FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
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
Listen to Pierre
14hr ago
My general strategy for political conversations is to propose something so outlandish that it short circuits pre existing culture war lines. Like, the USA should offer statehood to Singapore.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
16hr ago
I thought that was going to be Dog Day Afternoon
Are you recommending this one or is the mention of Twitter beef meant to warn me off of it?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
20hr ago
What are interesting translations of the Odyssey that I might not have come across in the past?
I've previously read most of Fagles' years and years ago, and I read the entirety of Pope's in 2020. And of course I've read Joyce's version. This year I've read the War Nerd Iliad and the Dryden Aeneid, I feel like I want to wrap it up with the Odyssey, but I'm not sure what translation to grab.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
23hr ago
If you wanted to post this, just post it, don't ask a stupid question so you can give your own brain dead answer.
What an amazing species of black piller, so allergic to winning that upon appearing to win you go back to fantasizing about losing.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1d ago
I don't think many would doubt that the Asian work ethic is in many ways personally damaging to people who follow it. It is both emotionally and physically damaging. I have met more Asians who complain about that work ethic than Asians who support it.
Isn't the clearest evidence of a dysfunctional life model, by right-wingers own lights, the cratering birth rate of East Asian countries?
It doesn't seem difficult to draw a straight line correlation between the two.
It's also unclear to what extend a small country model is applicable to a larger country. Does the East Asian model work without the United States to lean on?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1d ago
It is possible that had Japan had a more US-like culture in the 1930s, it would never have become dominated by delusional imperialists who then got the country flattened in a war. Indeed, such a Japan would probably have never become isolationist and fallen behind the West to begin with.
If Japan had a more American culture, in just one way, Japan would have seen very different outcomes in WWII. If Japan had simply chosen to be less racist then they would have obtained a different outcome.
The USA in 1941, which was certainly a more racist society than today, nonetheless was able to field a half million Mexican and Hispanic soldiers, and more Native Americans served proportionally than any other group, most famously in the Navajo code talkers who were used specifically against the Japanese.
Where by contrast, the Japanese made enemies even of the anti-European independence movements within the areas they invaded almost instantly. If the Japanese had been capable of articulating and implementing the vision of the Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere, they would have been able to tap the manpower and resources of Korea, Manchukuo, and South East Asia far more effectively. Would that have put them at parity with the United States? Not necessarily, but it also would have allowed a slower pace of war that would not have necessitated involving the USA in the war as quickly.
Of course, such a society would likely be less mono-ethnic, and hence according to most here less high trust etc today.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
6d ago
https://www.schottnyc.com/products/steerhide-perfecto.htm
So this is what I was thinking of. 945 between sizes 32 and 46. That's a pretty damn wide material spread! A 46 (xl or XXL?) is probably close to twice as much leather as a 32 (xs). That's a remarkable uniformity in pricing!
I rarely even see sizes above xl stocked at most stores I frequent so you're probably correct. But my point stands: we don't start charging more until you're in truly circus freak size categories and will accept it. For folks in the normal-ish range we just accept that some are paying extra for material and some are getting a bargain on material.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
7d ago
Customer tolerance of established customs and traditions. Everyone has more or less agreed that is what you are charged for and that's fine. Customers would perceive any other system as more unfair and ridiculous than this system.
In the same way that off the rack clothing items are priced at a single price point for all sizes, rather than increasing the cost with each increase in size for the larger quantity of material, or charging more for odd sizes that are more expensive on the margin for the store to produce and stock. People would be upset if fatsos or tall guys had to pay more for a shirt to pay for the material, or if skinny women paid more for a dress because it's not as profitable to stock that size. The perception of unfairness would harm the company. This holds even where crossing size categories produces weird arbitrage: my wife buys boys extra large LL Bean flannels rather than women's S, because the boys price is cheaper. People would find it inequitable to charge parents of fat boys more money, so the price is set at the median cost the same as for a smaller kid. Meanwhile, while I would happily pay more to be able to buy 11ee sneakers, stores can't really charge extra for the "same" product so I have to buy from specific stores and brands, with worse prices and/or results than if I was just charged extra.
Although, for your carry on lead bricks example, I think the airline would say fine pussy do it. Most people won't choose to carry more than perhaps 30lbs around the airport. Let alone do it twice. As for moving the items between bags, imagine how many pissed off customers they'd have to deal with if they didn't allow people to remove items? And if they don't let you move them right there, you'd just go around the corner and do it and pretend you threw things away.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
- By being right 2) By being awesome.
My confirmation saint, St Adrian, was a Roman soldier, a jailer of Christians, who saw the courage of Christians he imprisoned and was converted on the spot.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
This is a great post.
One of the problems adults seem to have is assuming that kids have no agency in their interpretation of their instructions from adults. One of the classic examples is the Participation Trophy, widely decried for making kids think they did something when they didn't. I grew up at peak participation trophy, I have a box of them somewhere or other. Little marble bases with little plastic baseball players on top, given to me for playing first base on a winless team when I was nine years old or so. Most critics think that the problem is that kids will think they achieved something that they didn't, and maybe some did, but all I got was a distaste for trophies in general. I had some trophies, they weren't interesting, why worry about them?
On the other hand, when I was 12, and my little league team went 18-0 and made it to regional playoffs, and one of the parents had little pullover windbreakers made for that team, I valued that jacket greatly. I still have it, somewhere. Achievement is an objective fact, strength is an objective fact, beauty is an objective fact. Attempts to hide the ball will simply create new instances of Euphemism Treadmills.
In the same way, I think a lot of what is getting criticized as childishness by Freddie is in reality a warped view of maturity inflicted on kids. Being quiet, being compliant, being unobtrusive, are all traits that are valued and rewarded in children. Then we find ourselves with adults who grew up that way and wonder what happened.
It's bizarre to me that De Boer here can't recognize his own massive blindspots, and realize that he's written an article not about America but about the dynamics of white Blue Tribers. He writes extensively about music, and never mentions Country, only Pop (which he despises) and 90s Punk or Indie (which he valorizes). He writes extensively about the concept of Selling Out in the year of our Lord 2024, and never mentions Donald Trump, the dominant figure of American (and by extension, world) politics for a decade now, who is the embodied avatar of Selling Out. He skips talking about the current kerfuffle in Congress, in which a rich man is openly threatening to fund primary challengers against sitting politicians who go against him. When he discusses celebrities, they are exclusively the celebrities he cares about, not the ones that have dominated other branches of American culture.
He writes about culture becoming a series of fakes, without talking about the physical manifestations of this: licensing deals. Professional sports jerseys used to be made in the USA, largely for a while in Pennsylvania by Majestic. It used to be possible when I was a kid to go to the Majestic Factory Outlet here, and actually buy factory seconds or overruns of jerseys. Now, Majestic is just a license owned by a corporation, Fanatics, who manufactures all of the jerseys and gear through contracts with other companies, which actually make the jerseys in China or El Salvador or Vietnam. The question of whether Fanatics or Nike or Under Armor or Reebok gets the uniform contract is purely one of which logo is placed on the jersey, the actual manufacturing will be bid out largely to the same foreign manufacturers regardless. Yet the price of an "authentic" jersey is the same, or higher, than it ever was. What does authenticity mean in that case? It's mostly a legal concept, this jersey is authentic because some money was paid to the team and the league. But it no longer really signifies quality, no longer really signifies particular skill in its creation, or even that it was made in the same way or in the same factory as the professional jerseys. Everybody knows that the item is being made by contract factories.
And this is true for virtually every fashion brand, even most high end fashion brands outside of Hermes and a few others don't have their own factories and craftsmen. Even bags that brag that they are "made in Italy" are often made by Chinese workers who have been imported to Tuscany so that the label can be applied.
It used to be possible to purchase an item that was meaningfully "authentic" and one that was meaningfully "fake." The authentic jersey was properly made from high quality materials in Pennsylvania, the fake was cheaply made in China. Now the on-field pants are so bad that you can tell the fake jerseys in the stands because they are nicer. And anyway, they're all made in some contract factory overseas. So what makes one "authentic" and the other "fake?" What makes a real Chanel a real Chanel?
The reason the idea of "authenticity" has been abandoned is because it always resulted in something incoherent, an endless internecine conflict over minutiae. Punk was largely a cultural failure. I don't know why Freddie is trying to resurrect it.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
9d ago
where he started working as a doctor and psychotherapist.
This is why Szasz is undefeated. What the fuck use is a field of medicine that purports to help nutters but the doctor himself, and his colleagues who interacted with him, can't spot that he's the type of nutter who is going to ram a car into a Christkindlmart?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
10d ago
The trouble is that if you insist on a shorter bill that does essentially the same thing as a longer one, what you're really doing is eliminating detail. If you're sticking to, say, Herman Cain's 9-page limit, what you're really doing is delegating to an agency with rulemaking authority.
Presumably the alternative would be, rather than a single 1500 page bill, 15 or so 100 page bills, or 30 or so 50 page bills. So rather than a single vote on everything, you'd get 30 votes on 30 things. While obviously it would still be impossible for anyone to read the whole thing, it would at least be manageable for somebody to have read the entirety of every bill.
The real mechanism of the giant bill isn't bureaucracy or pork barrel spending, those can happen anyway, it's moreso the lack of trust between congress critters. Dems aren't going to vote on R's things in exchange for a later vote for their things, because they know the Rs won't be there when they said they would. They'll make some excuse about constituent pressure.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
10d ago
Just wanted to note I really enjoyed your contribution on this occasion.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
10d ago
Can that manifest in your 30s? I always assumed that was a birth thing.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
Formal Satanism is or was symbolic opposition culture. Invoking Satan, wearing all black and a pentagram or whatever, was for Lavey and co a way of scaring off normies. Today, it just doesn't have the same impact. I probably interact with someone with a pentagram tattoo on a pretty regular basis in an ordinary service job, like a barista or a Target cashier, and no one would frighten me by saying they're a satanist.
On the other hand, having a Swastika tattoo pretty much marks you out as a true oppositional figure in society. Even when I was looking for HVAC contractors for my dad, when I saw the guy with a swastika and SIEG HEIL on his knuckles, I felt the need to report that to my father as telling me something about his character and history. It marks someone as a true opposition figure in society.
And in the same way that Satanism has only a tenuous relationship to Satan or anything supernatural beyond using it as a normie-repellent, esoteric hitlerism will often have only a strained relationship to the National Socialist party, beyond using swastikas as a normie repellent. We already see this in use in several places.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
How does bruising work?
I started BJJ classes. I'm having a great time. But, I'm covered in bruises from rolling, and even from drilling sometimes. It's bad. Where they're on visible parts of my body, it looks a little much for public display. Where they're on private parts of my body, my wife winces when I take my clothes off.
I'm used to having scrapes and bumps from climbing, but my whole bicep being black and blue, or a giant blotch on each forearm, is too much. My coaches have commented on it ("Who are you fucking rolling with bro?") so it's not normal bjj stuff I guess. I should note that I'm pretty fair skinned, so it might just show up more on me.
Will I callus to bruising, in the same way my palms get callused to lifting and my feet to running? Is it some vitamin deficiency? I'm thinking of trying to get into the doctor to ask, but I'm a little wary of being pulled into some medicalized solution to a problem I don't really think I have.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
Eagles win the Pennsylvania Bowl. Wawa>Sheetz, Youse>Yinz.
Pretty big win for the iggles. Steelers are a very, very good team, they play physically and hard. Watt is a monster, game wrecker. He should be getting MVP buzz, because of the impact he has on the game for a top team in the league.
The Steelers sold out to stop the run, and Jalen Hurts and co showed that they could beat teams in the air. O-Line held up against an excellent Steelers' D, with Dickerson, Becton, and Johnson being replaced with Steen, Driscoll, and the other Johnson at different points, with virtually no change in result. AJ and Devonta feasted.
There were some bad calls in the Eagles favor, so maybe the game was closer than it looked. Or maybe it wasn't: the Eagles chose to run out the clock on their last drive, eating over 2/3 of the fourth quarter on a drive in which they did not score, which some tweets said was the longest game ending drive they had ever seen.
I'm starting to think the Eagles have a viable path to the Super Bowl. The entire NFC looks pretty beatable for the Eagles. Lions are looking increasingly worn down by injuries, they already beat the Rams and Green Bay (and while Green Bay might be better than it was in Week 1 so is Philly), and Minnesota is relying on Sam Darnold at QB. The Bucs rape choked the Eagles earlier this year, but I'm not sure that's repeatable, and there's a good chance that the bracket shakes out so that they never face the Bucs anyway. If the Eagles get the 1 seed, big if, they're going to be weak favorites to win the NFC. And no team in the AFC looks unbeatable either: the Bills are going to be a boat race that could go either way, the Chiefs are great but weaker than the team that beat a weaker Philly by 3, and the Eagles have already smacked the Ravens and Steelers.
Elsewhere, Detroit now has an entire viable starting D on the DL. Josh Allen has gone crazy since getting engaged. The Falcons are benching Kirk Cousins, a hilarious outcome given that they are now starting their first round pick while paying $45mm to the backup QB.
And Patrick Mahomes may be day to day with an ankle injury. Putting the current #1 seed in the AFC in the hands of...Carson Wentz. Wentz has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. Wentz famously had his best year in 2016, leading the Eagles most of the way to the #1 seed in the NFC before getting injured, forcing the Eagles to turn to backup QB Nick Foles. Foles would rip through the end of the season, outpunch Tom Brady in the Super Bowl, winning the Eagles their first ever Lombardi, and leaving Wentz a permanent also-ran in Philly sports history. Now, Wentz has a chance to redeem himself, and take over someone else's #1 seed, and lead them to a few wins. I want it to happen just for the podcast drama.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
Esoteric Hitlerism is just a new manifestation of Satanism I guess.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
13d ago
Anyone here know who radfem Hitler is or was? I keep seeing it referenced.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
14d ago
Ahem
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
14d ago
I wouldn't really have reported any of them. I try not to report stuff just because it insults me for waking up early. After all, how much sense can you expect out of people from Pittsburgh?
Just struck me as odd is all.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
14d ago
To those early birds who think that it getting light a 4 is just as good as it staying light until 9, you either do not have a job, a family, or other real-world obligations.
On the contrary. I wake up at 430 so that I can do things before those real world obligations kick in.
Obviously throw it into the pot of an all night poker game when you run out of chips.
More options
Context Copy link