teleoplexy
7d ago
If I tell a Christian that their belief in sky-fathers is ridiculous while they're hosting an unrelated activity
That’s not a fair comparison. I preferred the comparison to a Black person among white people, although that one isn’t perfect either. In my experience, Christians and Black people generally don’t test others to see whether they hold haram beliefs, whereas trans people and trans-friendly communities routinely test whether you agree with them. For example, I once felt tested through a joke, where my reaction seemed to be examined to see whether I laughed along. Another time, I was asked directly about JKR and Harry Potter. I’ve never had similar experiences with Black people or Christians, despite knowing far more of them than trans people.
Yes! It's your hobby-horse, as you put it yourself, so I think it's pretty much your only set of opinions that I can coherently judge
teleoplexy
8d ago
I personally know many people that share my views, that I think are more liberal than yours
teleoplexy
8d ago
It may not apply to literally everyone in the community - people differ and hold different views - but effectively, there is an atmosphere of fear around being ostracized for questioning anything. Many people share my views in private (which are much more liberal than FtttG, for example), but are afraid to dissent, because if they do, they cease to be a good person in the eyes of their peers and colleagues.
when it seems easy to ignore
Not the OP, but five or six years ago, I was on the side of supporting transition and never criticizing it. After that, I became interested in the issue because of several factors that came together.
- An FTM person in my family desisted while she was a teenager. At the time, I was supporting her, if not encouraging her, but then she fell out with her queer friend group and later moved to a different school. After that, her suicidal ideation and desire to be a man seemingly disappeared completely. Partly, I credit her parents, who refused to let her visit a gender clinic, which otherwise might have put her on an irreversible path. She now has a long-term cis male partner. This episode shattered my conviction that being trans is based solely on an internal, innate, hardwired feeling of gender.
- The school hid the fact that this person had socially transitioned for a full year. I put myself in her parents' position, and I think it would be unacceptable to me if someone else decided that I couldn’t help - or rather, that I wasn’t allowed to help - my child.
- Speaking of the feeling of gender, neither I nor anyone I have talked to about it has that feeling, so naturally, I can’t relate.
- The episode with my family member was interesting because mentioning it was taboo in trans-friendly circles. I never felt animosity toward trans people, yet by the standards of the leftist community, bringing up desistance or detransition is itself transphobic. So there was no way for me to square my real-life experience with the community consensus. I researched the topic myself and found that there are other liberal opinions on it, some of which reflect my real-life experience much more closely than unquestioningly accepting the idea of a gender journey.
So, if the school or state is silently aiding a child in transitioning - and, for the sake of a thought experiment, let’s say it’s my child - does that really look like an issue I can ignore? I don’t think the people who push this policy in schools are ignoring me; they are putting me in a position where I have to take some sort of stance.
teleoplexy
1mo ago
Man I even made the rice cooker pancake due to this trend. It was okay, not the best thing I've ever eaten.
teleoplexy
1mo ago
teleoplexy
2mo ago
Another vote for This Is Going To Hurt
teleoplexy
2mo ago
Sam Kriss is an amazing writer, a true jester
teleoplexy
3mo ago
DO NOT MAKE THIS BAKED ZITI RECIPE IF YOU WANT TO MAINTAIN YOUR DIET
I REPEAT DO NOT
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/281646/the-best-baked-ziti/
teleoplexy
4mo ago
It is unambiguous given the videos that she did try to hit the officer with her car, but just barely, and seems to have backed off immediately when her tires slipped on the ice.
What happened to "be charitable"? She's just a libbed out body who got scared when she saw the people she was reading about online in real life. The people who will disappear her, deport her to El Salvador, put her in a cattle wagon straight to an Auschwitz equivalent located in Texas. Then she panicked and tried to flee without thinking too hard how her actions are going to be interpreted by a hostile party. Why instantly jump to accusing her trying to kill someone?
teleoplexy
4mo ago
Mainstream media
Who do you mean by this?
Might as well include the whole population of the world in this category.
various politicians
This one would be the simplest to prove, so if you don't respond to other ones, I'd like to see your response to this - who incited the assassination?
teleoplexy
5mo ago
I kind of hate private group chats. I have a private group chat with friends to shoot the shit and it makes sense if I just want to keep in touch and make each other laugh, but Discord style real-time model just doesn't fit my mental model of deeper discussion:
- If you don't have a lot of time to constantly check on it, it's hard to understand where an ongoing conversation started.
- It's hard to follow the discussion because multiple groups of people can talk about multiple things at the same time. Thread model captures my mental model of discussion much better.
- I don't have time to read it to an extent where I keep up with everything going on.
- It's unsearchable - sometimes I want to find an old conversation. On Reddit, here and on forums, the conversation about a topic will be organized into a nice thread. On discord it's interspersed with some random conversation without start and end.
If it's a smaller group chat like Signal or Telegram or whatever, those problems are less prevalent but I just don't have an understanding how to join one with an anonymous group of people I don't know.
teleoplexy
5mo ago
I mean they already consume shit like tiktok too, but there’s for example us, here on the Motte talking to each other. The Motte IMO is going to be affected by the coming avalanche sooner or later, so in my head the question is - where would I go? I came up with “a paid forum”, but I think touching grass OSS an acceptable outcome too
teleoplexy
5mo ago
It would be funny is the main political divide in the future is “grass touchers vs slop eaters”?
teleoplexy
5mo ago
Maybe we won't want to talk to each other online anymore in the future, but I think the problem will become a real pain point very soon. If I'm forced to make a bet: will we stop talking to each other online or will people pay for the service somehow, I'm betting on the former.
teleoplexy
5mo ago
I think there's a free niche, in our AI world. Strike it while it's hot deal, IMO. There's only one way humans online can keep talking to each other without the doubt that it's really another person you are talking to and not AI: paying for posting. And also having anti-AI policy. I don't think it's going to be easy to create something like this, we would need a Bluesky style mass-exodus to that platform and we are all so used to posting for free that the idea will be met with natural revulsion, but IMO it's the only way to continue talking to real people.
Or maybe such a platform already exists: Something Awful still validates people like that. I'd love it to be not ideologically captured like SA. Maybe framing it as a monthly subscription would be acceptable.
I think the dead internet is going to become true very soon, it already is to an extent. It must get much worse before people will really resort to paid posting.
teleoplexy
5mo ago
teleoplexy
5mo ago
Not surprised about this at all 😬
teleoplexy
5mo ago
Russia is not some magical land of freedom.
Glad that we agree)
And guess what public officials did to a handcrafted fairytale playground someone built for everybody in the neighborhood? Yep, you guess it, demolished it to avoid liability.
In this hypothetical, I think it's much easier to rouse your neighbours to defend a working slide than to rouse the bureaucrats to fix it.
- NL is spinning a yarn to entertain the viewers first and foremost, the rambling is supposed to be entertaining, not a representation of how he communicates with the outside world.
- You are right to question his intentions. It might be an exaggerated account of events to entertain the viewers.
- He can definitely afford $15k + installation.
- I inferred that if he wants to fix it, then its reasonably fixable. So the discussion is about fixing it, not installing a new one, which is why I'm skeptical about the necessity to drill and the overall costs you mention.
- I really doubt that the corruption was mentioned as anything more than a joke - feel free to correct me on this though.
All that said, I don't doubt that budgeting and building and maintenance and commitment are the meat and bones of the problem. I take issue with needing to prove commitment in a roundabout way, rather than a direct way. If it really is how you describe it and not an issue of distributing funds equally between neighbourhoods, you still need to infer the intent of a bureaucrat, translate the invitation to donate as an invitation to a game in which you prove your commitment. If I were in NL's situation, I would miss this entirely. Frankly, I don't want to play the courtship game with a bureaucrat, I want to do stuff that is pro-social.
teleoplexy
5mo ago
Picture of me egressing out of my apartment window: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/05/The_Falling_Man.jpg
teleoplexy
5mo ago
why not be a man instead
I agree
Unbuckle
I refuse the notion that unbuckling makes me more manly. Getting rid of the Watchers doesn't mean upping my chances to die. If anything, I think of my family and doing a responsible thing for them.
I'm a fan of a minor celebrity from Vancouver, a Twitch streamer Northernlion (NL). He goes on "arcs" and in a recent one he can't get a slide fixed in his neighbourhood. Long story short, he is fond of his memories as a kid, how he played on a playground with his friends. They had a slide and how much fun was had with that slide. Now, he also wants his daughter to have memories like this, but alas, the slide has been broken since 2019 (more? less? I refuse to rewatch the video). He calls up a local low-level bureaucrat to offer a solution: he can pay for the repairs.
A low-level bureaucrat gives him a run-around for weeks and after he alludes to being somewhat popular, the bureaucrat goes, "🤑🤑🤑" (NL is at the very least upper-upper-middle class, but he is no Mr. Beast), the fateful call is scheduled. The call goes roughly like this: if we accepted donations like the one you suggest, there would be an imbalance between neighbourhoods. Richer neighbourhoods would have better amenities and poorer neighbourhoods would remain slideless. But you can pay to install a bench with your name somewhere in who-the-fuck-knows-where. We'll take your money, but you can't tell us what to do with it.
NL then laments: the kid is already four, her "going down the slide" days are almost over as it is (unless she's going to smoke and drink there with friends when she's twelve. Although a broken slide would be suitable for that as is), so this whole slide thing is kinda urgent.
One chatter suggests that maybe one could FIX THE SLIDE, and I am elated, but a parry comes swiftly (don't we all have this second nature in common?): "I would be taking on the liability if someone hurts themselves". Suggestions in YouTube comment section involved calling up an elected official (a higher level bureaucrat).
As of today, I strongly suspect that the slide isn't fixed.
Remember those commercials, where it's a bright morning, a single house in the middle of a green field, mountains in background, dewdrops serenely resting on blades of grass and a beautiful girl swings a window open to let a fresh breeze into the domicile and the curtains soar like sails, everything's sparkling clean, then she presents you some cleaning product? Well, I can't remember such a commercial, but I can imagine it so vividly it feels real to me.
I can't be that girl for two reasons: firstly, I'm not a girl, secondly, my window can't open more than... care to take a guess? It's 10 cm/4 in. I can't open a window in my rental apartment because there's a window opening control device (WOCD) installed on it that prevents me from opening it wide open.
All new buildings in British Columbia are mandated to have those devices installed when the window is 90 cm/3 ft from the ground. When I learned about this, I started to suspect that there's a fenestration industry conspiracy: there's no reason that I can fathom other than profit, why those devices would be mandated. Did a shadow fenestrator cabal collude with the governments of Canada, the UK, Australia, Boston, NYC to implement such rules? Did they push the newfangled window devices in every single new build? Which led me to my current predicament?
It's much simpler, much more prosaic. I haven't seen any evidence of conspiracy (not ruling out anything, anonymous fenestrator tips are welcome): some kids fell out of the windows and thus, a new safety rule was born, added to the BC Building code at paragraph 9.8.8.1 "Required Guards". Its brilliant Sentence 4, reproduced here in full:
Except as provided in Sentence (5), openable windows in buildings of residential occupancy shall be protected by a) a guard, or b) a mechanism that can only be released with the use of tools or special knowledge to control the free swinging or sliding operation of the openable part of the window so as to limit any clear unobstructed opening to not more than 100 mm measured either vertically or horizontally.
Isn't this wonderful? Now our kids are more safe! You can sleep tight: your toddler will not fall out of the window. By the way, how many kids did fall out? Oh, in the UK it's 2 per year.... Tragic? Yes. But...
I'm from Russia and in line with our, as the saying goes (I consider it a lie) "broad Russian soul" they also install windows that swing open broadly, all the way inside. Khruschevkas have them, new builds have them. So in Russia, I could be that cleaning product girl in almost any damn building, or at least I'm half way there - just need a way to become a girl. I could swing a window open and let a warm summer morning wash all over me.
Back in the day, I've seen news about people, sometimes even children falling out of windows, but somehow Russians (and most of the world) decided that the issue was related to parental negligence or indifference, rather than the design of the windows.
"Well, if you are so confident you are safe, take the WOCD off". Yup. Here's my thought process: I can't take them off because I would be accepting responsibility for anyone who falls out. I'd be liable in case something happens. Even to my own child perhaps. I wouldn't want her to fall out of the window, or any of her friends. Or my adult friends. And, anyway, let's say I take them off. Strata would instantly notice my tiny North American windows (there's not much to swing open anyway) swung open all the way. Like - it would be noticeable from the street, akin to a chad-virgin meme:
- My neighbours' virgin windows: 10 cm, no airflow, people inside slowly dying from CO2 poisoning
- My chad window: swung open to 90°, curtains SOARING due to a draft the strength of a jet engine.
I don't really want to antagonize my strata's busybodies who will send a stupid email to my landlord, who will in turn forward it to me:
Dear tenant of Unit 404, we noticed that all of your windows have simultaneously "malfunctioned" in exactly the same way bla bla bla bla. We understand that 100 mm might seem insufficient for adequate ventilation, but rest assured, the Building Code Technical Committee has determined this is plenty of airflow for human survival. Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla Please be advised: you have 14 days to remedy this situation. Failure to comply will result in a $200 fine (first offense). Bla bla bla bla
Ugh... Feels like I'm rubbing salt into my imaginary wound in my pride.
I said to my wife "I'm taking off the safety restrictors" and she had the exact same reaction:
- What if someone falls out? We'd be liable!
- The strata would notice
What the hell is going on?
Let's quickly acknowledge something: both mine and NL's problems can be solved without anyone's involvement at all:
- He doesn't disclose the nature of the slide's defect due to opsec concerns, but going by his reaction to the suggestion of doing it yourself I'd bet that he could just go and fix the slide. The office he called to complain about it wouldn't notice for years, if ever.
- I, on my part, do own a screwdriver and realistically I doubt the scenario I described above would ever come to pass.
Neither of us have an insurmountable problem on our hands, I'd argue that the problems are pretty trivial and nobody cares if we make our lives a bit more comfortable, even if we circumvent all of the bureaucracy but the first thing both of us thought about was: there's a process, there are rules, there's a big brother who watches the safety in our society and it is paramount everybody's safe and I don't want to be liable for anything that happens. Ever.
This thought process that both of us went through is a far more interesting phenomenon to me than a default libertarian argument of "government should get its hands away from my business". It should, but if it does, there's no guarantee anything changes in our heads.
We teach kids to think like this: here The Last Psychiatrist describes how we deal with bullies at schools nowadays. In essence, in the name of safety, we inadvertently brainwash away all of the righteous, moral, community-oriented instincts before they can flourish. He vividly paints how a girl is instructed to stay away from a bully instead of standing up for your peers: do not speak up, stay in your lane so you don't get hurt. Someone else will deal with the bully.
If there is any value you do want to encourage in kids, it's looking out for each other. The girl had it; the boy who tried to snag Devastator also had it. Those were reflexes, they didn't plan this out over morning waffles, but whatever was going on at home and in their heads lead them to have, and to follow, those impulses.
But the school fostered the reverse value: "don't get involved, take care of yourself, let the Watchers handle it. That's their job." Note that the school didn't inadvertently teach her not to look out for others, it specifically instructed her not to look out for others. "We'll handle it."
Now, in what I described with NL's slide, with my window WOCD devices, we don't need the Watchers present. They're already in the back of my mind, telling me that this is done in the name of safety, that they'll get their way anyway. When the Watchers don't want to or can't do something due to a lack of money or staff, well, in this situation all of the parties are completely impotent. Slides sit there completely unfixed. Windows stay safely restricted by safety restrictors.
"We'll handle it" is everywhere:
- How do bug tickets get picked up in big companies? They don't get picked up easily. The default assumption is that someone else will be responsible for prioritizing the bugs and fixing the issue. Maybe your boss will take a look and assign it, maybe that one crazy teammate who says "if you find a bug, you should fix it" will do it, and anyway, your average programmer is not really well versed in this domain to do it. People routinely rely on the third party to tell them what to do. Slightly relevant article on how people in software limit themselves.
- Liberals "believing in Science," getting the Watchers to tell them what's correct rather than diving into issues and figuring out something by yourself. The Watchers have to tell you what's right and it's impossible to make your own conclusions. The Watchers are credentialed and knowledgeable, the papers are available for you to read because The Watchers wouldn't publish something false. The science is settled - I know it because I believe in
the Watchersthe Science. - Gun laws and "the police aren't there to protect you from criminals, they're there to protect criminals from you".
- Identity being something that has to be affirmed by a third party. "I'm only real if I'm validated."
Fundamentally, we have less opportunities to exercise agency anymore and that shapes one's mind in a weird way. It embeds the Watchers in the back of your mind when they are not there physically. I think how we bring up kids is partially at fault, but the bureaucratization of the society is equally damaging. School is Not Enough by Simon Sarris addresses the first part. The whole body of work of TLP addresses the second part. Maybe I'm coming around to some of the Hlynka's arguments.
How do we make kids have more agency?
How do we make adults with more agency?
How do we go back to the society Alexis de Tocquevillle's observed?
When Alexis de Tocqueville compiled his reports on America for a French readership, he recalled that "In America, there is nothing the human will despairs of attaining through the free action of the combined powers of individuals." Yankee agency became an object of fascination for him: "Should an obstacle appear on the public highway and the passage of traffic is halted," Tocqueville told his readers, then "neighbors at once form a group to consider the matter; from this improvised assembly an executive authority appears to remedy the inconvenience before anyone has thought of the possibility of some other authority already in existence before the one they have just formed." This marked a deep contrast with the French countryside Tocqueville knew best, where the locals left most affairs to the authorities.
Fun exercise - shuffle the CSV and get entirely different outputs! Not a bad thing per se, just abusing the Lost in the Middle problem to get more different songs you might like.
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