women "I'm sorry you're upset, should we continue this conversation later?" to which they responded by turning off the waterworks or by doubling down and lashing out ("How can you be so insensitive about X!?").  The key in the latter case is to maintain frame and not be provoked, but instead simply make a mildly concerned, sympathetic expression as you allow her rage to pass over and through you.  If she tries to drag you in by demanding a response, just calmly repeat the question.


I've never suffered any lasting social damage from this approach, but you really have to be rock solid in your frame.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But the bigger issue is that Mainland China is so incredibly sheltered. They don't have the sense of what is possible, their culture is a tiny shallow hothouse for midwit takes. It's like Belarus or some other stale post-Soviet backwater; actually worse. This is true of their entertainment as well as of their tech and politics. I've tried to take them seriously for a while, and came to this conclusion. Ignoring China and assuming they won't do anything consequential nor retaliate in any meaningful way when Anglos are kicking them in the balls has consistently been the rational choice.




Finally, someone else on The Motte who gets it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.




Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.


Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.  My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT.  When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.


So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They prey on naïve Westerners who are good people, and thus believe that other people are good people too.






What would you do?




Nothing. I wouldn't want to prevent them from learning a very important lesson about their fellow man.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

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    Trashy Adult Swim Shows
    

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    Denpa music
    

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    Sour Patch Kids
    

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    Bicep curls
    

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    Collecting weeaboo merch
    

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    Gas station spicy pickled sausages
    

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    Dr. Pepper
    

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    TTRPGs
    

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    Not breaking character during the entire TTRPG session
    

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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One dark pinstripe suit.  I wear it to solemn Masses and big social events (funerals, ceremonies).  So at least once a quarter.


Glancing in my closet I also have a tweed blazer and a thin white summer blazer that sadly no longer fits since I've started lifting. : (


I've been meaning to buy a casual suit to wear for fun.  Probably a navy one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm increasingly against the concept of "asylum" in general.  A lot of discussions about immigration seem to take it for granted that we must let in a nonzero percentage of "asylum seekers," that this is just some sort of given, or law of physics or something.  It's not.  The number of asylum seekers we have to take in is zero.


It must suck to live in a place controlled by warlords and gangs.  But life sucks in a lot of place and in a lot of time periods.  Sometimes it even sucks within the borders of the U.S. I don't believe I or my countrymen have a special moral duty to shelter every single person who shows up at the border with some unverifiable story of persecution.  The idea sounds good in theory, but in practice it is one of those ideas that seems unstable in its theoretical limited form and which inevitably decays into its more stable degraded, excessive, unlimited form (see also college financial aid).


Even a midwit like me can tell that there are simply too many people in LatAm and the 3rd world for the U.S. to absorb without impacting the living standards of Americans, so I have to suspect that "taking care of asylum seekers" is really a pretext for serving some other ideological belief, like "increasing diversity" or "destroying white hegemony" or "free market absolutism."  I guess there are a few true believers among the suicidally altruistic (religious charities come to mind) but I wager that they're a minority and are mostly the "useful idiots" that the ideologues in power use to further their ideologies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For me it was the police's ability to hold anyone in custody for up to 23 days without charges.  I avoided police, and in the rare case I had to interact with them I was exceedingly deferential and polite.