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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3549 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 18, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Sort off topic, but don't know where to post it. I am trying to set up a mac ec2 instance. I am having a ton of difficulty rendering the macos GUI remotely. Not sure where to go for help on this problem. Looking for someone to give me help on setting it up. Contact on telegram or here. Will pay in crypto :BTC or ETH.

As an impartial spectator, I suggest giving more clarity on your bounty, whether it's an hourly rate for a walkthrough, or a performance/result based target. McDonald's can get away with advertising "competitive pay" because you have a rough sense of what that sector pays, and so does Glassdoor. Here the range is too wide to leave talented coaches guessing.

maybe $100. It has to do with pem files and ssh. here is what I am trying to do https://www.workfall.com/learning/blog/how-to-launch-and-connect-to-a-macos-instance-on-amazon-ec2-and-access-it-through-a-gui-using-vnc-client/ I am unable to complete the second to last step. I already set up the ec 2 sever and everything else. I think I am close. It is likely one of those things where making some tiny change will probably fix it but all my efforts have failed thus far.

I am not going to pay $300. Otherwise I would just buy a refurbrished mac and not bother with an emulator

Nice. Hope someone competent bites.

By the way, have you found much success in ad hoc bounty requests like this (whether here or any other site)? I've thought about trying the same when I encounter a problem or question for which I am willing to pay, but am stumbled because the internet somehow does not have a great platform to systematically connect buyer and sellers of transactional knowledge work. Why isn't there a Fiverr or Upwork for this? I mean I can name a few reasons, but still you'd think there would at least be more famous failures.

It was a tiny mistake. I needed to exit before imputing the command. problem fixed.

By the way, have you found much success in ad hoc bounty requests like this (whether here or any other site)?

I think it has the problem where it's too low or people feel ambivalent about taking money. It's hard to know how big or small the bounty should be. I think companies do not pay enough for major security bounties.

I think anyone who said they plan on getting their future kids circumcised in that thread a couple weeks back should seriously reconsider.

Your conclusion doesn't really seem to follow from the rest of your post. From what you've said, various students got this question wrong in spectacular ways. Only one of them had anything to do with the foreskin. The problem here isn't lack of familiarity with the foreskin, it's that these particular students simply didn't learn the material you're teaching.

I mean, "pee is stored in the balls" has been a meme online for a long time. I wouldn't assume that the students who said that meant it seriously.

It is funny that these kids got all this so wrong, I just thought you were making a serious argument as to why one shouldn't circumcise their children. If I missed the joke then mea culpa.

The volume of new posts slows some after Friday but usually continues until the Sunday small questions thread is added.

Today’s Wiki-walk:

After reading today’s XKCD (which is a real hoot, let me tell you), I scrolled down past where I usually scroll and found Randall’s links to other webcomics. I used to read Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics daily, so I clicked through to it, to procrastinate retiring to my slumber.

After today’s Dinosaur Comics (the plural is part of the title, similar to Psalms), I clicked the arrow for yesterday’s comic. It, too, was witty. Then I clicked the text for a random comic, and got one where the dinos discuss mathematicians always doing their best work before they’re 40. Both the Fields medal and the Abel prize were mentioned. This discussion was of interest to me, as I’m both over 40 and planning a paper for a discovery I’ve made in number theory.

Having never heard of the Abel medal, I Googled it. It’s a medal specifically designed to correct the oversight of the Nobels not including a prize for math. What caught my eye was the 2008 awardees, John G. Thompson and Jacques Tits.

John Thompson, the solver of the nilpotency of Frobenius kernels, and Jack Tits, the classifier of all irreducible buildings of spherical type. Also, the Tits alternative, the Tits building, the Tits cone (“of major importance is the fact that X is convex”), the Tits group, the Tits index, the Tits metric, and Tits systems.

I go to bed with a smile tonight thinking of Thompson and Tits.

Imagine being Glenn Ellison. You’re a highly respected academic at the top of your field, Department head of economics at MIT. One day you wake up and see your daughters face all over the internet. Half the world is calling her ugly, stupid, and evil. At the office, your colleagues are too polite to mention it, but you can see the disgust on their faces. What are you gonna do, blame it on the Harry Potter fan fiction? How does the daughter of the chief MIT economist not understand margin requirements or decreasing marginal utility? Everyone knows you failed as a father, and you just have to sit there and take it.

He'd already failed as a father by not getting her plastic surgery in her youth so she could possess a worthy level of beauty to fulfill her appropriate primary task as a female of worshiping and obeying masculine authority. (This is just not some dig either; I consider it a great political failure of society that aesthetic enhancement is not more available/common.) Everything after that is just one flavor of what would have assuredly been a harrowing outcome anyway.

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You look at the world around you and think it doesn’t focus enough on looks?

Yes and no.

No as in it's unfair to have a society that is so image-obsessed when eugenics to level the genetic playing field in regards to attractiveness (among other interventions) is hardly common or accessible. (Also no as in the natural hierarchy of beauty is often exploited solely in a manipulative way by malevolent forces, for example to paralyze men with addictions to pornography. And society also does its best to make everyone fat, which almost always results in a reduction in attractiveness.)

Yes in that we have a society that is delegates insufficient resources toward socialized beautification (particularly of females, who naturally demand beautification as that is a major part of the few apparent benefits that they can generally offer society as far as I perceive) for the benefit of all (but particularly masculine authority and power).

In an ideal world Caroline Ellison would have had any mockery-worthy aesthetic flaws (and I think she does possess a kind of "cute ugly" that isn't really much of a saving grace but at least has the possibility of being salvaged) corrected at no expense to her (or wouldn't have been born with them in the first place). The only small price (which is hardly a price in my calculation as I do believe that it almost certainly would have made her happier/resulted in a better life outcome for her anyway) would be her eternal submission to masculine authority, in particular the masculine authority of her specific masculine steward/owner, who would naturally make use of her beauty to enhance his own personal life satisfaction. Win/win.

The ideal society would beautify the entire volk, not use the beauty of some of its members to abuse others. (Of course some would inevitably still be more exceptionally beautiful than others for a variety of reasons, and this uniqueness and excellence would be celebrated in appropriate fashion (and not suppressed in some left-wing Harrison Bergeron-esque fashion), as this only serves the dignity of society overall and thus benefits everyone, but the median person would be beautiful enough, or at least not ugly, to not feel threatened by this.)

Physically unattractive but very intelligent woman. Definitely an unfortunate combination in the domain of finding love.

Tbf Bankman Fried is capital F fugly, So it was a match.

Sam is not a model, but when he wasn't overweight, he was fine. Plain, but no obvious faults and a friendly smile. No one would've said "it's obvious she's dating him for his money" or "he must have a charming personality".

Eh, I'd give him a 3/10. Her? Maaaybe a 4/10. She's pretty damn homely, but that "sultry wood nymph" picture indicated an okay figure? Plus, she's 21. 4/10 might be a little generous.

( @FarNearEverywhere was certainly correct in that "sultry" is atrociously optimistic phrasing. The girl is modestly dressed, and comes off as the kind of babysitter you know won't be abandoning your kids to make out with a boyfriend.)

In very short retrospect I regret having commented on their appearances at all.

Regardless of their failings, I shouldnt be concerned with their looks.

Sorry to be a killjoy but I don't believe this is what's happening (though there are American academics here, they should know better). Everyone is a hero of one's own story. And on top of that, academic elites are a highly conscious class as a whole, a guild on the level of a discipline, and a mafia on the level of a department. They are intensely clannish, prize loyalty over reason, and are largely incapable of taking responsibility or seeing things from the perspective of strangers. It's always the children, the profane masses, who are wrong. Doesn't matter if this is about replication crisis or collapsing an entire financial ecosystem. It is natural for an academic to fail precisely in the way he teaches not to, and to refuse to acknowledge it, appealing to his authority in the domain. Even more natural to excuse allies for the same. If anyone is disappointed, it's people who were already critical.

This is how I see it (modulo tone which I admittedly can't mimic well enough):

– Glenn... I was so sorry to hear about Caroline. Is she doing okay? If she has time, I can refer her to Pasternak, he's got an opening after getting rid of that crazy piece of shit. He's a real pro.

– Mr. Ellison, you should know we of the Nth Lab always have your back! Do not blame yourself and don't listen to those vile haters on the Internet! Tell Caroline we looove her!

– So G, I'll be blunt, this is a valuable life lesson for the kids. They got into a seedy market for criminals and tried to turn it into candy. Sounds nice, doesn't work like that – some things, some people, some communities are just rotten to the core, no point even trying to help. Yellen says they'll slam this crypto stuff with regulations over the next year and it'll die at last. And uh, you've other things on your mind, but just an advice: they should lay low now, maybe come back to Jane Street for a few years. Okay? Anyway, don't beat yourself over it, they'll come out stronger on the other side.

– What an awful situation. This ugly cunt Zhao, or what's his name, will rot in jail for what he did! I think she should go and set the record straight, even if it's stressful. What about an interview with The Economist?

– Ugh, so many Nazis have crawled out of the woodwork, on Twitter and other places... But you know how they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I've called Jonathan and there's an expert group forming to bring attention to those fuckers and put heat on the platforms.

– Caroline and Sam, you know how I've always thought about them, both brilliant kids, very talented, real doers. I've told you on Sam's Bar Mitzvah «that boy's gonna make a splash», and he sure did. It's such a great thing they met. A terrific project, too!. Losers love to see great people stumbling, so there's all this noise. Bah, everyone makes mistakes. I am sure Sam's going to get back on his feet and they'll do many more amazing things together. Just don't lose heart. Don't you and Caroline dare let the bastards see they're getting to you, you hear? It wasn't her fault.

Illforte pretending to be not Illforte and emulating «normal» humans is disorientating to say the least.

I've no doubt they are frustrated, and that there's lots of gossip, and unwillingness to actually allow those losers influence projects one cares about. But I am also 100% sure nearly everyone in those circles, at least outside one's private quarters, only blames hostile external forces for this meltdown – haters on Twitter, scamming crypto bros, Changpeng Zhao, maybe even journalists. This is just how institutions and senior academics reflexively attribute blame, in my experience.

Private conversations have impact. But what people say in public matters for which decisions they will be able to endorse.

According to her tumblr, her dad is Jewish and her mom is Catholic (she was raised Catholic).

When did he say Ellison was Jewish?

I think that was implied by the "Nazis crawling out of the woodwork" bit.

To be clear, that this will be/is being said whether or not Ellisons are Jewish, because Sam is and people assume they are too, and there is quite a bit of explicitly Antisemitic content being posted in relation to these events. I assume that MIT Department of Economics faculty do not take kindly to it; and as good liberals they are also driven to tar all attacks against their own with the discrediting Nazi brush – especially when the situation lends itself to it.

No idea if reaching out to Greenblatt is actually in the cards. The situation keeps getting sillier, Forbes has basically labeled her an alt-right figure:

In recent days, Ellison has faced a barrage of particularly nasty criticism from crypto boosters who blame her for overseeing the downfall of Alameda. But amid the vitriol she has found some defenders in an unlikely group of people who have celebrated the musings about race science and imperialism on a blog she allegedly wrote in college. Some of her defenders, who call her “Queen Caroline,” are followers of Curtis Yarvin, a neoreactionary political theorist and far right darling. Many of the people who have flocked to Ellison’s defense gather on Urbit, a peer-to-peer platform created by Yarvin, one of her online supporters told Forbes. [...]

The now-deleted blog, called WorldOptimization, is unsigned but a close associate confirmed that it was hers. In it, she wrote that "the sexual revolution was a mistake" and that she believed “women are better suited to being homemakers and rearing children than doing Careers." She also mused about race science, in one post saying the "genetic differences there are massive" when it comes to Indian people from different provinces and castes — which has become a source of discrimination in Silicon Valley. And at the top of her list of “cute boy things” was “controlling most major world governments.”

That's so strange, especially given that one anti-rationalist/EA journalist guy you linked once who also appears to be a big Urbit booster.

As with SBF, I suppose I have to ask: Caroline Ellison--secretly based? I've seen worldoptimization before back when I was on Tumblr, but they didn't seem so prominent in the Tumblr ratsphere (or at least, not compared to argumate or the-grey-tribe).

Some of her defenders, who call her “Queen Caroline,” are followers of Curtis Yarvin, a neoreactionary political theorist and far right darling. Many of the people who have flocked to Ellison’s defense gather on Urbit, a peer-to-peer platform created by Yarvin, one of her online supporters told Forbes.

Reportedly, this bit from the Forbes article came from someone who went full "Rahul Ligma" on them.

Argh.

The situation keeps getting sillier

Oh, indeed it does.

https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1593760608939167745

I admit I do not have any definitive reason to believe that they are, but Sam is; and the general pattern of association, occupations, credentials, the whole attitude and math-nerd-girl-geeking-out-about-moral-hypotheticals angle, makes this a priori likely. Anyway you can strip the Jewish aspects from my post – most of those lines do not hinge on it, Gentile academics are similar.

Contra @orthoxerox I don't think their appearances are much of a clue, Ellisons don't look distinctly Jewish in my book (in the way e.g. Zelensky or Yudkowsky do) – Glenn can easily pass for an Anglo, his wife for a Southern European, their daughter for a not very attractive product of such liaisons. The surname is also not definitive.

But maybe I just have poor Jewdar, miscalibrated in one or the other direction.

other than a few scattered examples of the word chutzpah, which of course has equivalents in many languages

«Of course». Well, that's about what I expected.

The late Leo Rosten, author of "The Joys of Yiddish," wrote that chutzpah means "presumption plus arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to.

This assertion of exclusivity itself sounds like chutzpah, ironically, but I'd rather believe this expert than you. Very many words do not have exact equivalents in other languages, and there are such words which do communicate a great deal about the culture and are only properly interpretable in its context – usually according to native speakers. For example, according to Vladimir Nabokov, «No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause...». An argument can be made that it's just depression plus a bit of narcissism, but that in itself communicates an important shade of Russianness (expressed both in our literature and suicide rates). Grozny, too, does not have an «equivalent» in modern English (but is evident in the Russian attitude to command chains).

Nor does chutzpah. Sapir-Whorf is wrong because it confuses cause and effect: much like evolution increases the density and diversity of receptors most vital for the species, a language develops finer distinctions to address things most relevant in the people's cultural and ecological environment. You know, Inuits have a trillion words for snow. Swedes have their Lagom – and their perfect taste. Jews have a ton of concepts that others have either not grasped at all, or found novel. Why do you think loanwords even exist – because they sound cool? Because native speakers narcissistically claim they mean something special?

I don't seen any argument that chutzpah is special

Except all arguments made by all Jews who've ever written on the topic, I suppose, starting with Rabbinical scholars cited in Wikipedia. Do you assert, say, that Catholics recognize the right of an individual to haggle with God? Do you not see how that is different from «courage, mettle or ardor» some Gentiles assume «chutzpah» refers to?

Or consider Bernar-Henry Levi, «The Genius of Judaism», speaking audaciously of what I believe can be seen as the intellectual foundation of chutzpah:

The idea of the wager, the sublime leap into the unknown of a Pascal who, tired of flitting between the computation of probabilities, pleasant diversions, and the silence of infinite space, decides to scale the wall toward the sound of the voices that he hears sighing in the shadows, to go faster than the music of the spheres though he is resigned to never knowing their ultimate secret, and even to travel beyond the light of the most powerful human understanding (his own) that the century had produced but that, despite its power, understood nothing: his wager took him beyond all that and, in a single bound, propelled him to the summit of creation and its end. But what could be more different from a Talmudic effort that never offers itself freebies, that skips no steps or rungs on the ladder, that forgoes no audacity of thought and will be satisfied with itself only once it has arrived at the end of the end of what it can think (not believe, but think)?

You pooh-pooh my examples. Care to show how they are unrepresentative, or point to a qualitative study of some rigorously defined form of chutzpah per religion or ancestry, say, comparison in rates of complex swindles and heists and exploits, adjusted for SES, perhaps? (Who would even have the boldness – if not chutzpah – to propose it?)

Look, this is very boring. I get it: Jews can be casually discussed as being special in positive ways, both well-evidenced and speculative (IQ, talents, «work ethic»), but cannot be special in negative ways (except ones that are compliments in disguise, like «excessively curious» or «too much empathy»). This is one of the cornerstones of Western culture, and all opposition to it is supposed to be defended with the rigor of a philosophical treatise, lest it be taken as evidence of a severe moral defect; while its affirmation can be as intellectually lazy as yours. «Of course there are equivalents».

But I'm not a Westerner and feel entitled to point out the obvious. There aren't.

would a non-Jewish fraudster like Frank Abagnale be a truffatore in the Italian tradition

Maybe he would. I, for one, agree that chutzpah, understood in line with my posts, is the correct term with which to label his actions. Or rather, the stuff he has asserted he had done, but apparently did not. Lying about being a cool sexy clever fraudster (but a harmless one! All victimless, baby!) to get book contracts, on the other hand, is not chutzpah – it's just, like, sad. It's telling that you have not reached for a less controversial example.

I'm curious now, do you even have any? Something on par with Soros or Madoff or Epstein or SBF or Bibi's scheming, if possible. Do provide it, before you leave.

Seems like this forum has a thing for Jew-related conversations, as well as the occasional Holocaust revisionism, which probably means I've overstayed my welcome.

There are definitely some of that sort here, but they are a minority. We allow people to present any idea here, even the most disreputable, so unsurprisingly, you will see the Holocaust revisionists and the pedo-advocates come out of the woodwork. I would not say this is a "flaw" per se (it is intentional that we don't censor any topics), but becoming the place where all the Nazis and pedos hang out is certainly a failure-mode we are mindful of.

Physiognomy, which is not very reliable. Putin's former son-in-law has a popular photograph of him that makes him look Jewish, but he is not, afaik.

So, physiognomy. Moreso of her mother.

A good few people with that surname are Jewish. E.g. the Oracle oligarch, the famously good, famously ill-tempered SF writer...

Also, an econ professor worth $225 million ? He probably cares a lot about having money, which is commonly associated with Jewish ethnicity and stereotypes are largely accurate..

Still, I'd not be entirely certain.

look Jewish, but he is not, afaik.

Ironically, some of the biggest IRL antisemites I know look Jewish. They aren't Jewish, either I know their ancestry or they simply too stupid.

Probably driven by child behavior dynamics or something like that. E.g. I look like a Jew so I better be more against them so I don't get confused or something like them.

Yeah, it seems it's way lower. Thanks!

Ive been seeing a lot of your comments on Bankman Fried et al. On here and on the main ssc sub. They are living in your head rent free. I think you should do a longer post introspecting why, but with more detail than you did for the first time where you mentioned that the fact they are your people is difficult to digest.

Yes his daughter is stupid and evil, without getting too philosophical about it. The most graceful thing he could do is take in the fact thay he failed as a father, whatever that means.

Aw come on, this is the greatest American soap opera since John Kelly took over as Trump's chief of staff and stopped the muslim bans. Even Musk can't compete, try as he might. What else do you want us to follow, Rings of Power?

I suggested him to make a longer more detailed post because I can sense there is a lot lurking inside of his head about this matter. Not to not post about it at all, quite the opposite.

I think you should do a longer post introspecting why

I've been thinking about that, but every day I wake up with a new theory about what happened or why it matters. A few days ago I almost pulled the trigger on writing a post on why I though they were trying to take over the world by cornering the market on crypto and hoping for inflation-induced demonitization of the dollar. I think at that point I couldn't accept the idea that they really were just that idiotic and unorganized.

I'm loving this #TwitterDown saga getting woke progressives melting: ‘Twitter Is Dead,’ 300 Million People Post On Twitter.

Some joke/facetious CW ideas. Feel free to add your own.

Patriot Visa

Should America have a "Patriot Visa?" (I mean a "Diversity Visa" already exists).

Because I am confident that no Indian or Chinese or Mexican or Guatemalan on Earth even if they study their entire lives can fake the real enthusiasm I have for The Constitution.

Reason for this? None at all. In fact there is no intuition to suggest that even the staunchest of Americophile will be a better pillar of his community or "contribute" more (taxes) than a genius third worlder who doesn't even know (in the true sense of the word, in that its not a string of letters with a meaning, but something that is not only felt in one bones, but desired) what freedom is. But just the hope that those who love America should be able to live in it.

At the very least, Those who receive it "deserve" it more than someone who gets a "Diversity Visa".

A case for White nationalism for non Caucasians.

If you hold classical liberal values (Or just not authoritarian values). It's most definitely likely that the overwhelming majority of people who do the same are white. Ofcourse its a guesswork but the ratio of people who hold said values among non-whites would be orders of magnitude smaller.

If we assume that there is some genetic component to political leanings. It's likely that the genes that encode a desire for all the "God Given Rights" are most often to be found in White people.

Thus it should be of concern to you that White people do not die out or become irrelevant in numbers to ensure the continued survival of your memetic ingroup.

Should America have a "Patriot Visa?" (I mean a "Diversity Visa" already exists).

How is that going to work? If it's moving the American Civics Test requirement from naturalization to immigration, then I expect one million Chinese, one million SE Asians, one million South Asians, one million Sub-Saharan Africans and one million MENA to apply and I bet your ass they will ace it like Apu did, even if you use the Trump's version. Five million new American patriots each year!

Hell, you could even slap the same requirement onto the existing Diversity Visa and the outcome wouldn't change one inch.

If it's not, how are you going to test for patriotism?

RETVRN TO TRADITION: Why NATO should seek to install Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on the throne of Ukraine

War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase 'with the addition of other means' because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace -- Do I really have to attribute this one?

The government of Ukraine cannot end the war with Russia in a position where Russia could renew the war in the future. As the permanent neutering of Russia is impossible or inadvisable, most commentators want to provide Ukraine with some kind of security guarantee from the USA/NATO/PRC that will prevent future Russian aggression, but negotiated in some unspecified way that it isn't just adding Ukraine to NATO, which it is basically assumed Russia wouldn't accept unless, as above, Russia was permanently neutered, which, as above, is impossible or inadvisable. Another problem being that Ukraine tried that shit once already, with all nuclear powers guaranteeing the integrity of Ukraine's borders, and we've seen how much that was worth when the bullets started flying. Given that Ukraine had non-alliance security guarantees in 2014 and in 2021, it does not seem like they would successfully repel Russian aggression. So how do we tie Ukraine to the NATO powers in a way that is genuinely credible and will be viewed by Ukrainians as a binding guarantee, but isn't article 5?

Let's look at how the Concert of Europe in the 19th century handled this: Constitutional or absolute monarchy was held to be the best form of government, and when a new country was formed, they would simply install a monarch from another royal family. The monarch's had no necessary special relation to their new domain, the first king of Belgium was originally considered for the job of king of Greece, which went to another German monarch instead. King Charles and his sons are descended from the Greek royal family [through a switch in royal houses en route] on his father's side, so it's family tradition to say: Prince Harry should form a mercenary corps, join the UKR forces and take Crimea, then Harry and Meagan should be installed as Grand Prince and Grand Princess of Kiev while naming Archie as Ilkhan of Crimea and heir while engaging him to the daughter of Ukrainian General or politician.

Harry does have some military experience in combat, and he's still young enough at 38 and popular enough, that he could credibly recruit a military force of thousands of veterans from the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia to join him in this venture. I think there's still enough weird tradition to get guys from the Commonwealth countries to want to ride out with a rogue devil-may-care prince into combat. He could get the money to fund their equipment and training from his friends Oprah and Tyler Perry and by selling the TikTok rights, or the CIA could fund it covertly, whichever, just get all the money for the full shebang of western toys. Take his fully equipped brigade of western veterans, go to Ukraine, and put up a good show. I don't think Harry is actually that bright, but he could find a bored retired general to handle the actual conquering for him.

At the end of the war, like our ancestors before us, the international community gets together to name Harry and Megan Grand Prince and Princess of Kiev. Now if Russia invades again ten years from now, do you really think that the UK is going to sit idly by and watch their King's son, their heir's brother, Diana's son, get thrown out? Maybe the UK public doesn't much like Harry and Meggan, but watching a close relative get deposed is just getting cucked as a kingdom, no way Sunak lets that happen. And is the US public going to let a celebrity BIPoC diverse prince and his valid mentally suffering actress mum get tossed in the tower? No way. We often mock the 19th century Royalists obsession with installing monarchs, but this was the purpose. It tied the new country to the international community by blood. In the same way, by creating a British ginger king and a halfrican American queen, Ukraine can guarantee that the two most important countries in NATO will have their back. And we'll be free of their podcasting project.

Now this is worthy of a nRX blogpost!

Eh, as perverse as these are, I don't think the FFT is the right place.

These are too CW loaded for the FFT, at the same time too vacuous for the CW thread. I'd rather shit up the FFT than the CW thread.

I think it's unreasonable to expect a person to love a country before they even move there. Anyone who claimed that without having first hand experience would just be the American version of a weeaboo.

Americans give immigrants at least a generation to habituate. Your Irish pappy might not care about the American Flag but you still have to stand up for the pledge of alliegence every day at school, and the children are what matters in the long term.

https://genius.com/David-kincaid-the-irish-volunteer-lyrics

Your Irish great grand pappy who served in the good ol 69th has entered the chat.

Which would be the standard patriot visa, citizenship for service.

in the true sense of the word, in that its not a string of letters with a meaning, but something that is not only felt in one bones, but desired

The word for this is "grok".

Careful, that Patriot Visa might pull in a hundred million new Americans if you don't add a cap to it.

Semi-joking. I've met a handful of fellow immigrants who would probably qualify. It's amazing how Hollywood/games/books can somehow pass on certain values that hook a person on the other side of the globe. Though perhaps not so amazing when you consider how so many cultures fall on the other side of the argument about "does a citizen belong to a state?" and similar.

Twitteratti Visa - To apply, one must show proof of the ability to serve as a mook in the CW. The applicant is graded according to how much time they can spend on Twitter, how good their skills are at finding low-quality, unreplicated social-science papers that prove their point, and finally, how long (in minutes) can they sustain a righteous anger.

This is a time-limited visa for two years. If the applicant is able to earn 250k retweets, the visa can be extended for another two years. After those two years, they can apply for a Green Card, but only if at least 500 other mooks swear on the logins that the applicant has never indulged in both-sideism, logical thought, or education.

edit: It appears I hit the wrong "reply" link. Meant to reply to the OP.

Playing a new game: ZERO Sievert

Very interesting and fun mix of top down shooter + roguelike mechanics + RPG mechanics + post apocalypse setting. There is lots of dying that has taken place. And the game has forced me to actually be very cautious about engagements. A single engagement with "easy" enemies can go wrong and kill you after you just spent twenty minutes slowly collecting items.

Areas turn pitch black at night, but once you get night vision goggles you can become a stalker of the night.

The video game footage shows the character getting in close range shooting matches with opponents. This footage had to have been made on some kind of cheat build. As far as I can tell the only viable path to survival is to get the longest range gun possible and snipe enemies before they know you are there. Tight corridors and fights inside of buildings are truly frightening because walking around a corner being the second one to shoot will kill you. If you manage to shoot first you still might bleed out from wounds if you don't bandage yourself quickly. The giant spiders, packs of wolves, and monsters with scythe arms are good for jump scares, but once you know how to handle them they don't pose too much danger. Its always the other humans that you can't trust.

I'm enjoying the detail with regards to weapons in the game. There are 34 different types of ammo , and 40 weapons which has been some awesome learning for me. I always learn things better through video games, and I've been meaning to learn more about the various types of ammunition. The Mosin Nagant has been my choice of weapon, and I'm always on the lookout for any 7.62x54mmR ammo on my scavenging runs.

Thanks for the review. If you're amenable, may I request you consider accompanying the text with a numerical summary? Whatever your preferred system--something out of 5 or 10, x%tile of games you've played this year, maybe even scored along specific dimensions like gameplay, story, etc.

It's easier to contextualize the details you provide once I understand your overall eval.

I'll think about it. In general if I talk about a game then I liked it. I don't discuss games I dislike.

Might have been a better fit for the WW thread but here goes.

I am bamboozled by this interaction with a girl. Help me make sense of this.

Context:

My mom is a photographer so she photographs people sometimes. I drive her to places if I am free and got nothing better to do.

So she wanted to hang out with one of her friends and photograph her daughter a bit as well.

I am a 24 year old guy. The daughter was 21 years old.

The weird part:

She literally wouldn't talk at all. Or even make eye contact. Like I would ask her a random normie question, she would answer it and then go silent again, often texting on her phone.

No I wasn't being weird. Since I had to kill time, I just wanted to talk to her and pass time. No I wasn't bothering her, the photography was done quickly and both us were captive there with our moms.

No I am not especially retarded. I literally talked as "normally" as any normal person ever normaled. No my breath didn't stink. No I am not horrendously ugly; In a generous day, I might even argue that I am more attractive than her.

This is the first time I had any interaction like this where the other person just refuses to talk to this extent. Like I can understand not talking if you are trapped there with someone for 5-20 minutes. Not if you are trapped somewhere with someone for hours on end!!

I wasn't being pushy, just tried to make conversation every 15-20 minutes. Every single time if I didn't follow up with a question she would just stop replying.

Is it just genZ being genZ or is this just how some people are? Or my fault? Or no ones fault?

I wouldn't over-analyze the whole status thing. Seems to me the most likely explanation is that she's just an antisocial weirdo. It's probably a lot more common than we'd like to believe for a random 21-year old today who hasn't already chosen to go somewhere for the specific purpose of being social with strangers to seem weirdly anti-social for no particular reason. I've known plenty of people, both men and women, in both categories - some will talk basically anyone's ear off on any occasion and others who are virtually impossible to pry a complete sentence out of even when they're at an event where people are expected to be social.

She's a 21 year old girl. If she's even remotely attractive, she's got 1,000 simps and and at least 20 Chads on her phone in her pocket, any of whom she can likely summon IRL quickly (except maybe the peak Chads, but even they'll come around eventually most likely) if that is her preference (as opposed to simply narcissistically basking in the endless dopamine cascade).

If you can't compete on quantity (impossible as one person) or quality (and due to feminine hypergamy in an environment of behavioral freedom for them, you'll have to be within a reasonable distance of the attractiveness of the most attractive guy who would be willing to pump and dump her for a night, not just more attractive to any degree, to be considered competitive in that realm by her), and if she is not in any way rightfully subjugated to your natural authority as a masculine entity over her as was historically enforced by men due to (among other things) the true nature of unregulated feminine behavior as you've experienced, then why would you expect her to give you the time of day ever?

What's in it for her? Nothing's forcing her, and no gain is on offer. Where's the incentive structure favorable to your mutual socialization? It doesn't exist. The only way to create it would be for you to become vastly elevated in sexual status (enriching yourself), which may or may not be possible for you, or for the natural edifice of absolute male authority and feminine reverence and submission to be reinstated (enriching all of your fellow men and all of humanity as well).

This assumes that the entire interaction is sexual in nature. He didn't say he's hitting on her, he was just trying to talk to her.

Now maybe she is attractive enough, used to being hit on, and stuck up enough that she just naturally assumes any attempt to talk to her by a male is a prelude to sexual overtures, and given her behavior that seems reasonably likely. But it's definitely not obvious or universal enough to just assume it is definitely the one definitive answer. People usually don't need explicit rewards incentivizing them to play nice in a conversation unless they are unusually antisocial.

Every interaction between the sexes is inherently sexual as in involving sexual dynamics. (Keep in mind that almost all credible evolutionary theories behind the development of every complex, non-erotic trait we have, from intelligence to comedy, tend to involve a significant portion of if not mostly boiling down to mating advantage. There is nothing in the behavior of an evolution-derived creature that is wholly untouched by reproductive fitness concerns.)

If you mean "sexual" as in "of an erotic character", I never assumed that it was explicitly at all. (The simps in her life certainly aren't having only explicitly erotic interactions with her, quite likely the opposite/none.) Without any insult implied, frankly the men bold enough to immediately make an interaction with an unfamiliar female explicitly erotic (even just by lightly hitting on her) don't tend to ask for socialization advice on themotte.org.

People usually don't need explicit rewards incentivizing them to play nice in a conversation unless they are unusually antisocial.

The younger generation seems to blatantly contradict this to me. They may be "antisocial", but the degree to which they are is no longer unusual.

I'm genuinely curious about the ages of individuals (particularly girls) most people replying to this acting like her behavior is bizarre and uncommon tend to interact with nowadays. In my experience "phone zombie" syndrome, especially among younger people, is quite common, quite normal, and rarely even considered poor etiquette by them (if they even care, which in my experience many don't, and if they do they usually just justify it with some reference to "anxiety" or something similar).

You're putting on a pretty high pedestal a girl who's stuck sitting around for hours on her phone.

Humanize her a bit and it's probably less likely she's made a rational calculation with ho logic to ignore the LVM than it is that she's neurotic and antisocial.

I'm not putting her on a high pedestal at all. (But I will say that if you've ever known/dated/been related to any hot girls recently you would realize how foolish it is to discount a girl's sexual status for "sitting around for hours on her phone"; they all do that nowadays. Let us hope that no playful AI ever gives a first world woman the choice between genociding men and losing access to Instagram Reels/TikTok because I assure you in that case we are gone fellas.)

The infinitely high simp (and to be clear those simps aren't necessarily loyal; most of them probably have more interchangeable girls on their phones than the reverse) factor and the possibility of being served in multiple Chad digitally-solicited all-you-can-fuck-buffets are both purely artificial phenomena that do not in any way reflect her value (and the exact numbers are just fun hyperbole) even if she is the hottest girl on the planet. (And since her attractiveness wasn't mentioned thus far we can't really run the probabilities anyway.) They are the product of modern dysfunctional sex dynamics held aloft only by the weakness of contemporary men. Were they to reverse course in reasonable unison with resolve, she could do absolutely nothing to stop them. Her pedestal, if she is on any, is made of toothpicks and playing cards and scarcely above the ground.

Oh and at no point did I say she made any sort of a "rational calculation with ho logic". Responding to incentives requires neither calculation nor logic as basically all of human behavior and society proves. If anything, seeing her behavior as a mere product of incentives is humanizing her.

I don't agree at all with the explanation that "you're the help, and women don't talk with the help". That's nonsense, I have known plenty of women who will happily make small talk with someone they hire to work on stuff for them. My best guess is that this is either (as you guessed) zoomers gonna zoomer, or this girl is very shy/introverted and was uncomfortable talking to you for that reason.

She has her own life. Maybe something important to her was going on but you have no idea about.

You showed up driving your mom around. That classifies you as "The Help" and self respecting women don't fraternize with "The Help".

At first, I was inclined to agree with you, but other comments have changed my view. If fez's mom was hired as a photographer, then yes, fez would be "The Help". For those who don't see what this means, imagine hiring a dude to retile your bathroom that brings his son along to unload the truck and now that the dad is busy tiling the son wants to hang out with your daughter. No way, Jose, go help your dad or go sit in the truck.

This is a different situation. The moms are friends, it's a social visit. It seems like social obliviousness runs in both families, though (FM for fez's mom, GM for the girl's mom):

  • FM should've mentioned she was bringing fez with her

  • GM should've replanned the whole hanging out thing to include fez

  • GM should've also included her daughter in the hanging out so fez wouldn't feel weird drinking tea with two older ladies

Instead, what the girl expected was this:

  • FM comes, hangs out with my mom, I can do what I want

  • then I do a photo session to make my mom happy and FM leaves

and got this:

  • FM comes with her son, hangs out with my mom while this dude is left moping about

  • I haven't been taught to be a gracious host, so I will try to pretend he doesn't exist until he leaves

Just to clarify, Everyone knew in advance what was going to happen. Both of them knew that I would show up.

Imo, GM did her part. I spent more time talking to GM than G. Lol.

About 3/4 of the way through I knew G was a gone case, and I might as well just shift my attention to something else, GM was very talkative though.

So yeah G was really really not interested.

Fair enough.

Cynical as I am, I am more likely to accept this reasoning as a cause. However the counter is that "The Help" and "The Useful" are not two distinct sets, And one would assume that "The Useful" are of neutral status at worst.

I actually ran this idea by some of my normie (but not stupid) friends, and they find it somewhat dubious because "The Help" is such a common role occupied by so many different people in so many contexts that it would be "crazy" for it to hold that much negative status connotations.

Would you have felt bamboozled if instead of a 21 year old girl, you were stuck with a 21 year old guy with whom you shared no discernable interest?

I don't think isolated interactions, barring ones that are extraordinary which I don't think this counts, are informative of what's going on with an entire generation or observation of how some people are. If you notice this same thing recurring, then it would be time for introspection and/or analysis of society.

And Occam's Razor would suggest it was very simple, that between talking to you and texting on your phone, she preferred the latter. I don't think that says much about other of you. Maybe odd of her if you're actually Harry Styles, but otherwise perfectly normal and unremarkable.

Lastly, I'd note that she probably wouldn't think it's very high status of you to be your mother's chauffeur. I think it's great that you're willing to help her, but she could very reasonably conclude that if your life is awesome, you'd be busy with your own priorities. And even if you were doing a favor for your mom by driving her, you might be busy with your own life working/socializing remotely via your phone, instead of "Since I had to kill time, I just wanted to talk to her and pass time."

Would you have felt bamboozled if instead of a 21 year old girl, you were stuck with a 21 year old guy with whom you shared no discernable interest?

With a guy, I would have much more readily chalked it up to poor/ a lack of social skills and moved on.

With a girl there is the element of poor social skills or {I am very unattractive}. Which is the bamboozling (hard to accept) part.

Lastly, I'd note that she probably wouldn't think it's very high status of you to be your mother's chauffeur.

Yeah this is definitely not "high status" behaviour. But its one of those things that need to be done.

As for your theory on her assuming I am even lower status because not only am I wasting my time being "a helper", I am not even making use of down time while doing that. I wouldn't discount that at all, after all signalling is king.

Let's just say, if that were the case, then fuck me for managing my "awesome life" by working overtime, completing things in advance, barely having much free time of my own.

But nevertheless, I probably shouldn't lose sleep over it. No one said signalling should be rational.

Maybe odd of her if you're actually Harry Styles, but otherwise perfectly normal and unremarkable.

This is the most ego preserving possibility, but the whole reason I posted was so that I could know if it could have not been this.

And clearly there are many potential cynical (!= not true) takes.

And Occam's Razor would suggest it was very simple, that between talking to you and texting on your phone, she preferred the latter.

Since plenty of people find themselves in this situation with even their own friends who are choosing to hang out with them, I'd go with this. No big explanation necessary.

Edit: problem seems to have gone away after restarting, so chalking this up to user error for the time being.

Has anyone noticed degraded performance for this site in the past few days?

Kids are pretty great.

My daughter just turned 3. Also I've been learning/practicing some wood working. So naturally my daughter thinks every crooked, marked up box or tray I give her is the most amazing thing ever she can't wait to use.

So I got a routing table finally. Trying to cut rabbets or dados with my table saw was just too time consuming, and difficult for me to get accurate consistently. Especially if I had to reconfigure the tool for another purpose, and then I had to dial it back in. Once I dialed it in on a router however, it was a piece of cake.

I made a small tray for my daughter's cluttered toy shelf, just to feel out how the router fits into the workflow. About 9"x11", poplar sides, a birch plywood bottom. Miter joined the sides, cut rabbets for the bottom, played around with rounding over the top lip. No nails or screws, just some extremely basic joinery and wood glue. Then some danish oil to give it a little bit of a finished look.

It's getting cold out though in my workshop, so I had to bring a space heater out to the workshop's office and do the danish oil in there. I've already brought all the liquids and batteries inside for the winter, so at least the can was room temperature when I brought it out. Been sticking with the wet on wet method I read about, where you just keep applying danish oil every 20 minutes for an hour, then wipe off the excess and let it dry for a day. So I finished all 3 applications, wiped off the excess, then brought it into the house to dry after another hour. I think it went well. Looks great, even on the poplar which I'd read doesn't take stains well. But I guess the danish oil isn't really a stain.

A couple things I learned during the process. The fence on my routing table was slightly misaligned. The left half of the fence was back maybe 1/64th of an inch further than the right side, resulting in a bit of snipe on the piece being routed as it came off the right half of the fence. Pretty sure I fixed that with a straight edge and fiddling with bolts. Second, I waited just a bit too long to get everything lined up after I glued it, and one of the corners was ever so slightly screwy. Came out mostly when I sanded, but I'll have to keep an eye on that. I think what slowed me down was the box clamp I was using was already too tight when I started assembly. Third, I seriously need a dust management system in that workshop. Even the smallest project results in every surface being plastered in fine sawdust. I have a small shopvac that works ok I guess, at least with the router. But it's utterly inadequate for the tablesaw.

And won't be anywhere close for the planer I want to get. Been eyeballing a simple "portable" dust collector, but I might go bigger with a chip separator, dust collector, and dust filter. Alternately I've seen people who just direct the output of the dust collector outside their shop instead of into a bag, which is appealing.

I think coming up soon I want to make a small bookshelf for the game manuals the accompany my retro pc game collection. Right now they just sit in a battered cardboard box, and it's impossible to fish any one manual out. I've got the perfect space for it, on top of my filing cabinet. I was tempted to buy a shelf for the purpose, but I couldn't find anything that quite fit my needs. But hey, now I can just make my own, exactly how I want to make it! Hurrah for that.

That's awesome! I loved helping my dad with his woodworking (really just being fobbed off sanding duty) but still love finish work. I've been using walnut oil more (it's another natural drying oil like tung or flaxseed/linseed). It's got a nice color and sheen.

Nice. I prefer hand tools myself, only my drill is powered. Planing a board by hand or chiseling out a groove or a dado is just more... personal?

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