cae_jones
2d ago
I think part of this ties into the contagiousness of mental pathologies. Scott discusses how in countries that have never heard of depression, nobody has depression. Before Columbine, nobody had ever heard of a school shooting, so nobody did school shootings (and even today, outside America, nobody does them).
I know people have harped on this already, but being that the Westside Elementary Massacre happened in the school district next to mine before Columbine, and family and friends were there at the time, I feel the need to contradict the point. How much people get away with terroristic threats always feels similar to all the people getting away with larceny to me, because immediately after Westside, we got authority figures drilling home that terroristic threats would no longer be tolerated, period.
cae_jones
3d ago
The porcelain people are in the south, in Glenda’s domain. The Winkies are their own thing.
Update on my summer legally-not-a-cult situation:
First, I did not spend $7500 to attend the retreat thing. I did observe the first night as a guest on Zoom (until I fell asleep, anyway), but that was largely just a mix of hype and the same stuff from the workshop I attended.
My friend did not reveal the secret sauce in the "breakthrough"s, but the rest ... sounds like Bay Area group-house stuff: long eye-gazing sessions with strangers, obligatory showering people in affection and praise... there was even a spontaneous cuddle-puddle in the room she was staying in on the last night (of phase 1; phase 2 is the end of this month).
It's painful listening to her wonder and joy at all the emotional expression and physical affection and positivity, meanwhile everything she says is something I've heard before in cautionary tales and I know saying so will probably backfire. Also she straight-up quoted Werner Erhard (with attribution) at one point. I at least take solice in her saying she's probably not doing it again after this. And while I'm no fan of death even for my enemies, the leader does seem to think-he's nearing the end of his life and is looking fora successor, but most of the enthusiasm is centered around him specifically.
Anyway, I'm planning on going to the homecoming after phase2, on the grounds that people feeling unloved is how they fall prey to this crap in the first place.
Oh, also, ad for a workshop I was invited to in July. I really thought something that ... that would be obvious to her, but here we are.
I'm mostly just frustrated because of all the conspicuously vulnerable people who showed up at the one I wrote about in June/July.
cae_jones
5d ago
I've been getting this feeling like the Left is pulling an ISIS, and basically begging the Right to go full violent conquest on them, so they can get the martyrdom they always dreamed of. Everytime Trump raises a finger against leftist violence, the leftwing politicians and talking heads shout "he wants a civil war! Really this time! Tanks! Disappearing grandmas!" Then the Feds conspicuously don't shoot rioters in self defense, even when it's clearly legal due to lethal force being thrown at them.
Trump is very conspicuously holding back, and it feels like the Left is trying to change that. God help us if they succeed.
cae_jones
12d ago
I don't think Windows Update fighting me so hard whenever Microsoft says it's update time makes my computer conscious, but it sure resembles intention and ability to act. Or do those terms have standard definitions in philosophy that I'm missing?
cae_jones
21d ago
Ultrasound is in a weird spot because it's evolving from a "nobody in the ED to can do this" to "we are starting to train everyone from day one to do this because its safe and cheap" but we are in the middle of that process. Wouldn't be shocked if in 5-10 years most PCP offices were doing it.
Wasn't there a story recently about a farmer getting in trouble for doing his own Ultrasound on his cattle? It made it sound like it's taking longer than it should to liberalize for reasons that sound ... guildy?
cae_jones
22d ago
Wasn't it The Grey King that got the Newberry? I mean, it has conspicuous Newberry bait at one point.
cae_jones
1mo ago
Yeah, this whole thread, I'm thinking, "someone mention that the costs are too high", and you got the closest. If you showed this thread to Trump, he'd probably argue that he's working on pressuring the drug companies to bring prices down. How likely that is to work is another matter entirely.
I suspect that, if prices don't come down, this will mean budget cuts for my workplace, and that will almost certainly result in some unpleasantness with supplies and their quality.
cae_jones
1mo ago
Didn't Epstein get banned from Marlago for sexually harassing a member's teenaged daughter?
cae_jones
1mo ago
If I may be less serious and delve into some Cabalistic insanity, and site Psalm 89: "Thou has a mighty arm, strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand."
So, first, go read Unsong so as to avoid spoilers.
So there's this wordplay that equates Neal Armstrong to the right hand of God. After all, what strong arm has been higher than the Moon? But I'd take it a step further, and go back to the example of raising one's right hand high: when Israel was attacked in the wilderness, and Moses controlled the outcome of the battle by the raising of his hands. Notably, he was old and tired and the battle lasted for a while, so assistants had to prop up his right arm to keep his right hand high and win the day.
People like to point to the early 1970s as the beginning of the decline of the West. Not coincidentally, that overlaps the Apollo program. If we allow that Neal Armstrong represents the right hand of God being raised high, and Apollo is the climax of human achievement (that and eradicating smallpox, around the same time), then it's not so odd that the decline follows Armstrong's return to Earth. Like Moses, the strong arm tired and fell, and so too the tide began to turn against its people. But unlike Moses, we didn't have anyone prop up his right arm to win the battle.
So to answer the question: we're doomed unless we go back to the Moon. And the Artimas program is not encouraging.
cae_jones
1mo ago
It's confusing, because it makes more sense if this is a foreign relations thing... but then why not just say that and only release the names of U.S. citizens and their role in the files? All the people want isto know who to send to the guillotines. We aren't supposed to be the world police according to Trump, so just leave the foreigners out of it. If that is impossible (I highly doubt, given the descriptions of the physical media involved), that would be ... troubling.
cae_jones
1mo ago
Identity politics can't only go in one direction forever. :marseyshrug:
IDK, the Jews and the Philistines have been going at it for at least 3000 years with no signs of stopping ...
cae_jones
1mo ago
IDK, now I'm getting flashbacks to Calc 2 and how useless it was to ask the instructor anything in the interest of understanding. Then sequences and increasingly absurd integrals came along without explnation of the utility ... and that's how I got the worst grade in Calc2. F? OK, retake it. C? Eh ... maybe that's more poor study strats than lack of understanding. But D? They wouldn't let me retake the class and I had absolutely no business moving on because I learned ... hmm, as I remeber, I learned the professor's opinions on Liebnez Vs Newton, and there was something involving a log cabin pun.
Dude's office was right by the CS departments's offices. I frequently heard far more enthusiastic convos coming from there on my way to see a CS prof. Maybe the secret wasn't showing an interest in the subject, but to be a perky flirtatious student? It's been 19 years; just be glad you remember any calculus and hit comment ... ☹️
cae_jones
1mo ago
The upper class in Qing China had some ritual involving a square of white silk, which was supposed to come out bloodstained as proof. Or so I've read in a historical fiction which may or may not be accurate (in which the newly weds deliberately faked the results so they wouldn't have to have sex the first night).
cae_jones
2mo ago
At this point, it's down to my friend calling me frequently to try and convince me to attend "The Awakening" (the $7500 retreat that takes the better part of a month and which was described as kinda like the workshop I went to, but even more so), while I'm trying to figure out what I can do to get her out. She is at least still doing unrelated things with her family, including some traveling soon, which is more non-cult activity than I witnessed when I was there.
Also, after consulting Chat GPT and Wikipedia, I think I need to start referring to it as "Large Group Attitude Transformation" instead of a cult, just in case lawyers get involved. This guy claims inspiration from Werner Erhard, whose ideological successors have been known to sue people for calling them cults. So I am legally encouraged to describe it as not a cult, just an emotionally exploitative money sink of a style that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association for their practices worsening mental health. (This back before the APA became politically captured and started producing therapists who act as money sinks and worsen mental health.)
So ... I would rather not spend $7.5k and request another couple weeks off work for more of that. But everything I've found suggests that being openly negative about it would be counterproductive, and providing a supportive alternative that is outside the group is the best option. The trouble is I'm too much of a coward to just say "Yeah, I'm not going. Can we still be friends?"
cae_jones
2mo ago
Bees make way better communists than humans, and there's way less competition, and they do what man was assigned to do in Genesis, and keep the gardens flourishing. This is actually starting to sound like a good idea. But there are no flowering plants in Space, and we can extend humanbee happiness several orders of magnitude via star-lifting, so either the entity who bebeeified humanity does all the space stuff while Beekind does all the life stuff, or we need to figure out how to make Space Bees work. /🧐
cae_jones
2mo ago
Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.
I get the impression that the DR largely is the antiwar left, who got kicked out of the left because reasons.
cae_jones
2mo ago
I'd say it's more "emotionally abusive MLM" than Jim Jones. It isn't the affection that gets me; it's how much it reminds me of the legendary Bay-area Rationalist cuddle culture.
But mostly, after attending a couple workshops and listening to the other people there, I'm increasingly convinced that it's stoking suffering while claiming to improve situations, kinda like what therapy has become, only worse by using charismatic church tactics and emotional intensity to convince people it feels amazing and must therefore be working.
cae_jones
2mo ago
Yeah. I'd describe it as slightly LDS-Flavored mystical hippy stuff that is totally not new age, for real you guys.
The main thing it reminds me of is discount Scientology, but way less scientology about it. The guy mentions his books, services, and other workshops ... occasionally. It has the structure of a lot of 30-50min Youtube ads, where they tell you something cool's coming, then spend half an hour on vague anecdotes, but there are also exercises (which are actually more scary than the part where the guy heard his toddler say he was Jesus, once, and did everything short of saying outright that he believes it, still, decades later).
What makes it work for the participants, I think, is a mix of insistent but meaningless afirmations (formally showering people with complements, talking about enough universal love and transcendant joy that he had to have met the cactus man in the 60s or 70s, telling people how awesome their spirit-realm self is). And there's the thing where people are encouraged to work through their issues with conversations crafted to get them crying and/or screaming by the end, incidentally revealing some very sensitive personal trauma at the top of their lungs to the whole room in the process, and ... OK, it's clearly not actually therapudic. Rather, it's getting people high on intense emotional expression, and using that to get them hooked.
Mainly, though, the people who stick around are clearly emotionally or relationally vulnerable, or the boyfriends that said vulnerable girlfriends convinced to join them. My friend says she's grown a lot and improved since she started going, but her resentment toward her family feels like it's grown (I also heard her complaining about how they're encouraging her to get out of it and move back in with siblings, the latter part of which would bother me more if her entire social circle weren't made of people involved in the thing), she's gone from the anxious but determined and genuinely positive person from a few years ago to a generally grumpy and discontent person using "inner child" / "energy work" things to cope. Other people were in much darker places, and it seems like the workshops are the only outlet they practically have, but it does nothing to improve the underlying issues, and, IMO, trains them to get high off expressing their suffering and just kinda hoping that enough love-bombing and emotionality-induced ecstacy will get them to project a more positive countenance for all the people they're encouraged to invite.
Also, a dad brought his 12-year-old daughter, who is already getting pressured by women in the group to come to "the awakening" in a couple months. Cue the first time I've heard a 12-year-old use the "I'm only 12" excuse totry and end an awkward conversation (which backfired and got her showered in more encouragement).
I tried going along with the exercises to see what would happen, but since I don't have daddy/mommy issues and get the impression that Spider-man's mantra was not going to fit in with all the "I AM PERFECT! EXPRESS LOVE!" speeches, and I already suck at communication period, that ... did not go well. I can't theatrically get in front of everyone and loudly weep about regretting ... Hold on, I think I just realized why I'm immune to the bullshit. Namely because it's the distilled and unrestrained essence of the hippy style stuff that was pervasive in 90s edutainment and motivational PSAs, turned up to 9001, and I took that stuff seriously in elementary school, only to unwittingly become a jerk by 11, and spend the next decade progressively recovering from the problematic stuff that was mixed in with my arrogant teenaged worldview. They might have gotten me before, let's say 2010 or so.
Mostly, at this point, it seems like 90% of my friend's life now revolves around this thing, every day she talks about how brilliant the leader is (he emphatically is not and 90+% of what he's said has been garbage at best, but, uh, a less toxic way of communicating that would be helpful ... ), she's taking on a leadership role and started a coaching business, and lost other friends who she brought in and crashed out hard by this point in the process. Also, I haven't asked her how she found it, yet, but she somehow revealed on the second night that her boyfriend's ex (who he was dating whhe first got with her but told neither woman about this) was there. And the only interactions I've any evidence of between her and him is one conversation (facilitated by another member, over the phone) and a few texts. She's actually in my hotel right now, because she let another member have her bed and couldn't get her boyfriend to host her for the night. (Bro, if he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you. And she desperately wants to get married.) Everything she wants mostou of this, as she expressed it to me, is directly harmed by her being involved, and I have no idea whatsoever how to deal with this.
cae_jones
2mo ago
So... I'm in the Salt Lake City Area visiting a friend. She's invited me to a workshop, but was worried about doing so because multiple people she's invited before have said it's culty, and some got very upset and went no-contact.
I have not gotten to the workshop yet (that's tonight), but the half-day and ... the past half hour, that I've spent with her and her housemates has ... made it seem very likely that the Culty vibes people were getting were accurate.
Mostly though, I'm concerned about the teenager I'm sitting here listening to get stressed out by all this creepy emotional exercise stuff. She's seemed pretty stressed out the entire time I've been here, and I feel like I should be doing something about some part of this but I can't quite identify what specifically to do that would help.
Also all the dads in the house are worrying me. It is difficult to organize this into the kind of details that would get the point across. The ways people talk about feelings and conversations, the way touch is used... the way both my friend and the afore-mentioned teen hugged me when we parted at the train station last night was disturbingly intense for goodbye hugs (also I have known the younger one like 24h at this moment).
I also want to continue sneakily writing this comment because I was casually invited to sit in on my friend and the teenager's dad's emotional pressurethon and I am ever-so-slightly uncomfortable listening to this weird brute-force ... therapy? Or whatever you'd call it. Which means I'm missing most of what's being said because it feels rude to listen closely but I'm also trying to understand the situation enough to problem-solve ...
... Help?
cae_jones
3mo ago
I've spent more time on the floor praying for mercy from heartburn and constipation. Toe-stubbing is worse than ball busting, IMO, although it's easier to stay upright afterward.
Getting hit in the balls is like 30s of ache. Gut stuff is Hell.
cae_jones
3mo ago
Youtube will profit considerably. Between the Democrats paying for ads, and how many people get Youtube Premium for the first time to escape the ads...
cae_jones
3mo ago
Does Teddy Roosevelt count? He had broken away from the Republicans to become the founder of the Progressives, and was shot while running for a third term, and like Trump and Reagan, survived. The political landscape at that time was so utterly different, though, I wonder how to count the other assassinations and attempts between Lincoln and Kennedy.
cae_jones
3mo ago
My grandpa (late 80s with COPD) died from covid. The superintendant of my workplace got it and died after being publically anti-lockdown. My older cousin and her husband (both obese, and he smokes heavily) got it, but survived, though she was hospitalized.
My parents got it (after being vaccinated). Got weird neurological things a couple weeks later that got blamed on covid, including my stepmom blacking out while driving (and only avoiding swerving into traffic because my dad's cousin was in the passenger seat and grabbed the wheel in time).
Richard Paul Pavlick was prepared to take out JFK in 1960, by loading his car with dynamite and ramming it into Kennedy's. He backed out after seeing Kennedy with his wife and children.
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