campfire
14d ago
Sorry, doesn't answer your question, but would you be comfortable sharing how much your current job pays and how you got into it?
campfire
17d ago
Yeah I've since familiarized myself with the original more. But a major deviation this remake made is (not a spoiler because it's in the first scene) Ellen and Orlock have been in contact since she was a teenager, through a telepathic link of some sort, which started when she prays for "a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort" and he's been haunting her dreams ever since.
campfire
18d ago
Can answer as a 2nd gen for good measure
- I couldn't, maybe very broadly North or South but tons of room for error
- Fairly confident with the more common last names (Patels are Gujurati, Singhs are from the Punjab region or around there) otherwise I couldn't
- Among 2nd gens I know, nonexistent. Among 1st gens (according to my father and some family friends who work in tech), Hindi speakers are sometimes a bit cliquey, though this really does seem to boil down to language more than any North/South enmity
- Basically couldn't
- My mom's family is Tamil so I know Iyer/Iyengars are Brahmin but that's about it (neither of my parents are Brahmin)
- Among 2nd gens, nonexistent. My father works in tech and is very dark skinned and has also never faced any caste-based discrimination in America. Mother is very lightskinned and other immigrants have never mentioned each other's caste to her either.
- I only speak English so N/A
- Among 2nd gens not at all, 1st gens yes some linguistic lines
- Among 2nd gens (and 1st according to my father), not at all
campfire
18d ago
I mostly liked Nosferatu, Robert Egger's new remake of the 1922 German silent film, but I think I had the wrong expectations for it which hampered my enjoyment. As I'm not very familiar with the original, I expected Orlok to be more subtle, charming, seductive. But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display. Plotwise it's very generic and lacks true dramatic tension, even when the visuals are incredibly gripping. But it's worth watching for the cinematography alone. On the big screen, nearly every shot is very cinematic and the movie just has an intense, psychic, propulsive energy to it. The first film in years I'm considering a second theater viewing of.
Thematically, it seems to argue that women have the undue burden of taming the darkness in men, but are also very attracted to this darkness. There's also a hint of exploring the limits of modern science to diagnose our spiritual maladies, though most of these ideas are underexplored in service of delivering a captivating creature feature. Still, manages to deliver this great quote from Willem Dafoe's mystic character, Franz:
campfire
19d ago
Just started The Way of Kings for the first time myself, it's tough avoiding spoilers on social media. Initial thoughts are that the spren are very goofy and Kaladin's depression isn't as effective a plot point as it would be if he weren't already an incredible soldier and surgeon. The worldbuilding seems cool though.
campfire
22d ago
Curious what this is?
The basics are to take her two different bars, one quieter where you can have a "real" conversation and beat her at pool or connect 4, then a second louder one where she's forced to lean in to hear you speak which gives you good kino opportunities. Look for some favorite media you have in common or if you have a pet and she's interested in meeting them and use that as a link to invite her home. If she says she has to leave ask her if she wants to listen to music in your car and kiss her, you'll likely seal the deal on a second date. But like I said most men who are failing are making mistakes that I can point out, it varies a lot but usually has to do with coming off too polite and like you're putting too much effort into getting her out which screams desperation and that you have too much time on your hands. To identify any other mistake would take a longer conversation.
campfire
29d ago
Chances are he's already made an attempt with them so if any were left with a bad impression and/or are just mentally unstable they might report him. If they're on good terms he doesn't need Hinge to reach out to them.
Yes but NYC seems to be a different meta entirely, very different sorts of women congregate there and you're competing with world-class elites.
I would look into blue cities in red states, many have surprisingly good demographics for you minus the Asian fetish.
Once you are getting matches on a dating app consistently and are in a better city, I can explain the basic strategy to get laid on first/second dates. After that it's just a matter of converting one to a long-term relationship which is the easiest step. I'm not amazing at this but your success rate doesn't have to be that high for you to be rarely single and have minimal dry spells. YMMV if you're much lower SMV than me. Chances are if you're new to regular online dating you're making mistakes that someone with experience can help you avoid but it takes time to understand and fix them. You are much more financially successful but lookswise unclear. We're both South Asian and are pretty much in the "want an LTR but are fine with hookups along the way" bucket. Definitely don't shave the beard, on balance 3mm stubble will help you with women across the board even if it turns off some with peculiar preferences.
One thing that will help you going forward is taking vacations now. In the next three years no reason you can't spend a week each in, say, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, and two other major global cities. It gives you much more to talk about on a first date and women are much more enamored with travel than men.
campfire
29d ago
/r/SwipeHelper is great for teaching you how to get around bans, you should also immediately add every women you've gone out with/exchanged numbers with in the last few years to your block list once you get unbanned ofc
I have other advice but I have to ask if you're willing to relocate somewhere with a market more favorable to you. I also think the Asian fetish is something you should get over. One way it holds you back is that the major cities with lots of Asian women in America also have the worst sex ratios for men.
campfire
1mo ago
Post on social media and link in your bio. I noticed you have a review of A Song of Ice And Fire, that means you should have a few comments a week in each subreddit associated with that fandom, for about a month. Pretty low-effort if you're knowledgeable about it.
campfire
1mo ago
I remember Aella or other Rationalist-adjacent person on social media sharing a word doc that compiles various controversial opinions and survey questions, anyone remember this and have a link to it?
campfire
2mo ago
First time I read it was Googling it when I heard a line from it quoted in Civilization IV, I was probably 10. I don’t read much poetry but it resonated with me so much I’ve had the whole thing memorized since then.
campfire
2mo ago
Oh I missed 1999, yeah I can see how the threat of nuclear war captures the same ethos
campfire
2mo ago
The songs you mention don’t seem to fit the theme, and I only listed a few in the genre.
campfire
2mo ago
Time for a music thread
Recession pop is a trend that's only obvious in hindsight. The specific label only took off this year. Does anyone remember it? You've definitely heard the songs. From 2008-2012, it was impossible to turn on the radio without hearing a song whose lyrics that were more or less "Heyyyy/ woooah/ let's have fun toniiiight/ have a good time toniiiiight/ drink and put your hands up". They were tonally different, and from different genres, but those lyrics basically encapsulate the trend. Music about drinking and partying your problems away and living for the moment, specifically, tonight. They almost all used the word "tonight". Many also said "woah-oah", sometimes the Millenial whoop. Once you hear it you really can't unhear it:
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Lady Gaga - Just Dance (2008): "Just dance/ It'll be okay", "Control your poison, babe, roses have thorns, they say/ And they're all gettin' hosed tonight"
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Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling (2009): "I feel stressed out, I wanna let it go/ Let's go way out, spaced out, and losin' all control", "I got a feelin'/That tonight's gonna be a good night"
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Usher - DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love (2010): "So dance, dance like it's the last, last / Night of your life, life, gon' get you right / 'Cause baby, tonight / The DJ got us falling in love again "
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Katy Perry - Teenage Dream (2010): "Let's go all the way tonight/No regrets, just love /We can dance, until we die/ You and I, will be young forever"
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Pitbull - Give Me Everything Tonight (2011): "Tonight, I want all of you/ Tonight, give me everything/ Tonight, for all we know/ We might not get tomorrow"
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LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem (2011): "Party rock is in the house tonight/ Everybody just have a good time (yeah)/ And we gonna make you lose your mind (woo)/ Everybody just have a good time (clap)"
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The Wanted - Glad You Came (2011): "The sun goes down, the stars come out/ And all that counts is here and now/ My universe will never be the same/ I'm glad you came (Came, came, came)"
Hey, that last one actually manages to not use the word "tonight". But don't worry, we still get a reminder that "all that counts is here and now".
I turned 10 in 2008 so this was around when I was first starting to gain awareness of the wider music landscape. At the time, I thought, this is just what pop music is. Insipid electro-bangers about dancing the night away and living for the moment. But no, the music of pre-2008 sounded very different. I much prefer the music of 2016-2019 which is when I did most of my partying in college. You had a few stinkers but a lot of the rap hits of the time were actually pretty creative, Black Beatles and Bad N' Boujee come to mind. Are there any trends in the media now that don't have a label yet?
campfire
2mo ago
Taste is her best single. The opening line “I leave quite an impression/ 5 feet to be exact” is hilarious and on-brand for someone whose image is built around being short and horny. Isn’t she cucking the other girl though?
Oh and in her live performances of Nonsense, she changes the last line of the song to a different innuendo every time. The original is “woke up this morning thought I’d write a pop hit/ how quickly can you take your clothes off? pop quiz”. When she played on BBC she changed it to “BBC said I should keep it PG/ BBC I wish I had it in me/ There’s a double meaning if you dig deep”
campfire
2mo ago
Vampire does shamelessly rip off Creep but that song also rips off an older 70s hit so I can’t complain
campfire
2mo ago
That’s the only one of her hits I don’t find obnoxious. I mostly can’t stand the new crop of pop girls. Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter have some okay singles but their most popular songs are annoying, Espresso has some of the worst rhymes I’ve heard in a while. On the other hand, I’ve liked Charli XCX since 2013 and she’s only gotten better since.
In my opinion, it's relatively easy to "debunk" materialism. I'd recommend watching Bernardo Kastrup's playlist, he's the leading proponent of Idealism these days. In his version, which he calls Analytic Idealism, consciousness is essentially all there is, and matter is a phenomenon of consciousness instead of the other way around. This is the view I subscribe to now. Some version of this view has popped up throughout human history and across cultures, it's arguably the mainstream view amongst the more philosophical strands of Hinduism (like Advaita Vedanta), Kabbalah has some overlap, the German Idealists mostly believed this (especially Schopenhauer who wrote clearly enough to remove any doubt about the content of his beliefs). Unsure how respected Kastrup is in academia, but he's definitely the person responsible for popularizing it in the last 10 years. Philip Goff is another recommended watch, his interview on Alex O'Connor's channel makes his case for panpsychism, a slightly different view that is essentially physicalism but with the caveat that consciousness is an inherent property of matter and not an emergent property of the interactions between certain sorts of matter. I think this view requires more assumptions than analytic idealism so I don't subscribe to it. That being said, it does address some of the major problems with materialism.
The basic case for Analytic Idealism goes a bit like this (this is far from a rigorous philosophical proof but it will suffice for now, will try to answer any questions about it):
Something else worth considering are theories of personal identity. Who are you really? And what makes you you as opposed to anyone else? This link does a great job of summarizing the three primary categories of views: Closed Individualism (CI), Empty Individualism (EI), and Open Individualism (OI). The last of which I subscribe to now. OI takes the position that there is a single self. Every experience in the universe is experienced by this Universal Subject. It should be worth noting that these views are ontology-agnostic. This video by the late Mario Montano makes the case that Open Individualism should be the default perspective under physicalism as well as Idealism. Practically what this means is that "you", that is, your deepest identity and not just the one associated with the human reading this now, will never die. But you should live as if everyone is you, that is, the difference between you and your father and a dog and your worst enemy isn't meaningfully different than the difference between you on your last birthday and you on your next birthday. Torturing your worst enemy is the moral equivalent of torturing your future self.
I'll second @Magusoflight 's suggestion that you look into NDEs. In particular, I can recommend the book Why An Afterlife Obviously Exists by Jens Amberts. It makes the case that NDEs are evidence of an afterlife because:
One thing that stands out is just how profoundly meaningfully they feel. Just as your friends feel more "real" than the characters you meet in your dreams, the entities people meet in NDEs feel like the closest, most intimate friends, that they've known for an eternity. If the primary purpose of the brain isn't to produce consciousness, but to sustain the ego in attachment to our bodies, then it seem plausible that NDEs, which occur during periods of extremely low brain activity, are peaks at what the afterlife.
As to what I believe, there's things I'm sure of and others that are more speculative. I'm
100% sure consciousness does not end at death. Reincarnation in the traditional Hindu sense, I think, is plausible but unlikely (20%). But what really inspires me is the evolution of humanity. It seems implausible that one species of mammals can so dramatically develop their understanding of the universe that they can bend the world to their will and improve their lives by leaps and bounds without being somehow divinely ordained. So if I had to integrate all of these observations into a single belief system, it might look something like this: We are all God in potential. The purpose of life and history, the telos of the universe, is for God to develop a fuller understanding of itself to reach increasingly more intense, wonderful states of being. To approach what Plato called The Form Of The Good. Everything we do is, in some twisted sense, in service of this goal. Failure in this life can be a temporary setback. But with intelligence and perseverance, and a deeper understanding of our shared being, all will eventually taste the fruits of heaven.More options
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