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
6hr ago
I feel like PETA would, if Hitler offered to do a public endorsement of vegetarianism. A very kind and humanitarian impulse, just... A lot of other things.
PETA would absolutely take him. They're that committed.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
Great movie. Got very mad at brother in law for making me watch it last Christmas, actually, because despite my wife being subscribed to an absurd number of streaming services, he insisted on buying another movie through my Amazon account. Which struck me as an absurd extravagance, $4 or whatever totally unnecessary, but it did turn out to be amazing, so that shut me up.
I’m no film historian, but if The Apartment wasn’t the first, it must have been very close to creating the template for the bawdy office Christmas party trope. It's all there (short of nudity) full on full-on pre-HR debauchery with people getting hammered, hooking up wherever they can find space. I’m sure Mad Men borrowed heavily for it's office culture.
No. That's how things were. It didn't create a trope through film, it represented a reality. Mad Men drew on that same historical set of facts. Christmas parties really used to be fun before we all turned our noses up at them. Go to any local bar association event, corner the oldest man you see, and ask him to tell you stories from the old days. This isn't to say that there isn't a cycle of art imitating life imitating art
Baxter is a cuck in almost every sense of the term...Since it’s the 1960’s she not just in it for the sex, she actually falls suicidally in love with the bad boys, and she doesn’t have any kids. But Fran only turns to the nice guy after she’s been "run through".
And we're shown the alternative to the nice guy forgiving the harlot: she kills herself. The alternative to beta men being cucked is that women who make mistakes just, kind of, shuffle off camera and die. No one has come up with a scalable solution yet. Baxter is obviously the good guy here, in that he is saving her from literal or social death by swallowing his pride.
What's the really interesting cultural reality in the film is the overwhelming nosiness of all the people around everyone in New York City.
Why do the executives value the privacy of Baxter's apartment so highly as to consider its use a major favor? Because back then hotels paid attention to their guest lists, and cared if two unrelated people stayed there, or if people showed up in the afternoon and checked out that evening. A non-concern today, when hotel employees couldn't care less, and in a pinch you could always find a place where you check in and out online without seeing anyone. No corporate hotel property pries into the business of its customers, and no pajeet motel owner could come close to caring what the YTs do there.
Baxter lives in an apartment house where everyone knows everyone's business. The elderly neighbors around him are watching him. Everyone thinks he's a playboy. Nowadays, they might snide-post on twitter about how loud their nextdoor neighbor is, but no one would say a word to him however much he plowed. The doctor cares about how Fran ended up the way she is, today's doctors want to "tolerate" your lifestyle to make sure to do harm reduction. This all has no consequences for the executives he lets the place out to, but terrible social consequences for him, which is what they are more or less paying him for.
Even in a city as large as New York, the very hub of anonymity for the time, reputation is important, and traditional morality still has its enforcers. Baxter is the very model of the lonely, isolated, atomized individual in this film, and he is still constantly worried about what other people think of him. Today's equivalent wouldn't know any of his neighbors. Traditional morality would have no grasp on him. He'd move out before he'd care what some old biddie thinks of him. And no executive needs a discreet love nest, he can just find a way to open a credit card online and spend $100 on a decent hotel room for the day where no one will ask any questions, if any of the staff even speaks English.
Where in 1950s New York, even a single man was subject to a panopticon of judgment, today a married man in the suburbs doesn't worry about it too much.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
This is a type of base rate adjacent fallacy. The pool of people with average or below genotypic IQ is literally over 150x that of those in the top 0.3%, 50x those in the top 1%, etc. They get a lot more cracks at making it into the Top [X] of phenotypic IQ rank. Kind of like how, taking listed heights at their word (NBA players were born in the darkness of height frauding; men doing online dating merely adopted it), there appears to be a similar number of men between 6'0" and 6'3" and men between 7'0" and 7'3" in the NBA. It could be that height doesn't matter that much for basketball—or perhaps it could be because there are hundreds of thousands times more men in the former group than the latter group.
Surely you agree that it is possible to both over or under rate the importance of height for a basketball player? Height is critically important for basketball, and a player is nearly always, ceteris paribus, better and more useful for a team if he as inch taller. But if you proposed trading Tyrese Maxey for Zach Edey, you'd be making a mistake.
There can bo societies that overrate the importance of genetic heritage, and societies that underrate it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
I believe I heard they were specifically instructed to wear college sweatshirts, to appear to be students.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Seemingly every month I find a new reason to dislike online gambling. It's becoming an intellectual doubt I have about a lot of the rationalist "gambling is a tax on bullshit" types.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Love:
No Place Like Home for the Holidays Out of the classic songs that get played over a store radio this time of year, this is the one that I whistle to myself when I'm cutting down the Christmas tree. My mother loves Christmas, which is the only thing I really like about Christmas, so that's what makes me happy to think about.
What are you Doing New Year's Eve Obviously a holiday season song rather than Christmas, but New Year's Eve is my favorite romantic holiday. Valentine's day is commercialized garbage, anniversaries are mostly kinda dumb in practice; but kissing at midnight to ring in the New Year is a particular moment that can only happen with one person every year, and having someone to kiss is a critical status symbol in high school/college, and being together is part of being a couple. The O'Jays do a really perfect, slinky arrangement. It carries both the longing and pleading, and a certain sly naughty offer to it. The speaker is humbling himself before the object of his longing ("Oh-oh, just in case, I stand one little chance, Here comes the jackpot question in advance..." "out of the thousands of invitations you receive") but the performance and arrangement reflects a confident offer of pleasure.
Hate:
Wonderful Christmastime I hate the Beatles, which makes this pretty straightforward. Saccharine and awful.
Happy Holidays My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays. Growing up I was a good little liberal, inculcated with the idea that the "War on Christmas" was Fox News bullshit and that inclusiveness meant wishing everyone Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, so that you wouldn't make people feel bad if they didn't do Christmas. This was based on growing up in a culture in which the religious majority-minority dynamic was built around Christians and Jews, and Jews historically took the view that celebrating Christmas was a threat to their religion, and equally they have no interest in me celebrating their holidays. I wanted to be tolerant, so I went along with it. Then as I grew up I got to know more Hindus and Muslims, and they love Christmas, and they would love for me to stop by on their holidays. I realized that nobody means Happy Holidays, it's just a corporate generic gesture, not the way one means "Merry Christmas." I don't feel good when someone wishes me Merry Christmas, and I'm not offended or left out when someone wishes me Eid Mubarak or have a good Diwali or whatever. We should all just wish each other to have a happy [holiday one actually celebrates] and we all understand that if we aren't celebrating, they're just hoping we have a good day that day.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I don't think there are a lot of actual genetics deniers out there who don't believe in the heritability of DNA from parents to children. What gets strawmanned or parodied as "blank-slatism" is either a denial that there is a strong race/class correlation because we aren't sorting efficiently enough as a society, or a quibble about what percentage chances are involved. There's a tension between stated beliefs and revealed preferences, much like choosing schools and neighborhoods, but one can find one's way around it pretty easily.
Good substack article on the weakness of twin studies here, the particular portion I think is relevant to this question (check the article for the scatter plots):
Heritability is, by construction, a population-level aggregate. Before it can inform policy-making (or even personal decision-making), it must be interpreted at the level of individuals. This is where things get interesting and counterintuitive. Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects? Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution. Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential. At 50%, being genetically average starts to limit your optionality, but the spread remains massive. Had you been marginally luckier—say, in the top third for genetic potential—you’d still have a shot at becoming one of the smartest people around. At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.
Most debates aren't between genetics deniers who think that there is zero correlation between parents and children and feudal pedigree enthusiasts who assume that children are clones of their parents. It's a debate between people who think there's a 30% correlation and people who think there's an 80% correlation. And further, I think most of the debate between blank slatists and genetic determinists is a debate is between people who agree that the correlation is 50% but disagree about whether society is overrating or underrating that correlation. A 30% correlation is still a chance that one wants to take to benefit ones children, but it might not be a chance that you think society should shut doors against. Most people would acknowledge that there is a correlations between IQ and wealth and between parent IQ and children IQ, people still wring their hands about the fate of coal towns in Appalachia.
There's also a simple element: I don't get along with dumb people. Even if I thought having kids with a dumb girl wouldn't lead to dumb children, I wouldn't get along with the dumb girl anyway.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
There's a good possibility that releasing a huge batch of files will likely lead to some investigative reporting putting together more circumstantial evidence of something or other.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Yup. And then he'll build up another winning streak against broke guys, and the haters will work themselves into a fine lather about how they want to see him humbled, and then there will be another big payday against a name.
It's classic professional wrestling storyline building. Your heel beats a bunch of fan favorites, with the crowd tuning in to watch him lose, until it's time to cash in and let him lose.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Dude, are you asking a serious question?
Askren, Woodley, and Diaz were MMA fighters, not professional boxers, and they all fought at 155 or 170. Joshua boxes at heavyweight, where he was once world champion. Joshua is definitionally a ranked contender in boxing, the others never were. There's no universe where an MMA welterweight and a heavyweight champion are comparable fighters. To say nothing of the difference in leverage and earnings.
I couldn't have predicted in advance the outcome of Jake's fights any more than I can predict what will happen in the next episode of a sitcom. But I can tell you how the plot arc will end.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
It's amazing to me that Jake Paul, a person I've only been peripherally aware of, has managed to reinvent professional wrestling from first principles, and make absurd money doing so.
For those blissfully unaware, Paul is a former disney channel actor and youtube personality who started setting up tomato-can pro boxing matches some years back, and slowly worked his way up through a series of has-beens to grandpa Mike Tyson. Whether those fights were on the level and he just won against bad opponents, or if they were works, is a matter of debate. Last night he organized a fight with a real contender, former heavyweight champ and olympic medalist Anthony Joshua, a fight that Paul was in no way qualified for, and in which he would certainly be murdered if Joshua chose. But, a fight for which each fighter stands to make around $90,000,000.
I feel like a crazy person seeing twitter fill with people gloating that Paul lost. As though that hasn't been the goal of building him up as a heel for years now, to set up a huge cash in when he faced a real boxer and people tuned in to watch him lose. That's always been the way of professional wrestling, build up a heel, make him win so that people hate him and tune in to watch him lose, until it's time for the big moment.
And people BET ON IT. This is like betting on the outcome of a TV show. How are gambling commissions allowing that to happen?
The phrase is overused, but generational wealth was produced in this spectacle. And I feel like I understand the past better. It was a classic "dumb guy" trait in TV and movies when I was a kid, especially older stuff, that stupid people believed that professional wrestling was real. And now I'm seeing people, many of them otherwise intelligent fight sport observers I follow, act like Paul's rejiggered version of professional wrestling is real. And they think they're the clever ones.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I find the whole "release the files" thing so funny.
If you really believe that there exists a DoJ employee who is so moral and ethical that he would neither leak an incriminating document during the Biden admin, nor destroy it during the Trump admin, and so powerful that he could not be fired or forced to do so during either; then you probably believe in the Easter Bunny.
If there is anything incriminating in there, it's going to come together weeks from now. It's going to be a reference that correlates to a hint that leads to a receipt that pulls on a thread that leads to an angle. It's going to be some clue so small that they forgot to redact it, and it's only going to make sense as a piece of circumstantial evidence, a piece that completes a puzzle we haven't taken out of the box yet. But probably it won't be that either.
It's not going to be something that MSNBC can broadcast in real time.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Let me know what you think of The Killer Angels, I was just talking about it with someone.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
- Girls are more attractive in casual clothing
Or
- Girls look younger in casual clothing
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Honestly, I figured I was on the low end here.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Nah, the pretzel stand is the Yoders, Stoltzfoos sells raw milk and prize winning aged cheddar.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I've been lucky enough to be able to train with champions in Muay Thai and BJJ within ten minutes of my ancestral farm. And we've got such high quality wrestling that I'm consistently getting smeared by D1 guys in class. I'm not knocking the quality of the training here, moreso if one day I find myself the best in the gym on any given day, I wouldn't feel like I was good at Jiu-Jitsu, I'd feel like I'm a big fish in a small pond who would get eaten alive at b team or whatever.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Leaving aside absurd Veblen goods, I could buy the highest quality stuff at full price. But I'd very quickly accumulate too much of it, because top quality stuff doesn't wear out in a year. I can only own so many suits and leather jackets!
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The Steelers winning would actually be a pretty hilarious outcome this year, for many reasons. And hey, why not? The only teams in the AFC bracket I really like are the Chargers and the Bills, and are both wildcards and are known to piss down their leg in big games. Bo Nix seems like a good candidate to implode, and the Pats seem a little young as an org, which is funny to say given that they're not that far removed from Belichek.
When Cowher was here people hated him too (how quickly we forget!) and came up with racial rumors that were just bizarre: Cowher and Kordell Stewart were secret gay lovers, which is why Kordell was still QB; Kordell was still QB because Cowher was having an affair with his sister; and Cowher impregnated a black woman who works for the Steelers. This last one is my favorite because it didn't explain anything. It should also be noted that the first one was an outgrowth of the rumor that Kordell Stewart had been arrested at Schenley Park's notorious "fruit loop", a public running track that's notorious for anonymous gay sex. There is no public record of such an arrest, but Stewart had to make an announcement to the team about how he wasn't gay, and every Pittsburgher's uncle knows the cop who arrested him.
This is why you need people, you never learn things like that from TV coverage.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I am curious if we'll see an increased defection rate from high-tfr subcultures into a low-tfr mainstream as the low-tfr mainstream ages and the value of young people increases. Arguably, this is already the dynamic of third world immigration to aging first world countries.
But I wonder if we'll see more young Amish or Haredi defect as they get a better "deal" from a mainstream culture desperate for young people.
When I buy pretzels from the Amish girls at the best pretzel stand in the world in Intercourse, PA; naturally one sometimes daydreams about marrying a pretty Amish girl in a bonnet. Theoretically, this is possible, to marry an Amish or Mennonite girl, but it rather seems not worth the effort. Right now, if I found myself single, like generations of wealthy but balding middle age professionals before me I'd get into my convertible and drive over to the local liberal arts college library and say "Whelp, nothing to worry about, they're still making them." But what if they stop making pretty undergrads? Then does the incentive to put a lot more effort into marrying the mennonite pretzel girl start to make more sense?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
So, they found him dead in a storage locker or something.
Conspiracy fellas, what's the deal? Was this dude a left-wing stochastic terrorist? Is this a coverup for...something or other?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
You can't just introduce random elements into your hypothetical haredi society and assume the breeding will stay constant.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I think you're missing my point, I'm not debating whether it is morally permissible to do what they do, I'm debating whether it would work without a much larger host culture that absorbs your cast-offs.
When nations face civilizational catastrophe, they've been known to try many things that don't work. It is important that we check to see if the thing we're trying will work before we waste time on it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I think injuries suck the most in the NFL, because you're sitting around with 52 guys that could win a Super Bowl and you're missing the one you need.
Though, of course, the Eagles won behind Nick Foles, so stranger things have happened.
I find it obnoxious to listen to in line at the Home Depot. That's really all I'm saying about. I'm not doing literary analysis.
At scouts as a kid, the Dreidl was crackerjack, so there's been some effort. And in middle school chorus, the token chanukah songs were normally pretty good. So it's not impossible.
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