Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
It seems the chairman of Morgan Stanley International is also missing, almost certainly dead. I sincerely doubt HP whacked him - if you want to blame someone, God's sense of humour never fails.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it varied wildly between dynasties. Notably, the Kings of France were extremely good at having male heirs (and, generally, having them young enough to succeed as adults), which was a huge part of their ability to centralize into a functioning state. The one time there was a really disputed succession, it kicked off the Hundred Years War. In Germany, on the other hand, comparable houses were much less fecund. The Ottonians died out quickly, in part thanks to their insistence on sending Imperial princesses to the Church, and the only eldest son of the Hohenstaufen to succeed directly was Frederick II, after a 17-year struggle and some minor miracles (Barbarossa was succeeded by first his third and then his tenth child). The Habsburgs did somewhat better, until they got too inbred...
Shower thought: "trying for an heir" was probably notably easier for some kings than others. Medieval kings moved around a lot, because of the need for personal rulership and the heavy demands the royal household placed on any given host. The Kings of France were mostly in and around the Paris area, having the closest thing to a settled capital. Except on Crusade, they were rarely far from their marital bed, their doctor's workshop, etc. The Holy Roman Emperors, by contrast, often spent most of their reigns on the move all across Germany/Italy, reducing fertility for two reasons - firstly, that military travel, particularly in the disease-ridden swamps of medieval Italy, was a terrible environment to have a healthy child in, and, secondly, that their wives often stayed somewhere else to act as regents or co-rulers. Poor relations with the Popes also meant that it was harder for German and English rulers to divorce wives who were infertile or refused to sleep with them, like Barbarossa's first wife. In the end, the difference between dynasties was probably a fair number of little things and a lot of luck.
If you're having trouble with the mechanics, check out amateur threads on /gif/ or some other repository of short clips. That'll let you get a sense of where to put your limbs in each position, potential positions, etc. Not professional porn, of course, since that's done for cameras over comfort. Start with some dry-humping (e.g. her straddling your lap while kissing) so she gets used to moving her hips and you get a sense of how yours should move. Make sure to use your fingers, it should be really easy if you pay attention to what makes her react, or react badly. If she can't be verbal about not liking a move, the pressure, etc... that's a bad sign on her part. Again, start through the panties. Ease into things and let the positive feedback give you confidence - don't jump from any stage too fast (and look up how to find the clitoris/g-spot, it's really simple). Once you've established that rapport between your bodies, it'll carry over into actual sex.
Contra the common advice to make her cum first so the sex doesn't seem so important, don't worry too much. Try, of course! But a lot of women, particularly in these days of SSRIs and general poor health, can't cum from any kind of sex at all. The journey is just as important as the destination. And the best way to make her orgasm from sex once you have some confidence in yourself is again likely (again, not all women) going to be to not care that she does and to do what you want.
And, for god's sake, talk to her, and definitely not in a mopey and self-defeated voice where you blame yourself. That's a fast track to making her blame herself, at which point it's game over. Calm, open, no blame, "I want to learn how to please you."
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Barsky also had two children by black (immigrant, interestingly) women, so he clearly took his mission to "blend in" seriously.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
I actually have a very rare thing - a friend who grew up in Gary. Her description is that that the only people left are the very elderly, and the people who are so dysfunctional they drop out of the South Side of Chicago and go to Gary. The latter would be a real problem if they got a gun and spotted you, but for the most part they're too low-functioning even to do that, otherwise they'd be driving up Chicago's crime rate.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
I've been to Adjara and I've still never heard of it. I would imagine it's an "autonomous region" in the same way Russia has "autonomous oblasts". From a quick read it seems like it used to have a lot of autonomy under a local strongman until a local crisis in 2004 after Georgia's colour revolution.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Whoop is excellent for this without all the doodads of a running watch like a Garmin.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
I strongly recommend the Atkins translation of Faust. Avoid any rhyming translations...
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Not to say anything about your wider point, but just because I'm seeing this everywhere and this is the first comment currently: the Superman is not the same as the man of master morality. Master morality is not the morality of the Superman. The Superman is beyond both and transvalues both, though to us in a slave-moral society he would look comparatively masterly by contrast.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
A side point on this - in reading about the peak era of football hooliganism, knives were common, but not machetes. Weapons were mostly small and improvised, but there are multiple accounts of hooligans using fire axes. I'd assume this is a question of higher surveillance on hooligans and stronger rule of law back then, since a machete is harder to conceal on your person than an axe and "honest, officer, I was just gardening my jungle" wouldn't cut it.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
The last sentence is, word-for-word, what a representative of the GDR would say if asked about the Stasi (pre-1989). As such, it doesn't exactly prove much.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Nietzsche does not uncritically endorse master morality, or military conquest as an end in itself. Neither a state entirely devoted to master morality, or to military conquest, would be Nietzschean states (to the extent that such a thing is a coherent concept, like with Plato's Republic). The Superman is not just the biggest, baddest Bronze Age warlord - there are higher worlds to conquer.
The next aphorism after the Sparta one:
The political defeat of Greece is the greatest failure of culture; for it has given rise to the atrocious theory that culture cannot be pursued unless one is at the same time armed to the teeth. The rise of Christianity was the second greatest failure: brute force on the one hand, and a dull intellect on the other, won a complete victory over the aristocratic genius among the nations. To be a Philhellenist now means to be a foe of brute force and stupid intellects. Sparta was the ruin of Athens in so far as she compelled Athens to turn her entire attention to politics and to act as a federal combination.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Nietzsche on Sparta:
The recreations of the Spartans consisted of feasting, hunting, and making war: their every-day life was too hard. On the whole, however, their state is merely a caricature of the polis; a corruption of Hellas. The breeding of the complete Spartan—but what was there great about him that his breeding should have required such a brutal state!
Nietzsche on the question of obedience:
A man who wills - gives orders to something in himself which obeys or which he thinks obeys. But now observe what is the strangest thing about willing - about this multifaceted thing for which the people have only a single word: insofar as we are in a given case the one ordering and the one obeying both at the same time and as the one obeying, we know the feelings of compulsion, of pushing and pressing, resistance and movement, which habitually start right after the act of will[...]
Nietzsche is a complex and difficult theorist. A general rule for these discussions could go something like: "In cases where the discussion isn't based on an egregious misreading of Nietzsche, an answer to the objection is almost certainly already in Nietzsche." As No_one suggests, it's probably best to think of this as a discussion of a couple pop-Nietzschean terms, and how they've come to be used in ordinary language, rather than a philosophical analysis.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Reverse sear into broiler? How does that work? Normally with a reverse sear I would oven/sous vide the steak, then slap it on the pan to sear. Do you mean cooking in the oven and then using the broiler for a reverse sear?
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
All of the four military men had highly philosophical outlooks (even Caesar wrote poems and works on grammar/rhetoric, which are now lost), and I suspect they'd rather discuss more abstract things they learned from their experiences in war, exploration, and statecraft. Junger could hold court explaining industrialized warfare to them, but he'd be too modest to go on at great length, and having Mencken would probably shut down any longwinded boasting from the emperors pretty quickly.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Xenophon, Ernst Junger, Frederick II, Julius Caesar, HL Mencken. I particularly look forward to Junger introducing the other four to mescaline after dinner.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
One thing I’ve noticed is that people in New York sometimes pretend not to know you, even if they do, whereas people in D.C. pretend to know you, even if they don’t.
It’s bad guesting to immediately call gossip pages after a party. That’s called bad guesting.
Those are both from Molly Jong-Fast, who isn't really a typical member of the sort of socialite class this piece is trying to project (she's a red diaper baby kid of two highly successful upper-middle-brow novelists, wrote a book called The Social Climber's Handbook, then tweeted her way into being a political commenter Professionally Terrified For Are Democracy. Chattering classes, not post-WASP or artistic elite). She's part being tongue-in-cheek and part reinforcing the Molly Jong-Fast Brand as someone who's both high-class and interesting enough she would have to deal with that.
Bartender_Venator
5mo ago
Razib has published reputable papers on paleogenetics and Indo-European history, and I have yet to hear from anybody who knows the field and thinks he's talking nonsense (I mean w/r/t paleogenetics, obviously there will always be HBD haters). Burden of proof is yours in this case, I should think.
Bartender_Venator
5mo ago
I find it's easy to clock from the state of the luggage/person. Clean luggage: going to/from airport/hotel/etc. Dirty luggage: hobo. Dirty luggage but looks young and healthy: backpacker/festival/punk type.
Bartender_Venator
5mo ago
I have heard good things about Emily Oster's books. She's an economist who goes through pregnancy opinions and evaluates the studies, should be rat-compatible.
Bartender_Venator
6mo ago
Manchester United's 2023-24 season
Glutton for punishment, huh?
Bartender_Venator
6mo ago
Is there any great work that would be improved by the addition of choice, by the addition of alternate possibilities? Would Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates be better if there were a possibility of Socrates simply... not dying? If Callicles’s warning to Socrates, that his devotion to the “effeminate” subject of philosophy would be his downfall, might not come to pass? If Socrates might be able to eloquently defend himself at trial and avoid conviction? If he might escape from prison before his execution?
Maybe I'm missing this in another comment, but that actually is how Plato's account goes. He wrote a dialogue called the Crito, wherein a wealthy friend visits Socrates in prison with an escape plan, and Socrates explains why he chooses not to escape.
Bartender_Venator
6mo ago
I've seen a bunch of Uzbeks doing "We're from Uzbekistan, of course we [X]", and it's quite sweet, they're generally wholesome and outward-looking people who aren't really connected to meme culture so it comes off as earnest instead of cringe.
Bartender_Venator
6mo ago
There are also many literary comparisons (often unfavorable ones) to Joseph Roth.
I'm surprised they're unfavourable. Roth's novels are wonderful, but they're novels, not the same thing, and while I enjoy Roth's personal nonfiction a lot, Zweig is obviously better at that.
Song of Roland is an excellent companion to the Iliad. The parallels are strong enough that it can be a great set-up for a discussion on the differences between ancient and medieval warrior culture - roles of kingship, religion, loyalty, violence, etc.
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