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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3592 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 23, 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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Thursday 12/29 Wordle

formatted with Discord-style spoilers by Scoredle, which rated it par 5.

Starting with 14,855 words possible:

🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ CHIME (100)

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ PLANK (25)

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ FUDGY (15)

🟨🟨🟨🟩⬜ ACHOO (1)

⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨 WATCH (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 HAVOC

Vocabulary:

  • adhoc: spur-of-the-moment, impromptu, usually "ad hoc" or "ad-hoc"

  • dacha: Russian summer house

  • achoo: onomatopoeia for a sneeze

  • schwa: the character "ə" representing the indeterminate vowel you make when you're lost for words: "uhhhh..."

  • achar: a spicy and salty pickle in Indian cuisine

  • aucht: Middle English "eight" or "eighth", Scots "possession, ownership, or property"

  • gatch: a form of plaster of Paris formerly used in Persia, borrowed from Persian

  • sauch: archaic Scots for "willow"

  • ratch: Nouns: a ratchet wheel, a white mark on a horse's face, a bird (petrel, dovekie, little auk), a dog which hunts by scent. Verbs: to stretch, to streak, or to sail by tacks.

  • gauch: Old Occitan ("Romance") for joy

  • vauch: Southwest English "to move fast", found in only 2 of 8 Scrabble dictionaries

  • daych: Southwest English "to thatch", equally rare

  • fauch: A desire; a yearning, to bite the bit when restless, to champ. From faunch, from mid-century SF zine culture

  • bacha: Borrowed from Hindi, "child" or "young person"

  • tacho: prefix of tachometer, sometimes used in racing slang (tach is more common)

  • tachs: plural slang for tachometers

  • bachs: plural slang for bachelors

  • accha: Sanskrit for bear

  • schav: Yiddish (from Polish) for a kind of borscht made with sorrel (or occasionally lemongrass)

  • oshac: The perennial herb whose stem yields ammoniacum.

Wednesday 12/28 Wordle

formatted with Discord-style spoilers by Scoredle, which rated it par 4.

Starting with 14,855 words possible:

⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨 CHIME (78) - December theme word 1

🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ PLANK (1) - December theme word 2

🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜ IMPLY (1) - eliminating possible positions

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 IMPEL

Tuesday 12/27 Wordle

formatted with Discord-style spoilers by Scoredle, which rated it par 4.

Starting with 14,855 words:

🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ CHIME (308)

⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ PLANK (13)

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ FUDGY (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 CONDO

A few vocabulary words from those thirteen:

  • codon: a sequence of three adjacent nucleotides, which encode for a specific amino acid during protein synthesis or translation. Alternately, a handbell used for summoning monks or the "bell" or flaring mouth of a trumpet.

  • cogon: a type of grass.

  • cyton: the cell body of a neuron or of a dentin-producing tooth-pulp cell.

Monday 12/26 Wordle

formatted with Discord-style spoilers by Scoredle

Starting with 14,855 words:

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 CHIME (812)

⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜ FUDGY (4)

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ PLUMB (2)

⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 NUDGE (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 JUDGE

Quite the pleasant surprise: my holiday-themed words gave me 4/5 letters in their proper spots. Happy Boxing Day!

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩SLATE (506)

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩BRINE (90)

⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩CHODE (7)

⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩WEDGE (4)

⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩FUDGE (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩JUDGE

For a few days now, I've been volunteering for the Motte by rating comments, and I have no idea if I'm any good at it, but I realize the rating effort is changing how I read comments on the site. Where is the line between a crass joke and mean-spirited comments that don't belong here? Does that well-written effort post faithfully report the current state of knowledge and research? Or is it just a bad take that wears the skin of well-reasoned argument? Before, I would occasionally upvote or downvote, but the vast, vast majority of the time I would do neither, so I wasn't forced to have an opinion, I'd just chuckle at a joke even if it's bad without caring if it belongs here or note a novel idea without deciding if it's well-reasoned. Now, I find myself reading more carefully, even when I'm not rating.

I have a new respect for the moderators and admin. It's a tough job.

I have a new respect for the moderators and admin. It's a tough job.

Maybe this is was the real motive all along...

Sunday 12/25 Wordle. Merry Christmas!

Words remaining out of 14,855:

🟥🟥🟥🟥⭐️ CHIME (2,536)

🟥🟥⭐️🟥🟥 PLANK (319)

🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥 FUDGY (129)

🟥🟥🟩⭐️⭐️ VOTER (3)

🟥⭐️🟥⭐️⭐️ WASTE (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 EXTRA

Hey look, I made a Christmas tree!

Unlike the execrable Thanksgiving Wordle, FEAST, this one doesn't feel curated||. It does, however, ||have the X from X-Mas, in which X is the ancient abbreviation of Christ.

Vocabulary words from the unchosen two remaining after my 4th and 5th guesses:

  • TETRA: small freshwater characiform fishes highly popular in home aquaria.

  • RETAX: one of the most abominable revenue-collection practices of governments. Meme for your edification.

I start off with ARISE, MOUNT and if necessary GLYPH.

Scoredle 5/6

14,855

🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨 ARISE (242)

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 MOUNT (32)

🟨🟨⬜🟨🟨 TAKER (5)

🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜ REACH (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 EXTRA

Decent starters!

Outside of December - Jan 1, when I’m using CHIME and FUDGY in case the holiday-themed curation returns, I either pick a random word or “yesterday’s” solution to start. I’m usually able to find two more five-letter words which take my guessed letters to fifteen. Someday I’ll go through that historical Wordle site and make notes on just how often “yesterday’s” solution is a good starter word.

Merry Christmas mottizens. Just want to say I’m grateful for all y’all hooligans. They said we couldn’t do it but here we are, survived another move, better than ever.

I hope you all get to spend some quality time with your families this holiday, and for a few minutes are able to let go of your frustrations and worries, and bask in Christmassy happiness.

To those without families nearby, I hope you have friends and loved ones. If you’re all alone reply to this post and I’ll talk to you. I know this is just a forum where we debate the culture war, but I’ve come to see it as a little online home. Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.

I'm filled with love for all you mother fucking hooligans. Keep being you. Nothing else will let me be me.

Every year around Christmas time I listen to the excellent radio recording of Crumpet the Elf's description of working as Santa's elf at Macy's in New York in the early 90s.

May I present:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/47/christmas-and-commerce/act-two-19

Dreading spending Christmas talking to your family while bored? Looking for a distraction?

Well look no further! Now is the perfect time of year to join us playing Blood on the Mottetower. It’s a fun little social deduction game where you get to lie about who you are and try to bluff others, while solving a murder.

And don’t worry it’s entirely text based so you don’t have to talk to internet weirdos at Christmas. @SubstantialFrivolity

Just click the link, go to the recruiting channel and hit the Christmas tree reaction to sign up, and join soon! Game starts later today.

Merry Christmas, Motte. Frohe Weihnacht.

Io Saturnalia!

God jul!

Saturday 12/24 Wordle:

⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 CHIME (150)

🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ PLANK (7)

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ FUDGY (6)

🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩 PRIZE (2)

⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨 VOTES (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 POISE

Vocabulary time! For once, Scoredle had a lot of decently popular words for me: prize, poise, pride, prise, peise, peize, poire. Here's the obscure ones:

  • prise: use force in order to move, move apart, or open something.

  • peise, peize: to weigh something down; to poise it for measuring on a balance scale). Pronounced "peese".

  • poire: French for pear, also pear-shaped things, also pear brandy or a beef cut. You can pair poire with poire for dinner, then have poire for dessert, right before things go poire. Like my fourth guess.

I don't do these too often because they get extremely boring after a while and I eventually stop putting effort into guessing the word, but here's my attempt at Saturday's Wordle. Couldn't get my formatting to look like yours, but I've done my best:

Wordle 553 4/6

⬛⬛🟩🟨⬛

⬛🟨🟩⬛⬛

🟨⬛🟩⬛🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

My guesses, in chronological order:

ADIEU

WEIGH

SLIME

POISE

Image for proof:

https://imgur.com/a/S3dnt98

The tool I use is https://scoredle.com with the Discord formatting (to the right of Reddit formatting). It also shows how many of the 15k 5-letter English words remain possible when certain letters are eliminated. Here’s yours:

Scoredle 4/6*

14,855

⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜ ADIEU (200)

⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜ WEIGH (94)

🟨⬜🟩⬜🟩 SLIME (7)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 POISE

The seven words left after your third guess were poise, noise, prise, brise, crise, frise, toise.

Hi just signed up!

Welcome to the witches’ den. I hope you enjoy!

Hello, how did you find us?

Friday 12/23 Wordle:

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ CHIME (3,340)

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ PLANK (459)

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ FUDGY (112)

⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨 SABOT (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜ TROVE (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 AORTA

This was one of the toughest Wordles I’ve faced, simply due to not getting the placement of any letters. It was also the first time I’ve had over a couple dozen words still possible after these first three guesses in particular.. It was only when I placed the yellow letters in alphabetical order that I finally got it.

They've been dropping more double vowel words recently, which I find requires getting placement correct or your hooped. Annoying for sure. Doesn't help I only use PENIS as an opening word.

As we prepare to celebrate the single most important event in history, I want to celebrate some positive things in the culture war arenas rather than focusing on the negative.

Item: the NFL is so often an arena of the worst of inarguably Toxic Masculinity, full of murderers playboy plastic surgery victims and whoremongers, all beating each other into early onset alzheimers. But the Philadelphia Eagles' pro-bowl bound best offensive line in the damn business made a Christmas album to raise money for charity, and it is an example of pure masculine excellence.

Seriously, watch that documentary, it's seven minutes long and it is all fantastic. Just three of the biggest, baddest sons of bitches in the world, drinking heavily, laughing their asses off, and working on their singing voices. Jordan Mailata, who could play Goliath with zero special effects, croons like he's Bing fuckin' Crosby out here. Jason Kelce, a multi-millionaire world champion, is wearing his favorite Christmas sweater: a women's sweater he got at a thrift store (seriously, how big was this woman? Kelce is 295 lbs!) and ranting about how much he loves it. Lane Johnson, who looks like he's cosplaying as [CueBall from Pokemon](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Roughneck_(Trainer_class)#::text=A%20Roughneck%20(Japanese%3A%20%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%83%98%E3%83%83%E3%82%BA,%2C%20Eevee!%2C%20Punk%20Guys.), is working hard at hitting all the notes.

This is what ideal masculinity looks like. Strong, big, tough, accomplished men who are hanging out, talking trash, singing, playing for a good cause, humble but striving to do their best at every task. Giving props to each other, and to the experts they brought in to help them. If one day I want to show my son the ideal of masculinity, this is it.

Seriously, hometown bias but still, how can you hate this Eagles team? Jalen Hurts answers every interview question "We're just taking it one week at a time." The offensive line is making a Christmas album for children's charity, the wide receivers are all Batman no Robins, while the cornerbacks stand up for each other. Most lovable NFL team I've ever had the pleasure of watching. In the wildest dreams of DelCo drunks, if this becomes the new NFL dynasty, we have to assume it represents a moral improvement for our country over the Brady-Belichek Patriots era right?

Item: every week we have a new Woke-Bait or Woke-bation media property to complain about, forcing diversity where it doesn't belong. I want to take the day before Wigilia to call out a perfect example of trans-inclusivity done right: the TikTok classic Girls by The Dare. Listen to the whole thing if you don't know it, it's like two minutes with no solos.

The lyrics to the first verse run through a list of types of girls the singer wants to bone:

I like tall girls, small girls

Girls with dicks, call girls

Girls who get naked on the 'Gram

That's just brilliant. The trans inclusive clause "Girls with dicks" comes right in line with tall, small, call, and instathots. Treated as perfectly normal! Girls with dicks are girls, the singer is (ridiculously, libidinously) heterosexual, girls with dicks are girls so he likes them. At the same time, they are included in a list right before the perfect perverted poetry of:

They say I'm too fucking horny

Wanna put me in a cage

I'll probably fuck a hole, in the wall, the guy before made!

and another list made up of pregnant girls, Catholic girls, and kinky girls; this all winks at the idea that girls with dicks are something of an acquired taste, that real heterosexual manly libidinous Dionysians like the singer might like it, but others might not. And that's fine, more for him!

That's how you do inclusion! Don't force it, don't try to make it "nice," acknowledge perversion for perversion and celebrate perversion as perversion! Don't force it down everybody else's throats, force it down the throats of other consenting adults!

Give me all your favorite examples of things that are just done right! Ideally things that aren't culture-war combatants, but things that do CW stuff right.

I'm biased towards Jalen Hurts for Oklahoma reasons, but yeah. Gotta love that team spirit. I think this is a the sort of stochastic excellence that can be found in most any field--if you cast a wide enough net. Maybe it's naïve of me, but I think a lot of people are just living good, valuable lives. It's easy for that to get buried by the one Outrageous Thing of the day.

100% but it's a rare moment when I watch a YouTube video and I'm just filled with love for humanity. Real talk I'm only every critical of my kotteish brethren inasmuch as I think y'all can do better than you're doing. I want all men to be as happy as they can br. Feliz vnavidad.

Merry Christmas!

It's sometimes difficult to notice the positive things that take place, us being drowned in the CW and all, so I salute your effort in bringing joy & merriment to the fore.

In a similar spirit, have other mottizens ever gotten a semi-random stranger to compliment them? It's an amazing feeling. It also feels good on the giving side. Give it a try, if you get a chance.

Merry Christmas! And in the spirit, I love your username. Paine is an underrated founding father.

Agreed he had a lot of, as they say, common sense. ;)

Amen! and Merry Christmas! These guys are great to watch. I agree that the most masculine thing possible is to excel so much you don’t need to fake confidence or worry about how you look, just enjoy yourself and have fun with your fellow men. Looks like a blast.

I’ll toss The Goblin Emperor in the ring, that book is CW stuff done right. A coming of age novel of a downtrodden outsider finding himself in the center of power and learning what it means to have a backbone.

Also White Christmas is a masterpiece of masculine confidence and camaraderie, but also much more. I saw it for the first time this year and cried it was so damn good. Can’t recommend it enough.

That's my mom's favorite Christmas movie! We watch it every year. Reminds her of my grandfather, who was a POW in Korea and had similar bonds with his comrades. Definitely a classic, and a heartwarming film. Up there with It's a wonderful life in my mind.

🎶 and I fall asleep, counting my blessings 🎵

Ideological disagreements withstanding. Hate to be thay guy. But this reads as insincere enthusiasm. Maybe because Im not from Philly or watch the NFL.

But this brand of masculinity being the pinnacle of masculinity, is just too on the nose. Too similar to the woke PMC ideal of masculinity that is just femininity with beards, muscles and beer! (Read the Last Psychiatrist?). Its too focussed on the aesthetics, would you sing the same praises if it was 3 lanky programmers and not NFL players singing for charity?

To me its just 3 dudes taking the piss and having fun... for charity. Which is great, but I am left wondering whats so inspiring? That they are not afraid to be goofy?

Archetypically, Charity is feminine, its sharing, its communism. Masculine excellence is creating wealth out of nothing, exploring the frontiers, its being devoted to a goal singlemindedly for the love of the game..

Charity is feminine, its sharing, its communism

Can we not let communists and women exclusively claim things for themselves†? Can we share good ideas with women and recognize their masculine aspects?

†I mean, other than abolishing capital and giving birth to babies.

  1. Charity is inherent to masculinity, magnanimity, abundance. It's the "King" archetype in the King Warrior Magician Lover grouping; I'll acknowledge that our society offers precious few examples of men who fulfill that role so it may be difficult to comprehend today. But every Indo-European pagan culture from the Sagas to Homer to the Vedas enjoined the great Kings and Lords to be generous to their people; every Abrahamic prophet from Mosaic Law to Christ and his Apostles and Saints to the Quran and Hadiths enjoined a true man to be generous to those less fortunate. To say that Charity is communism or effeminate, that sharing with others less fortunate is bad...that's just fucking lost, dude. Masculine excellence that is limited to striving is taking the warrior and the magician and losing the king and the lover. Which might be why the world is so lost, we have no fathers and no husbands because men don't exercise those archetypes, those virtues. Which is what made the video so refreshing!

  2. would you sing the same praises if it was 3 lanky programmers and not NFL players singing for charity?

100% if it were 3 lanky programmers who were top .01% in the universe at their craft, nationally renowned, and wealthy. Hell, I'd probably have the exact same feeling if a similarly joyful, bro-ful video of Sergei Brin, Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Elon Musk making a drunken Christmas Album for charity came out. That would be a similar, probably even more powerful, demonstration of the Christian spirit of giving and the masculine spirit of magnanimity and brotherhood and not taking yourself so seriously! Charity calendars are practically a tradition among young professionals these days, and widely celebrated.

Charity is inherent to masculinity, magnanimity, abundance. It's the "King" archetype in the King Warrior Magician Lover groupin

Call it what you like, but personally I think there's a slight difference in tone there; I would call that Magnanimity, or gift giving for functional purposes (to create bonds of allegiance and affection, to increase the capability of an underling, or to ostentatiously show off wealth and power to third parties). Charity I would describe as gift giving out of pure empathy.

Maybe I'm being too tetchy about it, IDK.

I mean we can definitely play patty-cake with it for a million years about what is empathy, does altruism exist, was there a purpose to this action or that action, and where the historic sacred responsibilities to strangers fit in. And I'm sympathetic to the argument that there's a meme of stripping masculinity out of masculinity. But I disagree with the idea that charity is feminine, that just does not track for me by tradition, by experience, or by logic.

It's the "King" archetype in the King Warrior Magician Lover grouping

See also, the seasonal carol "Good King Wenceslas."

To say that Charity is communism or effeminate, that sharing with others less fortunate is bad...that's just fucking lost, dude.

I agree. I hate to invoke political, ideological memes in this context, but libertarians are prone to pointing out the difference between men with guns telling you what to do in the name of helping the less fortunate, and going out and doing it yourself because it's the right thing to do. In spite of being atheist, I'll also invoke my former religion, and leave a quotation that I was thinking about last night while I struggled through my yearly requirement of midnight mass:

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

-- Matthew 6:1-4, ESV

I feel like the world could use more of this sort of morality, of quietly doing what is right, knowing that that is good enough, and other people don't need to know all of the gory details. Exemplified by people like Nicholas Winton and Dale Schroeder, who toiled and risked for the sake of others without ever seeking a shred of credit.

Charity is not antithetical to masculinity but it is only ever contingent, and contains within it a contradiction. A king might give alms, but his crown cannot be shared. We might wish for nicer, more generous, and more magnanimous kings - but we cannot all be king, no matter how gracious superior men might be to inferior ones.

Which might be why the world is so lost, we have no fathers and no husbands because men don't exercise those archetypes, those virtues.

What would be the point? The virtues of charity and magnanimity are predicated on being part of a superior elite to begin with. There's no value in being humble when you have nothing to be humble about, in being charitable when you have nothing to give, in being a generous and open-minded lover when nobody wants your love. For the average person who isn't a top .01% physical specimen or a millionaire, meekness and humility aren't assets, they're massive handicaps.

Yes, not every man can achieve the highest ideal of masculinity, just as he cannot achieve being the ideal of the student or the athlete or the tycoon or the Don Juan. That doesn't mean they can't learn from great exemplars.

But most every man is king to some in some way, and it's important that he treat his kingdom well. That's the philosophy of the great chain of being, whether it's a king and his nation or a peasant and his dogs, relationships of mutual loyalty and benefit follow the same schema.

To say that Charity is communism or effeminate, that sharing with others less fortunate is bad...that's just fucking lost, dude.

Didn't say it's bad. Just that it's not one of the principal components of Archetypal Masculinity.

My argument was more along the lines of if you extracted out the features that define both masculinity and femininity, you would have a set of different features. Some of those features would overlap (Charity might be one of them). But the strongest signals let's say the top 5 strongest signals would be different. That's the entire reason why two different words are used to refer to two different things.

Charity is sharing. It's making sure everyone has enough, that no one is left behind. It's a top 5 feminine feature, not a top 5 masculine one. Maybe a top 20 masculine one.

Which is why I said its a bit on the nose to claim that what is inherently a feminine archetype (not action) being Masculine excellence.

100% if it were 3 lanky programmers who were top .01% in the universe at their craft, nationally renowned, and wealthy.

That's the (dare I say) feminine fixation on aesthetics.

Focussing more on the people than the act.

I'll think about The King Archetype.

Which gender does "stretching archetypes" belong to?

I believe there are a number of software devs here. Are there any Linux / C / embedded devs here that would be willing to mentor or offer some signposting for a (near) total beginner on writing what ought to be a simple single function program? By which I don't mean "make a mobile app", I mean "read this one function call from a piece of hardware and print the value to the terminal".

I've gathered a few of the concepts but I don't have enough knowledge to grasp whether they're the right way to approach the matter and whether I'm focusing on the relevant level of abstraction.

Edit: Help is being provided. Thank you Motters.

Are you writing the hardware's driver, or just a userspace program interacting with an existing driver?

I'm definitely not writing a driver, just trying to read (physically read, with my eyes) one value from an existing driver. I've got someone helping me now and fingers crossed I can use an existing library / script that I missed to get me what I need. Looks like I overshot the mark and ended up in the kernel zone.

Maybe unrelated to your needs but I believe people waste too much human resources on niche low level languages like C/C++/rust (I've extensively learnt both BTW) and could get much more proficient and expert in their job language instead, such as Kotlin which is the sweet spot IMHO.

The language wars are a CS student thing, not a programmer thing.

Good luck making a website that is any good with C or programming a microcontroller using JS.

It all makes sense when you realize the flamewars are being fought by;

  • CS students arguing over which program to use in their data structures and algorithms project, most of them are yet to write a program that is one any use to anyone. To them, the idea of a language genuinely being good for a specific task is still alien.

  • Old-timers posturing about the good ole days.

To argue that every languages are equal is intellectual obscurantism.

Of course both CS students and old timers are major tribes in that culture war but that is irrelevant to the fact that languages have objective features and merits that can be civilly discussed.

Im strongly skeptical that a vast majority of the people partaking in those wars are priviledged to the level of job security where deeply rooted perks/flaws of the language actually matters to them, relative to how strongly they feel about it.

Outside of a flamewar context where the technical details are of concern, I have no issue with dissecting languages.

Who is the female equivalent of Gigachad? Gigachad is ultramasculine (a bodybuilder with a massive, chiseled jaw) and women rate him less attractive than men. Who's that woman that makes women go "yasss, that's our gender's ultimate form! What's do you mean she's not that hot?"

I so do not want the answer to this turn out to be Kim Kardashian.

Anecdatally I’d say Aubrey Plaza: all of the women I know find her very attractive, but not a single man.

I'm a man and I find Aubrey Plaza irresistible.

Aubrey Plaza is like, probably top 5 on celebrities I'd do. Thin and aggressively mean is my type. If she had glasses she'd be perfect.

Anecdatally I’d say Aubrey Plaza: all of the women I know find her very attractive, but not a single man.

I'll register as a straight man who finds Aubrey Plaza very attractive.

Aubrey Plaza

She's got a severe case of RBF. When she's not smiling she looks like she's going to give you detention.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after observing Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown (2005), said that the MPDG "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures"

Perfectly measures the most toxically feminine themes in every role Zoe Deschanel (sp?) ever played. Accomodating, but fun, but pretty, but not arrogant, but interesting, but not independent, but not needy, but not frigid, but not nymphomaniac, but not religious, but not materialistic.

ETA: Real life example Springora's Consent. A book I am torn about in general, in particular because she is 14, but that's the essence of toxic femininity. Seeing oneself as a side character, as the muse rather than the artist, as the object rather than the subject. That's the essence of everything bad we tell women to be.

MPDG is an female archetype men like and women don't like that much, not one women like and men don't like that much. To complete the quadrant, a man women like and men don't like that much would be one of these scary, dangerous, but brooding and haunted men with a tormented soul that need a woman in their life who can tame them and heal them. A Byronic hero.

I disagree. Your great MPDGs aren't in male-focused media, where they would appear in male focused media they only show up by reference to or in imitation of more famous female-focused works. Elizabethtown is a romcom starring Orlando Bloom, while New Girl had a viewership that was better than 60% female. You're not seeing MPDG archetypes show up as Bond girls or the fresh love interest in F&F 14.5. Women like MPDG media, men don't really care for it. On the other hand, real life gigachad types (John Cena, Ah-nold, Stallone, the Rock) never appear as RomCom protagonists in female focused movies, they appear in male focused movies where women are attracted to the things men like about gigachad (muscles, aggression, etc.).

Women dislike the MPDG archetype and complain about it because it is what they imagine they need to be to attract a man*. In the same way that the gigachad archetype/meme comes directly from RedPill/PUA/Incel discourse about how that is what they think women want. Both archetypes are taking the resentments that losers think apply to winners and expanding them endlessly past the point of logic. They're the gender/romantic equivalents of the old gag about Trump being a hobo's idea of a rich man or of scrooge McDuck.

Where the reality is that what most attracts partners is a mixed approach of quality/attainability. The Girl Next Door archetype for women. The classic romcom professions for men: Architect, small business owner (especially family business), farmer, widower with kids, reporter etc.

*In any women's discussion of mating, "attract a man" can be read to include the qualifiers "a man who is sufficiently tall/attractive/rich/committed/whatever." Similarly, but to a lesser degree for men.

Apparently I'm not the most men, as I find her very attractive. That said, the point about makeup in other comment applies. I think it's something that is supposed to be "oriental" and "exotic" and I don't like that part too much.

Interesting. What makes her so attractive to women?

Some of these women are not unattractive, but have a strange fixation with using makeup and accessories to look like they're about to issue an ultimatum to the Spartans at the head of a vile heathen army.

I can't tell where this style came from, although it seems influenced by the transvestite men who are so prominent in the fashion industry. Like women pretending to be men parodying women.

I can't tell where this style came from

Those lines, and that style in particular (including skin tone, to the extent it can be done artificially) absolutely screams "ancient Egypt". Which is... probably what they were going for given the rest of the outfit.

As for why the aesthetic is considered pleasing, it's probably just to try to accentuate the eyes (the modern equivalent being the racoon-style eyeshadow, but I think there's other things going on there).

It's less the eye makeup (although the sharp eyebrows are odd) than the extreme cheekbone emphasis and garish lipstick. Neither enhance their feminine features, but seem intended to make them look androgynous and exotic.

It seems like the exact sort of thing a homosexual autogynophile male fashion designer would want to make popular.

Aren't autogynephile and homosexual supposed to be mutually exclusive, autogynephiles being heterosexual men who like to imagine themselves as women because they like women?

My intuition is that autogynephilic men often want to transfer the kind of direct sexual desire that women receive to themselves, and they pursue that by attempting to transform into a woman in some kind of semiotic signifier-signalled double switch around. The resulting sexual desire comes from men/masculinity, which at one level of argument would render it homosexual. It's inherently complex and so it depends if and where you slice it into parts (homo/hetero) or if you sum the parts (man-loving-himself-as-a-woman, or -as-he-himself-loves-women, or etc).

Thank you. That's exactly what I was trying to get at without having the vocabulary.

I'm not aware of any female equivalent meme such as Gigachad.

But here are traits I have noticed that women weigh very highly compared to straight men.

  • Good sense of fashion.

  • Being thin to a fault.

  • Fancy haircut.

  • Interesting looking face (!= attractive face)

  • Overall aesthetic such as "art hoe" or "cottagecore".

  • Male like personality, think humor, sarcasm and aloofness (they project what they find attractive in men to other women)

If women wanted to optimize being maximally attractive to men and not what other women would think is attractive (sort of like the gigachad meme but in inverse), they would optimize;

  • Breast size

  • Butt size

  • Facial neoteny, or neoteny in general

  • Bubbly personality, high agreeableness (genz calls them "pick mes" lol)

You're modeling female heterosexual attractiveness as "being someone he'll dump a fuck in." Which is kinda like saying "If you're willing to scrub toilets you'll never be unemployed."

That is so say, true, but also bad advice for most people seeking to achieve something.

Yes because I am talking about SEXUAL attractiveness. Which is not the entire equatiion when choosing a life partner.

After all Gigachad is modelled as a Sex God implicitly, not a good husband.

You probably won't see even one person with a truly beautiful/stunning face, because they're that rare.

Why not? There are plenty of beautiful men in the gyms I go to (9-10 faces). Beautiful women seem far more rare but that might be more down to the types of gyms I to than something generalisable.

Yes, the face is the weak link in overall attractiveness. BUT, I don't think men place AS much importance on faces as women.

If I were to think of it. If I had two girls to choose from (A, B), Girl A has a 7.5/10 face and massive boobs, and girl B has an 8/10 face and medium-sized boobs, I would choose the girl with the massive tits.

I think this can extrapolate to most men. Ask them if would they rather prefer Kate Upton or Keira Knightly. This might be TMI, but when I see Keira knightly I think "wow, she is beautiful", when I see Kate Upton the dog inside of me takes over and I think in cavemen speak.

I think men extrapolate the weight they put on bodily attractiveness to women, hence the obsessive lifting.

Also I think there is a disconnect between biological attractiveness and "beauty standards". A mate that looks a certain way is an indicator of status, that certain way might not be the most biologically attractive.

The whole high SES men prefer skinny women shenanigans. All else being equal no man really prefers a skinny woman (small tits and ass).

This confounds conversations on the topic.

Attraction is hard to model and highly non-linear. And they are obviously not symmetric across genders even when you zoom into the most minute of details.

Maybe I'm wrong about that though.

I think you are confusing direction for magnitude.

My point was that a woman's attractiveness to men can be modeled as;

(0.75)*(facial_attractiveness) + (0.25)*(bodily_attractiveness)

Whilst a man's attractiveness to women can be modeled as;

(0.99)*(facial_attractiveness) + (0.01)*(bodily_attractiveness)

First point being that weights are not the same. The second point being of course it's not linear. So a "real" model would have floor and ceiling functions or activation functions in there. But I am confident about the weight ratios.

This is mainly time preference

Not so sure on this. I am not talking about tastefully thick, I am talking purely about breast and butt size. Large breasts and butts on a deeply subconscious level are coded as low status.

Male faces look much better at a low bodyfat percentage

women rate him less attractive than men

Interesting, sauce?

Not the biggest or the best survey, but at least it's there: https://datepsychology.com/women-dont-find-gigachad-attractive/

But can you believe what they say? In dating topics, the answer is usually "no," although I agree, I suspect men are over-estimating the attraction here.

Thanks

Audrey Hepburn. Beloved by all who would care but noticeably given a kind of feminine archetype status by women.

What is interesting with those brows is that it is not in fact a feminine feature but a masculine one. Few people understand that the modern artificially enhanced woman has in fact an androgynous face to such remarkable extent that some of their features become more masculine than men themselves.

Traditionally, for some value of tradition, an emaciated tall runway model was probably it. In the last decade or so I think the consensus has started falling apart and I'm actually not sure how much women think that men are actually into the kind of models they elevate with weird asymmetric hair and deeply caked on unnaturally colored makeup(I know that the natural look is still a good bit of makeup but I'm talking about something different than that).

Cleopatra?

Maybe something like GI Jane? Men vary a lot but tend to prefer softer more feminine looks, but Demi Moore was pretty well respected by women in that role.

I was looking for a tv recently, half the reviews online were from people who had ordered the tv but hadn't gotten it yet.

Ridiculous

Strongly agreed on the saliency of it, e.g. for Elden ring.

However I sometimes try to read reviews not for being convinced but to be persuaded, to hype me.

Reading about flaws makes me emphase and give attention to them.

So there is a tradeoff but you're mostly right.

What sort of products are being reviewed?

If you try this with video games, or perhaps any other sort of interactive entertainment, you will mostly be disappointed in the quality of the reviewers.

I discovered a fascinating thing.

There's this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Valerius_Soranus who was executed for revealing the Secret Name of Rome. By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome doesn't mention that Rome had a Secret Name. It's that secret.

Now look, here's this website https://hwlabadiejr.tripod.com/ straight from the pre-2000 internet, apparently selling or renting out some property in Hawaii?

But then! Then! Somehow it has this! https://hwlabadiejr.tripod.com/roma.htm

Here is an interesting question, (one that Tiberius need not have asked nor would have condoned if asked) noted by Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, (Book 1 Chapter 3), as arising in consequence of a statement of Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. III.65 ):

How do you not go and read everything that that guy wrote on the subject? Also apparently this website is literally the only place we can get this stuff from, there are no other hits in google or google books or ya.ru.

Lunaranus, whatever is your new name, you will enjoy it a lot.

Stupid question, perhaps, but: what, then, is the Secret Name of Rome?

The linked essay makes a convincing argument for what it is.

It’s the she-wolf, Hirpa.

Rome’s famous origin story was Romulus being suckled by a she-wolf, whose statue featured prominently in Rome. Lupus was the vulgar Latin for wolf, probably because the earlier word for wolf (Hirpus/Hirpa) was basically made a matter of national security which was relegated to obscurity on purpose:

Supposing for a moment that the swineherd Faustulus was of the Hirpini, then we would have to conclude that Romulus was adopted into the Hirpini tribe and that their tutelary god, Hirpus/Hirpa, became his own. To say that he was suckled by the wolf would then be as much as saying that he had been adopted into the clan. This could be a legendary reading of the historical relationship of the Romans to the native people of the area. The Romans, as newcomers, may have made a pact or treaty with the Hirpini, and part of the mechanism of treaty might have included the adoption of the Romans, through their chief, into the Hirpini clan, thereby giving the Romans natural rights. The wolf-god or goddess then became the tutelary spirit Roma who gave her sacred name to the city, binding the Romans to the Hirpini eternally.

Excellent find, I wish there was a subreddit for obscure quality rabbit holes like this.

or ya.ru

I appreciate the mention of yandex, it is something that is easy to forget but google only shows a chunk of the internet, unfortunately I don't speak russian but yet I was able to find a unique find, inexistent on google, the roadmap towards the VVER supracritical nuclear reactor, coming this decade (IIRC) and that will disrupt nuclear fission economics.

BTW

how did you find this website?

Did you notice the main page?

https://hwlabadiejr.tripod.com/ENIGMAS.HTM#TOC

The author has made a whole book apparently

here's his (was?) email address hlabadJr@aol.com

I wonder what Horace W. LaBadie, Jr. is doing nowadays, would love to see him go on substack :)

Also one might be interested in using a "website auto explorer", a tool which automatically find sub-URLs on a website.

how did you find this website?

By googling "secret name of rome".

The author has made a whole book apparently

That's another enigma (within an enigma): if you google Horace W. LaBadie, you find his books on technical subjects such as building a laser printer from scratch, but no "On the Roman Religion", which, it seems, exists only as a (partial?) transcription on that website. Maybe it's not a real book at all.

Absolutely fascinating.

I took Latin in high school; we watched “I Claudius” on Fridays in class which gave us a flavor to the language we were learning. I really hadn’t kept up with such entertainment, such as HBO’s Rome, until recently reading Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy. What stunned me the most about those books was not just his scholarship on the cultic nature of life in ancient Rome, the historicity of the plot to turn the republic into the empire, or the focus on the daily lives of high and low class slaves. What, impressed me was his ability to weave everything together into a coherent reality, as real as my own daily life.

In that context, I see a Rome which treated its relationship with the gods as transactional and just part of the business of a city. It also now makes sense to me why the early Christians were called atheists by the Romans: they had no rituals other than feasts and sharing, no sacrifices, no negotiations with the gods. They treated other gods as simply not existing, unlike the usual civil courtesy of treating other peoples gods as their business and a relationship that was not to be impinged upon.

I’m going to go read more from that website; linking here for my convenience. It appears the Roman religion pages are all sub-pages of this page on The Enigmas of Tiberius.

By the way:

One and one half millennia later, Sir Thomas Browne noticed those questions in his essay Hydriotaphia, Urne-Burial, remarking that they, "though puzzling Questions, are not beyond all conjecture." It is notable that he did not mention the first of the questions, confining his reference to the latter two, and resisted himself the urge to answer any of them, if only by conjecture. Herewith. we attempt what he would not.

Check this out too: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/02/09/urne-buriall-in-tlon/

Feel free to share any fun short scripts you find yourself using often. Useful scripts are fine too.

I have a running joke with some of my friends that goes along the lines of "I am better than you at {followed by an extremely long list of things}".

If you want to let someone know that they don't belong to any profession in the world, use this.


import pyautogui

import time

import requests


jobs = requests.get("https://gist.githubusercontent.com/wsc/1083459/raw/d8d0aa8737a36912e6c119a172c8367276b76260/gistfile1.txt").text.split("\n")


print("------Starting spam script------")

print("Move your cursor to the spam location.")

time.sleep(3)


for c in range(5,0,-1):

    print(f"T-minus -> {c}")

    time.sleep(1)

print("GO GO GO! Starting Spam")


    

pyautogui.write("You are no genius \n")

for job in jobs:

    try:

        pyautogui.write(f"or a {job}")

        time.sleep(0.5)

        pyautogui.press("enter")

    except KeyboardInterrupt:

        print("EZ $")

        break

Merry Christmas!

As someone asked (ironically) in another thread - how would life change if everyone could read thoughts and there was no off filter?

we would melt together as a single consciousness and those who refused would be slaughtered.

Are you saying that...resistance would be futile?

I’d meld with you, ya stud!

I disagree, although that is a horrifying image.

I believe there would be many maybe surprising consequences, such as an explosion in social anxiety.

However the no filter effect would have interesting consequences on the group thinks/culture wars.

BTW one of the strangest things of this timeline is that apparently a huge chunk of the population is not able to think or at least they believe themselves they can't think.

Think as in subvocalize words.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/exan65/today_i_told_my_mom_that_i_have_no_internal/

I have extreme skepticism on this phenomenon but if true it has many implication for AI research and philosophy.

In other words it might be that for a chunk of the population there is not thoughts to read at all.

However, one could talk about telepathy for the intermediate subsymbolic representation but that's not what your original comment was about and is definitely much less well defined, by definition since it is ineffable.

Of all things, the Harry Potter series has a good take on this. Mind reading is a skill that wizards can learn. It does not let someone listen to the inane verbal chatter of someone else's mind. But it might let a skilled practitioner perceive a memory association that the victim of mind reading is currently feeling. Or perceive other deeper non-verbal thoughts.

I don't know if a reddit thread is a good place to say a huge chunk of the population! I wouldn't be surprised if people without internal voices existed though, there are a shitload of people out there with unimaginable variations.

I'd always imagined telepathy, and often it depicted, as something where you get a vague impression but not exact word-for-word thoughts from someone. I suppose it could depend based on how the person thought.

It would be an extremely radical change. Humans wouldn't even be the same animal.

I recall reading that people with exceptionally good memories have a hard time connecting with people because they remember in vivid detail every slight that was ever done to them. And that being somewhat forgetful is a necessary component for forgiveness. Sociolopsychology is fickle.

The concept of social skills wouldn't exist as we know it because so much of that is just hiding/broadcasting thoughts/intentions.

Imagine if people would know every time you found them annoying. Or worse, everytime you found them hot. Teenage boys would have to be locked up in prison.

And all of this is scratching the surface. It is a radical change to say the least.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

It's not high science, but it's pretty much exactly that.

A few random thoughts on the article.

  • This Blanton guy is a fucking degenerate. Getting a blowjob from a dog???

  • I think the author is exceptionally lucky. None of his close relationships faltered; that is a miracle in my books.

  • This is probably somewhat mentally taxing. For various reasons, I would wager that most humans have a baseline "dishonesty" level, with significant variance, but a non-zero baseline nonetheless.

  • I actually do employ "radical honesty" in my personal life. At least a lot more than I used to. Sometimes saying exactly what you think is not that easy, if your thinking is fuzzy. You have to spend disproportionately more time explaining things when a white lie could have just sufficed. And I don't mean that the bottleneck is mutual agreement, the bottleneck is mutual understanding. (You would be surprised how little abstracting most people do.)

  • There is a Molochian aspect to it. One person doing it would probably just reap all the punishments and none of the rewards. If everyone did it, the aggregate rewards could be reaped.

  • This would work only if you are surrounded by high decouplers. For a certain class of people "you didn't add enough salt to the stew" is equivalent to "you are a dumb human being".

Yeah, I think to do this irl as the only guy playing the game requires a certain Charlie Manson energy that most humans lack. It's like the gag about the movie Yes Man recast with a woman just being a porn, a guy with nothing going for him who is honest all the time is just going to fail while a charismatic psycho who is radically honest gets a hot open marriage and a following.

It's fascinating, but I don't know how to get through some scenarios like that. I was just at xmas with a couple that everyone at the table knows is going through a divorce, but I've only heard it 2nd or 3rd hand. How the hell do you handle that one? Lies are grease to get us through the world.

At the same time, I'm of the opinion that noble lies are key to enjoying some things. Constant cynical honesty isn't helpful. Tell your woman she is beautiful, even when she's not at her peak, telling her she's ugly when she knows she is doesn't make you honest it just makes her sad.

It would be an extremely radical change. Humans wouldn't even be the same animal.

I find comments like this so tiresome. Yes I understand that this would be an extremely radical change, and I don't think debating the nature of humanity is relevant to the post.

The concept of social skills wouldn't exist as we know it because so much of that is just hiding/broadcasting thoughts/intentions.

Imagine if people would know every time you found them annoying. Or worse, everytime you found them hot. Teenage boys would have to be locked up in prison.

Yep things would be different. I would hope we could adapt enough to prevent teenage boys going to prison. I'd imagine we'd have to adopt a sort of 'radical honesty' approach to communicating. Perhaps it would lead to people spending more quality time with people they genuinely knew cared about them, and less with acquaintances or 'fake friends?' No doubt it would radically change our landscape.

People would remember slights, but they would also remember good turns too. No need to make it such a pessimistic scenario.

I find comments like this so tiresome.

I don't know what you are looking for, boss. You asked how life would change if X happened. The answer is in every way you can think of. Friday FUN Thread be damned.

we'd have to adopt a sort of 'radical honesty' approach to communicating.

The concept of communication itself would be moot if you could read minds.

You are framing this thought experiment, so everyone has telepathy, but the psychology remains the same. That certainly wouldn't be the case. So much of psychology is tangled in the social world.

I don't know what you are looking for, boss. You asked how life would change if X happened. The answer is in every way you can think of. Friday FUN Thread be damned.

Sorry, still touchy from my post in the CW thread about transhumanism. Shouldn't have brought it into the fun thread.

I recall reading that people with exceptionally good memories have a hard time connecting with people because they remember in vivid detail every slight that was ever done to them. And that being somewhat forgetful is a necessary component for forgiveness. Sociolopsychology is fickle.

I can relate to that for another reason. I see people each year having the same conversations they already had years ago and they repeat the script as if it was for the first time.

I mean sure, it's great to bypass the hedonic treadmill and to be excited about things you already talked about in the past.

Me remembering things indeed maintain a bit my hedonic treadmill but the worst by far is to see the non-evolution, instead of taking the occasion of the discussion to explore the semantic search space differently, more in breadth and or more in depth, it is tiring to see the striking human stagnation.

There can be comfort in repeating familiar conversational ruts, I find. It's a sort of mutual acknowledgement that you know the other person well, and vice versa. Depending on your relationship with them, it can be very affirming and pleasant to know there's another person out there who understands who you are and what you belief, albeit partially.

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