FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
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
Wawa Nationalist
3hr ago
You've never met a really good manservant then!
I mean I'm not @grandburdensomecount or @2rafa I don't have a valet. But I've definitely interacted with people in service roles who gave off that "this is what we're doing" vibe. Barbers and waiters come to mind. Mechanics as well.
A really confident barber tells you what you want to do with your hair, informs you that this is how we do things in this shop. Yes you want to trim your eyebrows let me do that quick. No you can't cut your hair that way it will look gay. Now sit back while I do the massage with the vibrating glove from 1950.
There's a whole trope older than dirt of the strong willed servant who dominates his weak master, by his sheer frame.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Noem, Kent, Bondi.
Gabbard's office has been essentially sidelined as well, but she's still there.
Are there more I'm not thinking of?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
I'm going to register my concern that at least three high level administration officials with portfolios that include counterterrorism have exited the administration in the past month, as we engage in an assymetric war with the premier state sponsor of terrorism.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
This is like at best eighth on the list of weird ejaculations from Trumpworld in the last 72 hours.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
De gustibus non est dispuntandum
TLDR: People probably like the things they say they like, even if there are people who pretend to like it they probably aren't the majority and definitely aren't universal.
I've never read Vonnegut, Heller, or DeLillo at all, but I know they are "canonical" in the postmodern genre. I made it 100 pages through Gravity's Rainbow and was earnest convincing myself I was "getting it" before literally slamming the books shut and verbalizing "This is fucking unreadable."
Back in college, I did the thing and carried around the Big Blue copy of Infinite Jest so people could see I was reading it and I stuck pens in various places to show I was capital-R Reading it. I think I made it a little further than 100 pages, but I can't be sure because I can't remember a damn thing about it.
So you haven't actually read any examples of post-modern literature, but you question whether anyone enjoys it because you don't think you would enjoy it if you actually read it?
I think you should probably be very hesitant to assume that no one actually enjoys thing because you don't enjoy thing, even if you yourself pretended to enjoy thing as a signaling exercise.
There are things that in my life, I tried to pretend I enjoyed because I thought it was the cool thing to like. Sometimes these weren't even things that would get me credit among my actual peers. When I was heavy into straight edge punk or metal, I'd listen to bands like Earth Crisis or atonal Norwegian black metal outfits because online forums told me those were the coolest bands to like, and I'd listen to them on my ipod and try to like them even though I didn't actually enjoy atonal screeching and lack of melody. But I thought for whatever reason that was the cool thing so I tried to like it.
At the same time, there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to believe that I like the things that I like. Amon Amarth isn't a universal taste. My workout playlist contains at least one song that will offend anyone.
My favorite books are full of things that people would call posing, or say that no one actually enjoys. I've read War and Peace four times, and loved it every time. Euros will tell me that there's no way I can possibly enjoy a boring sport like Baseball or Football, Americans will tell me that there's no way I can enjoy a BORING sport like soccer. The arguments over which sexual acts women actually like and which they are pretending to like could fill a new Talmud with disputations in volumes on BDSM, Anal sex, blowjobs; some contend that women don't actually get horny at all! Atheists claim no one can possibly enjoy going to church. People tell me that the gym is a chore and that one can't possibly enjoy it; the gym puritans even tell me that enjoying lifting is sin, indicative that you aren't engaged in proper lifting which must be unpleasant. For every one of my favorite things there's somebody who wants to tell me I don't actually like it I'm just a poseur.
Now for the genre arguments, Chuck Pahluniuk is normally labeled as postmodernist author, and I don't think Fight Club is a book that you can reasonably say that it isn't enjoyable. One doesn't have to like every postmodern novel for the genre to be real or any good, any more than I have to enjoy every piece of scifi for scifi to be real or any good.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
It's not that I'm advocating a RETVRN to the business suit. I'm critiquing that we abolished the business suit with nothing to replace it.
I do believe that the American Ivy/Prep tradition is the perfect way for a white American man to dress, and that the suit or something like it is the perfect outfit for most occasions. The suit is aesthetically perfect for the male form. Structured tailoring smooths out your body's imperfections. The lapels broaden the shoulder and slim the waist. The shirt collar frames the face. It's relatively practical and comfortable if you pick fabrics and cuts properly.
But I recognize that wearing a suit and tie is a costume today in most circumstances. It might be a very attractive costume, but it's a costume. For the most part I try to achieve a similar impact with more casual clothing, a chore coat or an unstructured blazer with chinos, a zippered hoodie, etc.
There are lots of other things that can fill that role. There are lots of other ways to create an outfit or dress people well. But we haven't picked one as a society and I think that's a problem that society can choose to solve. We've lost, in most places, the basic "this is how you dress to show respect to those around you" set of rules that make life more navigable.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It comes down a difference in views on virtue and sin.
One side thinks that you restrict tactics because they are bad for your enemy. The other thinks that you restrict tactics because those tactics are bad for you.
Like a jiu-jitsu coach that tells the white belts not to lean too hard on cheesy moves that will only work against other white belts, or caution big guys against moves that only work against smaller guys in workouts, because then as you progress or you want to compete you have to learn jiu jitsu twice.
A lot of people think sinning is winning, and that the only reason not to do bad things is out of some primitive feeling that Sky-Daddy is going to punish you when he goes through his giant ledger at the end of days. Others think that sin is bad because it destroys you, destroys a society.
Identitarianism is bad for blacks because victimhood politics holds people back. It is equally bad for whites. I'm sick and tired of hearing pissant "I coulda been a contenda" speeches from people.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
What, do you think Paul Wolfowitz was jonesing for the 82nd Airborne and 1st Infantry Division to be rolling from Turkey towards Tabriz?
Yes, actually.
The big difference is the lack of buildup. There was no effort to sell the war to the public or to the international community. Trump relied on the element of surprise, the Sucker Punch Doctrine.
The result is low support. Even the Republican numbers are hovering in the 80s, where they were in Lizardman Constant territory at this point in the Iraq war. The USA had the Coalition of the Willing, with Britain Australia Poland etc deploying troops in Iraq. In Iran we have...Israel? I mean kinda but Israeli forces don't appear to be under direct command of a US general, where in Iraq all coalition forces were under a US commander (Spartan style).
Now obviously the bright side was the element of surprise, and for whatever reason we can't expect the Israelis to operate under a US command structure...but there are big differences in how the story will be seen.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Today I went to BJJ, there were four of us at the 6am open mat, and we rolled for 45 minutes straight of 5 minutes. I rolled with a guy from the local SWAT team, he's 165, and he dog walked me despite my having 30 lbs on him. So clearly size and strength doesn't matter for jiu jitsu! Or maybe it was that he was a college wrestler, and has been training BJJ twice as long as I have, or maybe I'm just not that athletic or coordinated. There's a ton of factors that go into it, so just being big isn't going to tell the story, but ceteris paribus the bigger guy will normally win.
The advantage to height, about 1% lifetime earnings per inch, is one of the best studied theories in economics. The advantage to height in romance is well known and obvious, even if you assume there's no return to attractiveness it's inarguable that the vast majority of women prefer a man taller than they are, so it's pure increased pool of prospects for every inch up to 6'3" or so.
I can't know whether you have a good life or a bad life, a hard life or an easy life, but we can say that your life has likely been easier as a result of being taller than it would have been had you been shorter. No one is saying that everyone over 6' is on easy street, but it's clearly an advantage.
So how you do you figure you haven't had any advantage? No woman has ever admired your height? People don't physically look up to you? You aren't any good at basketball or volleyball?
Among the hardest truths to accept as a human being is that I am both extraordinarily lucky to be who I am, and that I'm nothing really special.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I continue to be skeptical of the thesis that has no balls and will give up if harmed. The Ukraine war has made me permanently skeptical of the idea, which seemed like the perfect example of a population of a fake country with a corrupt government that nonetheless is willing to go to the mattresses.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I have experienced absolutely zero in social benefits, moral stature, recognition or anything else on the basis of how tall I am.
Or more likely you have experienced all of those benefits, and your life would really suck if you were 5'5".
That's the problem with both privilege and discrimination, you can't know the counterfactual. The privileged can't know how bad their lives would be without their privilege, and imagine they would be about the same. The victim of discrimination imagines that their lives would be perfect were they privileged, but that's rarely the case.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Height and intelligence are different in a great many other ways, like how your height is immediately apparent from afar,
Height is like a woman's waist or breast size, immediately apparent to everyone who sees you, and so is everyone else's to a first approximation. A woman may be insecure about her breasts or think she's fat, but she'll mostly be able to figure out her ordinal ranking from those around her.
Intelligence is like a man's penis size, secret, impossible to really display, and the ordinal ranking is totally unknown. A man can worry about having a small dick regardless of whether he has one or not. A man can worry about being dumb whether he is smart or not. The effect of repeated exposure to those at the top percentile is left as an exercise for the reader.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
but I've never heard it directed at anything other than the US and Israel.
Have you ever interacted with a Persian?
From Grok:
the Persian phrase “marg bar” (مرگ بر, literally “death to”) is famously used in political chants like “marg bar Amrika” (Death to America) or “marg bar Isra’il” (Death to Israel), but it (and related death idioms) also pops up in more casual, everyday Iranian speech for frustration with mundane things.
It’s not always a literal call for death—it’s often idiomatic, like an exaggerated “damn [this thing]” or “down with [annoyance]” for stuff you can’t control or that irritates you in daily life. Travel writer Rick Steves captured this perfectly during a trip to Tehran: his taxi driver, stuck in horrible traffic, exclaimed “Death to traffic!” (in English) and explained that Iranians say this about uncontrollable frustrations, comparing it to casually saying “damn those teenagers.” Steves noted the driver wasn’t advocating violence against drivers—just venting about gridlock the same way people rant about everyday hassles.
Another clear non-political (or at least prosaic) example is “marg bar sibzamini” (“Death to potatoes!”). During the 2009 Iranian presidential election campaign, opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chanted this at rallies in places like Yasouj and Isfahan. It mocked his government’s potato distribution (seen as a gimmicky handout or vote-buying tactic amid economic issues). Protesters turned a staple food into a slogan of everyday dissatisfaction: “We don’t want potato government!” It was humorous and pointed at a mundane economic gripe rather than grand ideology.
Broader Persian “death”-related expressions are super common in quotidian contexts for exaggeration, annoyance, exhaustion, or minor irritations (not protests). These show how death metaphors are woven into casual talk:
Che margeshe? (“What’s his death?”) → Used for objects or people acting up, like “In mâshin che margeshe?” (“What’s wrong with this car?”) when it won’t start.63
Mordim tâ… (“We died until…”) → For everyday ordeals, e.g., “Mordim tâ residim!” (“We died until we arrived!”) in bad traffic or after a long, draining commute.63 Marg! (“Death!”) or Boro bemir! (“Go die!”) → Casual “Shut up!” or “Get lost!” among friends, depending on tone (joking vs. serious).63
Khabare margesh! (“The news of his/her death!”) → Muttered under your breath about something/someone annoying, like a frustrating politician or a bad driver.63 These aren’t rare or invented—they’re documented by Iranian-Americans, travelers, linguists, and Iranians themselves as normal ways to blow off steam about traffic, broken stuff, exhaustion, or petty annoyances. The political versions get all the media attention because they’re chanted at rallies, but the structure lends itself to everyday venting in Iran, much like how English speakers might say “screw this traffic” or “kill me now” hyperbolically. Context and tone make it clear it’s rarely literal.
Either way, I don't think it's about translating it as harmless, just making the Iranians seem less poetic and serious. It's a problem with Persian translations in general, hence the Twitter memes about how every middlebrow Iranian bureaucrat had a PhD thesis on Quranic Hegelian dialectics in assymetric deterrence compared to Trump's boomer caps lock and Hegseths group chat edginess. If we translated more idiomatically, we'd see them as losers, the way most Persians do.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I absolutely agree, but again, Russia's hypothetical goal here isn't to get enough material into Iran to prop up Iran's conventional defenses, or to allow Iran to resist the whole US air force, or enough missiles to level Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Iran doesn't even need enough missiles to sink every ship coming through the Strait of Hormuz. They just need to continue firing enough that they can credibly threaten traffic, such that insurers and ship owners still won't risk it, which requires a fairly minimal quantity of munitions. Hell, even if they get down to the point where escort missions are practical, as long as there is still enough fire coming from shore that escorts are necessary, that will still massively throttle traffic compared to pre-war numbers, because it's impossible for destroyer escorts to escort the number of ships that transited on a typical day before the war.
The longer the oil shortage goes down, the greater the urge in the West to de-sanction Russian crude and accept Russia back into the community of nations in order to get access to that oil.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I highly doubt this will happen.
I mean me too but I do think it entered the head of the average Democratic senator that he didn't want to be on the wrong side of this, especially when people are holding up Venezuela as some kind of massive success story.
Who could possibly defend monsters that would commit such atrocities?
It's different when we do it. Hell, even just Iran causing mass military casualties will qualify. Say, by sinking an aircraft carrier, or destroying a landing craft full of marines on live video feed. Enough flag draped coffins will lead to calls for revenge and redoubling, "finish the job so my child didn't die in vain" as Pete Hegseth claims a parent told him but the parents that could be reached for comment deny.
Congresscritters are cowards with their fingers in the wind, not principled anti-war activists.
The opposite, I'm saying the anti-woke coalition is a mixed-marriage between people who think that wokeness is wrong because the theory is bad, and people who think the theory is good it should just be applied to a different group. The former are horrified by the latter, the latter think the former are moral mutants and cowards.
Take as our basic woke concept "if you criticize the actions of BlackTM Folx, it's because you are racist and bad. Any bad outcome for BlackTM Folx is due to Systemic Racism, even if the people in power are not and would not be racist. Policies can explicitly help BlackTM Folx, but if they even implicitly hurt BlackTM Folx, then they are racist and bad."
There's a large portion of people who disagree with that concept! But they don't all disagree for the same reasons.
Some people disagree with the process. It's stupid and reductive to attribute everything to an -ism, any -ism. Identitarianism harms the group you're trying to help by stifling their drive for success, removing their internal locus of control, leading them to attribute all their failures to nebulous "haters." Every group, and every member of that group, can do bad things and be bad people, no matter how much Oppression the group may have faced before. Affirmative Action is bad because it undermines meritocracy, etc.
Other people disagree with the targets, but love the process and want to use the same process but for other groups. BlackTM Folx fail because of their bad genes or bad culture, but any criticism of Jews should be met with thought terminating screeches of ANTISEMITISM. Affirmative Action was bad when it was targeted at BlackTM Folx, but it should be targeted at white Christian Conservatives, who are the real oppressed. Etc.
Both very divergent ideologies are labeled as "anti-woke" and travel under the label, but they're diametrically opposed. One group wants free speech on campus even if the speech is offensive; the other thought it was bad for kids to be hounded for saying nigger in an instagram post but don't mind kids being hounded for saying "From the River to the Sea!" at a protest. One group thinks tracking down a twitter commenter at their job and reporting them to HR for making a joke about faggots is bad because it threatens free speech, the other group thinks that it's bad because sodomites are sinful, but are happy to track down cashiers who talk shit on Charlie Kirk. This realization is uncomfortable for the three principled libertarians, and maybe for the seven zilliion witches as well.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
It's more that they're worried that one of two things will happen:
-- The Special Military Operation will work, and they'll look like naysayers
-- Iran will do something so horrible that you don't want to look like you were defending them
I mean if the IRGC sets off a dirty bomb in Tel Aviv, that actually makes the war a worse idea than when it was started, but it makes anything that sounds like sympathy for Iran look bad.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Many have already pointed out that the biggest beneficiary of the war so far is Russia where both oil prices are seeing higher prices AND that their sanctions are dropped. At first glance, this should be bad news for Ukraine.
What worries me about is to what extent Russia can prop up Iranian anti-ship capabilities cheaply. It would be very much in Russia's interests to keep the strait closed as long as possible, it harms their enemies and helps Russia. Every air defense capability sent to the gulf is one not sent to Ukraine. Buying Russian oil and propping up Russia becomes the lesser evil compared to surrendering to Iran. They don't need to give the Mullahs the bomb or supply their whole war effort, just keep a trickle of drones and missiles coming in to prevent a total degradation of Iranian launch capabilities. Keep Hormuz' legs crossed, and the more both sides destroy more oil infrastructure the more the price premium Russian oil will demand for months or years afterward.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
No mullahs, no IRGC, no "Death to America".
A minor aside, I often wonder to what extent we should idiomatically translate "Death to X" as "Fuck X" instead. In the same way that an American saying "Fuck Iran" should be translated to a Persian as "Death to Iran" and not "I would like to have intercourse with Iran."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Sometimes it feels like this forum is still stuck in 2020. Woke is over.
The anti-woke have discovered that half of them hated the process of wokeness, and the other half hated the way the process was targeted. On this forum this mostly takes the form of disputes around the Hebrews, elsewhere it revolves around Charlie Kirk or foreign wars.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The US has air superiority.
I think it's really telling that the US has achieved air superiority over Iran instantly, while Russia has as of yet never achieved that level of superiority over Ukraine.
I believe the US certainly has the capability to do it, though.
It's probably not impossible, I'm just saying that when considering scale redundancies and protection need to be included in that calculus.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
they're one bad fall or headkick away from brain damage or[...]
I have been insanely blessed to have been doing it as long as I have without being sidelined by a serious injury
I love the result of this typo being the trailing off "I've never suffered brain damage or...anyway..."
I have "let" guys with less experience than me win simply to avoid a situation where one of us would probably get hurt, or to not escalate the intensity to unsafe levels. Most of the time they simply don't have the knowledge to realize how easily they can get hurt. On rarer occasions they lack the self control to rein it in where needed.
So much of it comes down to pride, and lack of communication which is mostly downstream from pride. When I get hurt, it's always ego standing in the way of just saying "Yeah I can't do that" or "Yeah I'm just going to tap here, not from a sub but because my leg is in a weird spot." The problem is removing ego from losing, while still drawing motivation from winning.
Likewise, the worst injuries I've doled out are broken noses. I felt HORRIBLE about that in both cases, but in the grand scheme those are easily recoverable.
I know you're far deeper into it than I am, and it's a different ruleset, but for me my BJJ started to get a lot better when I realized that I didn't want to hurt my partner, and just removed all the moves I deem "too dangerous" or "rude" from my repertoire. I don't do heel hooks, I don't do throat posts, I don't do neck cranks, I don't do anything flying or rolling, I don't slam anybody. I stick to slow, even, cautious application of basics. I give my opponents tons of time to tap because I have the sub sunk. This works so much better for me, because when I try something risky, I double clutch trying to make sure not to hurt my opponent, and then I lose the whole thing. I never get a heel hook because I'm trying to do it too slow. Where a straight ankle, I'm confident my opponent is going to tap to discomfort before they break anything important. I never manage to finish wrestling shots live, because I'm worrying about not slamming my opponent and then I lose it, but I can do slide-bys or arm drags all day. I never finish guillotines with a guard pull, but I can use the position to take the back.
I'm hoping to one day reach a level of confidence where I can reintegrate some of that into my game. I still drill it, but letting go of it live and focusing on things I'm confident in really improved my rolls.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I was speaking more generally regarding the whole war, but in this specific instance "losses greater than zero" very quickly complicate things and expand the operation. Unless the HEU is secretly stored closer to the border than publicly indicated, you're looking at 200+ miles of contested airspace, transporting in and out. Every piece of essential equipment or personnel you lose now needs a backup, which balloons the size of the operation, makes it harder to transport and protect, and increases the number of targets that can be hit. So you need more protection, which increases the footprint to be transported and protected, etc.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I highly doubt that the covert ops community is leaky enough to leak this plan if it were real. There are very obvious and direct consequences to the soldiers involved, I just can't believe that would happen.
That said, there's probably a lot of alpha in finding a way to track the prediction market accounts of actual soldiers, who won't be shy about cashing in. It's likely that in turn global intelligence agencies are keyed into such accounts...which then raises the possibility of using prediction markets to head fake.
What do Pam bondis husband's tits look like?
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