professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
No bio...
User ID: 1157
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2hr ago
And thousands, perhaps millions, are reliably stumped by the "is a hotdog a sandwich" question
AFAICT no one's lost their job, been hounded out of their hobby, lost an election, rewrote decades of a social movement, etc over this one.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
Great response, captures the feeling I had but didn't want to write.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
Anyways I find it likely that the cratering of birthrates across the entire world is a mass viral sensation where the lie is breaking down.
Obvious next step is mass suicide, we'll see if we get there. Why live at all?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
We should bring back bloodletting too. Nothing like a good leech to help balance the humors.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
"Wild and weird... A homeless hulk, a derelict unsteered."
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
Mormons and Iranians yes; Amish much less so.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
I'm tempted to quibble around the word classy, but I'm not sure I'd disagree with them in terms of volume. Afaict, though my latam experience is limited, they really do have a more vibrant, living dance scene. Swing and ballroom have had some resurgence but they're self-consciously retro and ime 'quirky.'
Country dance still seems to do well in actual rural areas, I don't know how well it does above that though.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
There’s a level of classiness in that culture we’d have a really hard time replicating here
Thought about this the other day- there's an interesting historical gap in PMC/upper-middle-and-above Universal Culture that it's almost wholly absent from any form of dance. Some might claim to appreciate lower-class entertainment, but few would participate. Salsa would be one of very few exceptions that's seen a degree of adoption, but nothing homegrown from that culture (such as it is). I'm not counting modern swing or ballroom, as they're self-consciously retro more than a vibrant live tradition.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
Likewise, the IRA were British.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
2d ago
He could spend half the federal budget on rebuilding the White House out of gold and it would not change a thing in the international perception of the US.
TBF I'm reasonably sure Trump could spend half the federal budget literally curing cancer or solving fusion energy and it would not change a thing in the international perception of the US, as long as he's still otherwise Trump.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
13d ago
Not really; there's a lot of room for society-poisoning callousness outside of a strict justified, on both sides.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
This sounds like something that would never work except on literal cavemen.
Literal cavemen had survival instincts and invented tools. Don't insult them by association with modern protestors.
Also just think of the rationalizations for why suddenly the rainbow flag (ooo has to be the updated version) is bad. Thinkpiece writers would melt under such heat.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
I haven't heard that one for a while so it dropped off my radar. Fair enough. The right has cuck, the left has "makes pp hard," it seems. Gross.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
I am aware this gives some people a hard-on.
Local right-wingers of The Motte, and especially if we have any actual Red Tribe good ole boys left, do y'all's social groups make the weird sexualized insults towards the left, too?
I only ever see it as a left against right thing, or whatever Amadan is against right apparently, but I assume that's mostly a social bubble effect.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
I was about to say Manchin, but he's no longer in office and I'd forgotten he was officially Independent his last year.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
2020 Bernie Sanders buried that guy too effectively.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
17d ago
committed by an agent of the state
I get why this is a distinction, but I'm still amazed at just how strong of a distinction this seems to be for some people.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
17d ago
modern rssc is boring. ACX open threads are better than ssc but you have to deal with substack comment system. the schism is on life support.
For better or worse, at least this place has some activity and some (if fewer than ideal) interesting conversations.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
17d ago
I think the right and the left are increasingly unable to model one another's thinking
Most people aren't good at modeling their own thinking, thus are very bad at communicating it, and the outsider map is more accurate in some ways, less so than others.
I recently got into an argument here where I said I know very leftist "woke" people, and they are not evil.
I've come around to a sort of cold comfort in that what the sides mostly see as "evil" in the other is what the allowable failure modes are, and the selectivity of attention (whiteness studies professors and actual no-joke neonazis aside, those two groups are evil in the regular sense). Maybe this is just warmed-over Arendt, I haven't taken the time to read her in full. A person can't legitimately care about everything, and where one chooses not to care- to draw their blinders close- has outsize effect on how they're seen by people that make the opposite choice.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
20d ago
The UK has a different legal tradition to Continental Europe and of course rather notably isn't part of EU
Still beholden, though, to the ECHR, and I'm not sure the degree to which the stuff like "we have to protect rapists because his home country will treat him badly" is homegrown UK idiocy or downstream of ECHR idiocy. That was the other thing I had in mind.
There's also Germany's interesting relationship to speech and democracy, but I hear there's some historic reasons there that don't necessarily apply to the rest of Western Europe.
Ireland is still part of the EU and has had some... issues... but I suppose is closer to the UK's legal tradition than Continental, though occasionally they try to do whatever the opposite of the UK is out of spite.
Here in Finland there was a notable case involving a blog post
I'm not sure the Nordics count very well for generalized European purposes either, given Denmark's... Denmarkness. Then again Sweden is at the opposite end of that spectrum. But I don't think it's bad faith to cite them even so.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
20d ago
So it goes, so it goes. The pretentious do what they want, and the insecure suffer what they must.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
21d ago
The government is quite capable of exerting its will on migrants and immigrant communities when it wants to
Any examples?
The UK at least seems much more eager to throw natives in jail over tweets than risk letting the migrants think they're disfavored for more than a few minutes.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
21d ago
If Trump thought that the Nobel Peace prize committee of all groups was going to elevate him with that sort of honour, he's a lot less bright than I thought.
I mean, they've given it for literally nothing before. Trump is smart enough to understand the work rules, but so narcissistic he seethes about the pettiness instead of moving on.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
21d ago
Fair enough; how much role did the US play in influencing the EU's structuring?
It was a thing around one of the earlier trans violence incidents but I don't recall which one specifically. I'm thinking particularly of Blocked and Reported, with Jesse Singal sticking to the "studiously use preferred pronouns" line (of course) and Katie being much lazier (of course) and/or pushing back a bit, that it ultimately is a respect thing and you don't need to respect murderers.
It's not like there's not similar examples, other populations where slurs are 'allowed' or you won't be expect to respect an identity due to other factors. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find people that would use preferred pronouns for murderers but not for nice conservatives.
A presidential candidate tried to change people's race based on their lack of support for himself. Hypocrisy exists and people are weird, news at 11.
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