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
11hr ago
You've got the point, Tattoos are nothing but a fashion trend. Nothing more, but also nothing less. So
If all the cops, SEALs and BJJ guys have tattoos, what might you surmise about the ones that have resisted the trend and don't have any?
That they don't like tattoos. That's it. We're not morally superior beings.
Anything else is cope. Like most of the stories told about fashion trends.
Except, of course, for the ones I tell about why boat shoes and OCBDs are the proper way for an American man to dress.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13hr ago
It would be, but to try out for the SEALs you've already enlisted in the Navy so that's pretty much the way it goes for many people who turn out to be only 99th percentile athletes rather that 99.9th percentile.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
Stolen valor available for a couple Benjamins at any strip mall is pretty much the story of tattoos.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
Who knows?
It also probably correlates with sleeping with sluttier women, against religiosity, and with a lot of other things.
But it seems like the best way to assess a metric by revealed preference vs survey design.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
Absolutely.
A big part of it is also that to obtain the same net rebelliousness requires more and more and more tattoos. A Wild One era greaser with a motorcycle maxed out his rebellious/scary/intimidating points with an upper arm tattoo of a heart reading "Mother."
Now a normal upper arm tattoo doesn't even register, so a guy with the same tendencies gets fifteen tattoos on his hands and neck to get the same impact.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
I'm open to using a different metric, it's certainly not perfect. If for no other reason than bagging a 9 at age 20 and marrying her is a better "sexual success" metric which requires a higher degree of net attractiveness than would having one night stands with twenty 4s over twenty years.
But that's the statistic we have that doesn't get caught up in other problems like survey design.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
Or just the number of men who enter and remain in mutually self destructive relationships with insane bpd chicks.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
Where does the urge come from to engage in rhetorical no-TRUE-Scotsman games to deny that a cultural norm has changed, rather than to lament that it has?
This thread is full of people saying that tattoos aren't attractive. I may agree, but every study has found tattoos correlate with an increased number of sexual partners in men, so clearly it isn't a widely shared belief.
This thread is full of people claiming that people with tattoos aren't really tough, yet every cop and every Navy SEAL and every BJJ champ and every boxer I know has at least one tattoo visible in short sleeves.
You claim that billionaires don't have tattoos, but googling "billionaire tattoos" returns results like this hilarious thing by VC Mike Novogratz, and Mark Bertolini CEO of Aetna. Plus you have high government officials like Trudeau and Hegseth. Personally, though I can't sit and name names, many high level corporate litigators, judges, and surgeons I know are inked.
Face it, man. We lost this one.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
I agree with you on both counts, though for other traits, not the tattoos, though arguably related.
Being fat is equally an indication of poor character as having bad tattoos. If I could, I would avoid working with or hiring fat people.
And while I have all the sympathy in the world for alcoholics, there but for the grace of God, I would never want to put one in a high pressure highly responsible position. It's just not a good fit.
But of course, the lack of qualifications is exactly what leads to loyalty in Trump world. His underlings can't rebel against him, or allow rebellion against him, because under no other regime would their kind be where they are.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23hr ago
After reading about BUDS a few times, I have a personal theory that SEALs are a little extra retarded, because their failure scenario is so different from their success scenario.
If you join the Army with the goal of becoming a Ranger, but don't make it, you will probably still be an infantryman. You'll still get to do like 80% of what you would have done anyway, the combat and personal violence and the shooting and the toys, just without the rarified status and the special missions.
If you join the Navy with the goal of becoming a SEAL and fail to make the team, you're going to be doing something completely different, on a ship or on a base. A totally unrelated job.
You have to be kind of stupid to go in for that bet.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'd certainly agree that I bet the average guy with knuckle tattoos is more likely to get into a fight than an average SEAL, and that a SEAL is unlikely to get into a fight he doesn't want to get into.
But I think they're much much much more likely to want to get into a fight than the true average man.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I have no idea what you guys are on about, every operator type guy I ever met had tons of bad tattoos on the forearms and legs that were visible in normal casual clothing. They don't get face, hand, or neck tattoos because of military regulations, not because they are squeamish about showing off.
If anything, these guys are less likely to get into stupid fights for no real reason than the average guy because of their ability to easily keep their cool in stressful situations.
I just read American Sniper and like a good 10% of the book is dedicated to describing in great detail the bar fights that Kyle and his SEAL colleagues got into. There's an extended story about a townie bar in, I want to say Arizona?, where SEAL teams kept going for training and getting into wars with the yokels. Actually right next to the part where he talks about getting tats after his deployment.
Which again pretty much matches my real life experiences with such guys.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Honestly, I used to be able to discriminate against anyone with visible tattoos, and you just...can't anymore.
I couldn't really hire contractors in some fields if I refused guys with tattoos, though I did once lose the number of an HVAC guy because he had swastika tattoos on his hands. That was a bit much. I can't really rock climb or do BJJ or crossfit comps without interacting with people with tons of tattoos. I can't get a decent cup of coffee without trusting someone with tons of tattoos. It's just not possible for me to run my life while avoiding people with tattoos, and most of them are pretty normal. So, you know, exposure therapy.
But to @ABigGuy4U 's point, there was a time when the same was said of a man without a hat.
There was a time when a wall street wealth manager could say "I'll never invest in a company if I haven't seen the head of the corporation at the Astor's ball or at the opera." And that was a pretty good, or at least a fine enough, investment strategy: only people in that sphere ran companies worth investing in, so following that social prejudice worked as a barometer of a worthwhile company. Then that time ran out, as less socially suave men ran great companies, and a manager who hung on to old social prejudices lost out.
There was a time not long ago when a wall street wealth manager could say "I'll never invest in a company if the CEO doesn't wear a tie." And that worked pretty well for a long time! Then the tech boom happens, and if you followed that social prejudice as your rule of thumb, you would have fallen way behind your competitors.
Tattoos are just another example. I used to be able to avoid anyone with tattoos. Now I can avoid people with "job-stopper" tattoos, or particularly offensive ones. But I imagine for people a step below the social ladder from me, it's tough to even avoid those people, and it becomes normalized.
I think that very few people in the West would say that it should be legal for people to be employed in jobs they can't quit. The number of people who would say that is, I think, not much larger than the number of people who would say that it should be legal to enslave people. Which is not surprising, given that being employed in a job you can't quit is basically a form of slavery.
"People who quit their job and can't find another one should be allowed to starve" is a position with non-negligible support, but that is a different view to "people should not be allowed to quit their job in the first place". The right to quit your job for a better one is fundamental to the capitalist concept of freedom.
Let me elaborate my hypothetical a bit and see if you understand where I'm coming from.
Poll Question A: Should the US legalize Slavery?
I suspect the Yes answers to this would meet the Lizardman constant. A few trolls and a few people whose politics are so insane as to indistinguishable under Poe's Law.
Poll Question B: Should it be legal for Employers to sign contracts with Employees which guarantee lifetime employment, in exchange for which the Employees agree to work for that Employer for the rest of their lives or until released by the Employer, and to do any job requested by the Employer?
I suspect that while this would still be a distinct minority, it would draw more support than A. Many people who oppose slavery oppose it conceptually, oppose Slavery as a boo-light, but don't actually oppose the underlying reality of slavery. In the same way that Fascism probably polls lower than the elements of Fascism.
Hell I could imagine that a decent number of red tribe types would support forcing chronically unemployed or unemployable people into jobs they aren't allowed to quit.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I mean those are just completely different things.
In theory (if not usually in practice) one could have the right to free speech and free exercise of religion but not the right to freely move, choose one's own work, or make other contracts on one's own behalf.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The Greeks (and Americans) frequently allowed skilled and disciplined slaves to save up enough money to buy their freedom.
Inasmuch as courage or valor was expected, it was of the "discipline and goal orientation over extended period of time" type, rather than the "violent revolt" type.
The thing in this clip, basically:
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
You can absolutely enter into agreements that restrict the 1st amendment right to free speech, NDAs, trade secrets, non disparagement clauses, even just normal character clauses in a contract restrict your right to free speech.
The first amendment protects from the government, it does not protect from private contract law.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Even the most politically loaded prewar narrative, Frederick Douglass, reveals the same pattern. One of my favorite anecdotes is when he bribes young white street urchins in Baltimore to teach him to read by giving them bread, which he has free access to an effectively unlimited amount of in the kitchen. Or his lament for how the institution of getting drunk on new years causes plantation slaves to waste money that they could be saving to try to buy their freedom. Slave experiences varied wildly and were not unform suffering and lack of agency.
Still, it must be noted that ancient Greek slavery was just a different institution. Most slaves were not slaves for many generations, slavery was not racialized as radically, freedmen did not worry (any more than anyone else) about being re-enslaved.
I always found that focusing on principles more than technique helped me link things together better. The move of the day stuff sometimes lines up with what you need, but not often.
I absolutely agree, but that's how they teach at the school that's five minutes from my house. Even if the one ten miles from my house taught more in line with my pedagogical preferences, I'd value getting into the gym more often, which given my tight schedule I can do so much more often with the short travel.
What I want to start doing is focusing on, during open mat periods, doing more limited rolls with guys. Start in half guard and play "Pass/sweep" for a whole round. I should probably start studying outside of class, but I never end up having the time.
My own progress really took off when I started to focus on staying in and advancing the control position...Once you understand how to progress the position, submissions sort of fall out of the process. About a third of my subs now are unintentional, before I start chasing anything.
I'm definitely similar, I'm very much a station-to-station or move-the-chains kind player, depending which sports metaphor you prefer. If I'm in bottom mount I'm trying to get to bottom half, from bottom half I'm trying to sweep to get to closed guard, from closed guard I'm mostly trying to sweep but I'll grab a sub if it's offered, then I'm only trying to finish a sub if it's on offer when I'm in mount or side. Hell, depending who I'm rolling with I spend most of my time in mount or side control rapidly transitioning positions trying to stay on top. I just try and stay calm and stay in my game. If I don't lose too quickly in the takedown phase, I can normally get to half guard top or bottom and work from there.
Of course, part of this is just a matter of depth of experience, and just the luck of who shows up. Some days it's still just nothing but guys who kill me, because I'm not very good.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
When Aristotle talks about "natural slaves" he's not really talking about some American nightmare-vision of an antebellum plantation*. The ancient Greek system of slavery he was familiar with was closer to "employee who can't quit" than it was to "living under absolute constant terror." In some sense "slave" is a mistranslation, because the context is so different.
If you say "should it be legal to enslave people" everyone says no; but if you asked the same people "Should it be legal for certain people to be employed in jobs they can't quit" many would say yes.
There's no question that a great number of people need a structured job created for them, where they are directed. Traditionally, bosses took a large hand in the personal lives of their workers; today that is frowned upon.
*It should be noted that actual plantation life wasn't like that either. There were black slaves better off than some poor white people.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
This was what I suspected would result from your prior post on recomp. Losing weight first is definitely the right call, dropping the fat and then starting with a clean slate will be great for you. 3kg in a month is quite a bit, if I dropped 6kg I'd probably be at my ideal fighting weight.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
"Jesus wasn't a Jew" is at least more likely than the "St George and Santa Claus were Turks" gag I see from SJWs.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Galaxy brain: the Israelis are indigenous to Palestine, because they never left for Europe and then left Europe to escape antisemitism, because there was no antisemitism to escape. The diaspora is a myth, Jews are just native to Israel and new York.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Reading this I was thinking to myself, well if you're Jewish whether the Holocaust happened or not, of course your ancestral memories will be of the oppression of Jews, it's pretty much their entire history other than the reigns of like three or four guys in the Old Testament. Which made me imagine a guy who isn't just a Holocaust Denier but an Antisemitism denier: the Pogroms never happened, the Blood Libel never happened, the expulsion from Spain never happened, the Second Temple never existed so it was never destroyed, etc.
I think this is where we're not connecting: I don't think most Americans would support permanent lifetime contracts.
But I think 15% might. Which is better than the maybe 2% that would support Slavery. Which is my point.
"Slave" is at some level a mistranslation in Aristotle because the Slavery he's talking about isn't the Slavery most Americans think of. One could probably just as well translate the idea as some people are natural employees and some people are natural bosses.
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