FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Don't let falling behind on the plan discourage you! I've literally never perfectly completed a workout plan, I'm always too ambitious, but when I get to the end I'm stronger than I would be if I quit.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I'm assuming you're saying without special unique credentials, not without any credentials or ordinary education.
The answer is to work for government or other very large organizations and be willing to work below your true talent level. If you're a lawyer with a hypothetical true talent level of $400k/yr, and you're willing to take a secure job making $130k/yr that only requires half as much effort, those jobs are available. Ditto engineers, etc at different price points.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Great example from a field I'm not knowledgable in.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10d ago
SCRIPT DRAFT: EAGLES TEAM PSA FOR EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION
((Emotional, compassionate, deep voiced announcer))
Have you ever felt ignored? Felt invisible? Felt like people wouldn't give you a chance? [Images of rejection emails from jobs flash across screen]
Because you don't have any experience? [Montage of action photos of Jordan Mailata]
Because you had to change jobs? [Montage of action photos of Zach Baun]
Because you have a tough personality? [Montage of action photos of AJ Brown]
Because you were let go by your prior employer? [Montage of action photos of Mekhi Becton]
Because you were the wrong color? [Montage of action photos of Cooper Dejean and Reed Blankenship]
Because you had a criminal record? [Montage of action photos of Jalen Carter]
Because everyone else in your industry hates you? [Montage of action photos of CJGJ]
Give people a chance. Be a champion. Don't discriminate when you're hiring.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10d ago
https://www.themotte.org/post/1146/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/256318?context=8#context
Evil Peak vs Evil Career Counting Stats
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14d ago
200 in a set is fucking monstrous. Good luck.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14d ago
1-5 0
Special case: Generally $1 per drink, for coffee or alcohol, regardless of drinking it in or out of the location
6 20-25% for places I like, which is most places I go
7 $5-10
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/09/tesla-clean-credits-trump
It's less of their revenue than I thought, only around 5% anymore, but still makes up 43% of their profits for 2024, which is much higher than I'd think. We're talking about $2bn in 2024 and ~$10bn to date. It's not a small amount of money.
ETA: Probably the sentence would be more accurate as "derives much revenue" than "derives much of their revenue"
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16d ago
"Just remember the right one" isn't really advice 😂
I just never use either as a verb. Not worth the mental effort.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16d ago
I'm never confident in this one, and just end up using impact instead.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16d ago
This is one of those times when people's ignorance of history is actually important rather than a meme. Palestinians will never trust that displacement isn't permanent, that's sort of their whole thing. No Palestinian who gets herded into a camp in Egypt or Jordan would really expect a Right of Return, and they'd be stupid to expect it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16d ago
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Much of their revenue and until recently all of their profit is based off of various government regulatory schemes for selling pollution credits to other automakers. Elon seems... Unlikely... To remove those particular government boondoggles.
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They are genuinely amazing, class leading, genre destroying pieces of machinery.
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People just think of it as investing in Musk. His stock is up, I'd imagine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16d ago
It's not so much never Trump Republicans as it is that the majority in the House is narrower than the number of total wingnutz who won't reliably agree to anything at all in the Republican caucus.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17d ago
I loved this book. Gabo was a genius.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17d ago
I think it would be easier to respond if you used concrete examples.
My basic response is that I don't like or dislike people primarily because of their politics, nor am I arrogant enough to think that the virtues I do rate people on inevitably lead to one political conclusion or another.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17d ago
The Philadelphia Eagles will play the maximum four playoff games this year, and every single one of them has essentially the same analysis going into the game:
The Eagles are better at every positional grouping except QB and Coaching, and maybe some special teams positions. Analytically the Eagles should win, but you hesitate to have faith that the Eagles and Jalen Hurts will execute on gameday.
The Chiefs matchup in the Super Bowl is the mother of all versions of this matchup. The Eagles are better in every other position grouping except maybe D-Line and Tight End where it is a push but you might give the edge to the Chiefs based on playoff experience. But the Chiefs have the edge at Quarterback, and they have all-timers at Head Coach and DC, and they execute.
The Eagles have better Wide Receivers, possibly the greatest running back of all time, the best O-Line in the league, the number one defense in the league behind two DROY candidates in the secondary, a DPOY finalist at linebacker, and a gamewrecker in the middle of their D-Line in Jalen Carter. And it all might not be enough.
If you aren't sure who to root for, here's my rooting guide, pro for the Eagles and Con for the Chiefs:
Why you should root for the Philadelphia Eagles
Pro: No one wants to see the Chiefs win again. Every right-thinking NFL fan wants to see the Chiefs taken down a peg. In the long run, it will even be better for the Chiefs themselves: if they threepeat, there will be no mountain left to climb, we'll just hear about them as inevitable or whining about the refs; while if they lose, Mahomes and Reid will come back with a vengeance next year. While if the Eagles win, or if they lose, they won't win the division next year. Let's see some variety.
Con: We Are All Witnesses. We have the chance to see historic greatness, maybe the best to ever do it, in Pat Mahomes and Andy Reid and Travis Kelce and Jones and all the rest. You only get to see this kind of thing so often.
Pro: The Eagles are incredibly likable. Saquon ran across the field to congratulate his backup on scoring. They fight through injuries for each other. The next man up will always come in and play.
Con: The Chiefs might be annoying because of the incessant advertising, but as the new GOAT, they'd be replacing Tom Brady and Bill Belichek's Pats, who were just ontologically evil. So it's an upgrade in the record books.
Pro: An Eagles win is likely to be a more exciting game. The Chiefs are going to score 24-30 points, it is inevitable. So an Eagles win will likely mean each team scoring five or six times. While a Chiefs win will likely be the same nonsense of Pat Mahomes pulling some nonsense out of his ass and winning by two points. I got so bored of every Chiefs game this season, it felt like one of those Marvel schlockfests where the hero faces down a vast army of enemies, but you know he's going to win so there's no dramatic tension. Let's see something different. The Eagles represent a different way of building a team: where most teams are built from the QB out in recent years, the 2024 Eagles are built around a superstar O-Line and a great running back. Let's see teams pursue more running backs, and fewer teams tanking for QBs.
Con: But people like Marvel movies. People like watching Quarterbacks play hero ball. You're going to see a Chiefs win in which Mahomes does something crazy no human being should be able to do. When Jalen Carter tries to pick him up, Mahomes is going to throw the ball thirty yards for a touchdown to Travis Kelce. Give the people what they want. Then we're going to spend the off-season debating when the play should have been dead.
Pro: If you like Eagles fans, you'll get to watch them go nuts. If you don't like Eagles fans, there will be fewer of them after the celebration.
Con: Chiefs fans are genuinely midwest nice.
Pro: E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES
Con: Huh?
Does Believing in Big Conspiracies Cause Small Conspiracy Theories, or Do Small Conspiracy Theories Cause People to Believe in Big Conspiracies?
Or: Why the Fuck is Luka a Laker?
I’ve always thought that one of the primary philosophical values of athletics is that it is a direct connection to capital R reality, in a way that is otherwise possible to avoid for many people. When I was in law school was when I got really serious about weightlifting, for the same reason that a lot of my friends got very into drinking: 1L year is a hell of feeling unmoored from any evidence of how you are doing. Traditionally, as my school did things, you have no feedback until finals. You are working all day every day studying, but you only really ever get tested on it in a cold call, which more depends on your professor’s mood and style for how it goes than it does on how good you actually are. And you might only get cold called ten times a semester anyway across all your classes. You’re working constantly and you have no real idea how you’re doing. But, as Henry Rollins put it, The Iron Doesn’t Lie to You. You can lift the weight, or you can’t. So I got really into the Olympic lifts. The Snatch, the Clean and Jerk, the Clean and Press (I’m old school). The numbers went up, or they didn’t, every day in my notebook. And if they went up I could feel good about myself, regardless of the fact that I was sure I was going to fail CivPro (I didn’t). Lifting weights, or running, or biking, gives you instant feedback on where you stand. You have a number you can pin your ego to, a baseline reality. You can lie about it, you can cheat, but you’re only cheating yourself: you know you’re a fake. In law school I needed that anchor to reality to keep me sane, to keep me from getting lost in my anxieties about things that I could not have knowledge of or control over.
Competition of course, is the ultimate reality check. I’ll confess to having become a bit of a hermit in my workout habits over the years. I have a very extensive home gym setup, the only time I worked out socially was the occasional climbing trip. Switching to BJJ has gotten me obsessed with fitness in a way I haven’t been in years, in that every time I go to the gym I’m getting my ego crushed. I’m getting dominated, submitted, and that’s reality: there was nothing I could have done to stop it. But, the victories are as real as the defeats. I can feel myself improving, and when I get a minor win, it means nothing it’s just a casual roll in a suburban strip mall in Eastern Pennsylvania, no one gives a shit. But it’s real, it happened.
And I think that athletics are necessary for that reason: they provide a tie to reality. There’s a reason that the study of decision making in economics has come to be known as Game Theory: you create a circumscribed ruleset for competition and use it to model greater decision making. This has value both in personal practice of athletics, and in the greater world of spectator sports and athletics. Moneyball taught more people about statistical analysis and strategy than any textbook. Sports are the one real thing on TV, you watch it and something happens, or it doesn’t. Your team wins, your team loses. This is important in that it keeps people grounded, it tells people things about reality. It teaches kids growing up to accept defeat, that sometimes the breaks beat the boys, that sometimes bad things happen. Sport was so important to national and ethnic pride, to civil rights movements, over the years, because sporting success is an inevitable fact. Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson and Jack Johnson were, and remain, so important because he went on the field and did it. When they went in against whites and won, the lie that no black man could do that was untenable. There was no denying that reality. Trans competitors in girls' sports has been such a controversy, not because anyone gives a damn about the purity of high school girl's track, it's because it is undeniable. Contact with reality. Black and white.
Unless, of course, the product on the field is fake. The ultimate crime against the public, as Fitzgerald put it:
"Fixed the World Series?” [] The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people--with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
Then sport becomes just another case of one’s emotions being manipulated by some power on high.
I bring all this up in reference to the recent blockbuster NBA trade that came out of nowhere over the weekend. In the middle of the night on Saturday, the Dallas Mavericks chose to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis and a 2029 First Round Pick, plus some spare change going around. This trade is so off the wall that many people assumed that the reporter who first put it out had been hacked. It simply makes no sense by standard NBA strategy: normally a team will never part with a top-5 player in their prime like Luka under any circumstances. If they did choose to trade a guy like that, then the team would accept that their current project was torpedoed and sell everything for future value, young players and draft picks to build the next great team. The Mavericks did neither: they got older and worse switching from Luka to AD, without acquiring any high end draft capital to help them build in the future. They lost a potential all-time talent, a face of the franchise and the NBA, a player who had just lead them to the NBA Finals as a number one option last year; and in exchange they got a slightly worse player several years older. It makes no sense. Writers call it The Dumbest Move I’ve Ever Seen. The Lakers have a player who virtually guarantees them a competitive team for the next ten years, and for it they gave up an aging star who was a key piece on a championship team five years ago, but didn’t look likely to win one this year.
And inexplicably, Mav’s GM Nico Harrison didn’t try to shop his player around at all. The players involved heard at the same time everyone else did, from a twitter account they thought had been hacked. Luka bought a house in Dallas less than a month ago. Players around the league reacted with shock. Fans are apoplectic. Had Luka been shopped, it is likely that Dallas could have stocked their team with bright young players and future picks to build a juggernaut years from now. A package vastly better than AD and change. They chose this very specifically. Leading many fans to ask why?
Conspiracy theories popped up immediately. From the mundane, Luka is injured or Luka is about to be MeToo’d or Luka fucked the owner/GM’s wife. To the more baroque: the Mavs chose to make this trade at the behest of TPTB within the NBA, who wanted their marquee franchise in LA to get a fresh star with the LeBron era winding down. Send the best young player in the league, and certainly the best looking most photogenic and charismatic player in the top ten, to the traditional top franchise in the league. The Mavs perfidious new owners, the (((Adelsons))) went along with this because they want to move the team from Dallas (a small market I guess?) to Las Vegas, and they needed to destroy the franchise and its fanbase Major League style in order to do it.
And that made me wander: do conspiracy theories filter up or trickle down? Does one start with a conspiratorial worldview and paranoid style and jaded cynicism because Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself and then decide the NBA is probably fixed too; or does one start with thinking the NBA is fixed and it shakes your faith in everything else? I’ve noticed the conspiracy theorists I know tend to be into personal conspiracy theories too. The same guy that’s telling me the Marines just raided a FEMA data center in Iceland to get the files about the 2020 election will tell me that the mechanic slit the rubber on his CV boot so that the mechanic could charge him to fix it. I wander, if one polled /r/nba fans, what would the correlation be between believing that the Luka trade was fixed and believing in RussiaGate?
Now we reach another question where Sports is a low-stakes microcosm of life: assume that the uproar was so severe that it actually threatened the legitimacy of the league. That so many fans were so convinced that the Luka trade was fixed by the NBA, that it threatened to ruin the NBA’s ratings and destroy the fanbase. Assume also, that it isn’t true, that Nico Harrison really just thought he was that much smarter than everyone. You are the NBA commissioner. Do you exercise your power to rescind the trade, in order to preserve the appearance of fairness, or do you allow it to go through, knowing that it will create the appearance of unfairness?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18d ago
I love cats and grew up with them hanging around the barn, raising stray kittens and giving them away. My only solution to mice is getting a cat. I don't think having a cat is inherently feminine.
But working breed dogs and ones relationship with them are inherently and classically masculine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20d ago
Moreover, Israel is reliant for its suffrage on a moral system that such actions would undermine. Israel exists and is tolerated in large part because of Western guilt over antisemitism and the Holocaust, a belief in the idea of self determination for ethnic minorities. The moment those beliefs disappear in the USA and the west, so does Israel.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20d ago
Reviewing Predictions on the Israel-Gaza War
The Institute for the Study of War opines that
The Israeli campaign into the Gaza Strip was a military success but has fallen short thus far of setting conditions to replace Hamas as a governing entity. The Israeli government enumerated three objectives at the beginning of the war: destroy Hamas’ military, return the hostages, and destroy Hamas’ government.[1] These objectives—though expansive—were achievable through a combination of military and political action. The Israeli campaign succeeded in destroying Hamas’ military and securing a ceasefire that would release the hostages. The campaign has also isolated Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though Israel and its partners will need to ensure that Hamas remains contained. But neither Israel nor the United States has tried seriously to achieve a political end state that would build upon this military success and permanently replace Hamas as a governing entity in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s failure to achieve this final war aim means that the strip will remain without an alternative governance structure and security broker, and Hamas remnants will inevitably try to fill that role again, especially as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdraw. Hamas will use this space to reassert its political authority and reconstitute its forces—unless the United States and Israel take further steps to prevent those things from occurring.
The Middle East Monitor meanwhile summarizes Israeli opinion:
Unlike previous military campaigns in Gaza – on a much smaller scale compared to the current genocidal war – there is no significant strand of Israeli society claiming victory. The familiar rhetoric of “mowing the lawn”, which Israel often uses to describe its wars, is notably absent. Instead, there is a semi-consensus within Israel that the ceasefire deal was unequivocally bad, even disastrous for the country. The word “bad” carries broad implications. For Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, it represents a “complete surrender”. For the equally extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, it is a “dangerous deal” that compromises Israel’s “national security”. Israeli President Isaac Herzog refrained from offering political specifics but addressed the deal in equally strong terms: “Let there be no illusions. This deal – when signed, approved and implemented – will bring with it deeply painful, challenging and harrowing moments.”
In Haaretz we get headlines like: "Total Victory in Gaza? Dismantling Hamas? The Hostage Deal Is Exposing Netanyahu's Lies” and "The Gaza Cease-fire and Hostage Deal Is the Same One From Eight Months Ago. Why Did Netanyahu Accept It Now? Ailing hostages rotting in tunnels for 15 months and over 120 Israeli soldiers killed since Benjamin Netanyahu declined a previous cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas are the least of the Israeli prime ministers' concerns. He wanted to be pressured just ahead of Trump's inauguration”
I can’t track it down online and I’ve since recycled the paper, but at the signing of the ceasefire, I read a WSJ op-ed in which the writer bemoaned that the hostage exchange, as lopsided as it was, constituted a defeat for Israel, and provided an obvious structure for future defeats. There’s been a consistent drumbeat of sentiment among committed Zionists and self-described foreign policy realists that the ceasefire constitutes an Israeli defeat. And inasmuch as one takes Netanyahu seriously earlier in the war, it does seem a defeat of a kind. Israeli hawks have said from the beginning that they were fighting to destroy Hamas root and branch and obtain lasting peace and security for Israel. That this was not another “mowing the grass” operation, that their intent was to totally and permanently alter the relationship between Israel and Gaza such that there would never be another attack originating from Gaza against Israel.
Now, at the end of the war, the grass is well and truly mowed, but permanent changes seem unlikely to materialize. Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity, while the doomerism seems overwrought it’s tough to see how Israel emerged from this more secure in its long term future. In the short term, perhaps even for a decade or so, Hezbollah is neutered, Hamas is pulling itself off the mat, Iran has been punched in the nose, Baathist Syria is gone; the grass is mowed, there is no immediate threat of attack. But in the longer term, it is hard to see what strategic objective Israel achieved. While a great many Palestinians were killed, amid cries of GENOCIDE from the usual suspects, I’m not even sure there are fewer Palestinians now than there were on 10/6/23. The attitude of those left behind in Palestine towards Israel requires little guesswork. Support for Israel is in decline among younger American voters, they may not be able to count on unconditional US support in the future (I’m not sure Zionism is a position likely to shift with age in the way that positions of issues like Taxes and Racial Equality have historically shifted with age). Israel still has no actual operational plan of what an acceptable government of Gaza would look like, a group that they would endorse as an alternative to Hamas rule in the enclave, or even an outline or an idea of what such a group might be. Many Israeli officials and soldiers face risk of prosecution abroad on war crimes charges, which I imagine will not come to pass in any significant quantity, but it means something that thousands of Israelis will be unable to travel to much of Europe. Israel is unlikely to see a revival of the Abraham Accords peace process with the Gulf States under a second Trump admin, though we can all hope that the Dealmaker in Chief can pull a rabbit out of the turban and get this done.
Looking back, this leaked intelligence paper from Israel detailing plans for removing the population of Gaza to camps in the Sinai before occupying Gaza, was remarkably prescient. The authors predict that the violence required to occupy a populated Gaza would be too great, unsustainable for the Israeli forces politically, and result in the Israeli forces ultimately exiting Gaza without achieving their goals. This has now occurred. While Trump is now making noises about removing Gazan civilians, it is not clear how this would be achieved physically.
@Pasha had an excellent comment near the beginning of the war presaging the situation facing Israel now:
To delve deeper into the uncomfortable topic of the looming genocide, I also increasingly get the feeling that contrary to the expectations of some whose view of geopolitics is eerily similar to RTS mechanics, the genocidal military power IDF is displaying right now is ultimately going to harm Israel a lot more than it helps. I think it mainly has to do with political/military leadership trying to cover their ass and muffle their enormous failures with the sound of bombs. If IDF really goes through with their plan which seems likely to cost civilian lives in the hundreds of thousands, I don't think the nation of Israel will ever recover from this. It is a country that is already losing two of its most powerful weapon: Endlessly idealistic and intelligent Ashkenazi founders who knew to out-think and out-work their opponents at very turn, and most importantly to not lose the sight of their goal even when they had to take very nasty decisions at times: to create a people. Not to destroy one. These people are not only losing out in demography but also they are losing the soul of the nation. Their spirit will not survive a Gazan genocide [AND] Zionist influence in the Western world. Through a combination of dedication, money, human quality, well-crafted propaganda, historical guilt and Cold War positioning, Zionists has always had a very unique power position in Western institutions, especially the US ones. This is quickly disappearing. Western Jews are assimilating into the PMC deracinated blob at a breathtaking pace. They are losing the set of assumptions that motivated them to identify with their kin in Israel, and they are losing the power that comes from ethnic favoritism. A Gazan genocide is very likely going to be the final nail in the coffin here.
I fully agree that the situation with Gaza is entirely unsustainable. But if Israelis go through with what they are plotting right now, they will slowly but surely find out that they are 7 million souls surviving in an ocean of half a billion through miracles, and they are pissing in the miracle potion.
It seems clear that predictions at the outset that “eliminating” Hamas/Islamism as a force in Gaza was not an achievable goal. I’m curious to see if this is an example people reach for in the future. Given the failure to consider predictions based on the 9/11 experience before this war, I doubt it.
What other predictions did you find particularly prescient or wrongheaded?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21d ago
That being said, I'm also taking the position that not all places have allegiances to all sports.
College allegiances also probably play a role.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21d ago
This is the most natural way to coalesce pre-existing cultural affinities, but how would you account for differences in the importance of allegiances? Delco is both Eagles and Sixers country, but it cares about the Eagles vastly more. I imagine there are places this might become relevant.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21d ago
If army helicopter pilots can't be sent to conduct routine flights in common use air corridors, what makes you think they can go to war?
Accidents happen. We seem to read about a fatal training accident routinely a few times a year.
But the civilian casualties of military training accidents should be zero.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21d ago
I'd agree with all that EXCEPT for the one area where the planes come in and out of the runway. That's not the entire Potomac, it's perhaps a ten miles radius around the airport. Avoid that area and you put the odds of hitting an airliner at zero.
Or, rather than tell them to look out for planes, tell them to stop and wait until there's a fifteen minute period with no planes.
Appreciate the thoughts and prayers. I'm telling myself this is the worst part, in that I'm no longer totally lost so just surviving isn't doing it for me, but I'm not actually winning much. My hope that a bunch of even newer guys would sign up for new year's resolutions was frustrated, most the classes I show up for I'm just on the bad end of a game of smear the queer when we get to rolling. But every now and then I catch one, so I'm getting better.
The severe, abused-victorian-orphan bruising has mostly stopped, so now my wife is more of a fan of what it's doing to my body，
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