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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3261 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Dase's argument in that thread is relatively weak. There are plenty of things to be argued among 'power worshippers'; Western elites, as even Karlin has finally acknowledged, are broadly of a high quality even if they have adopted some low quality memes.

My argument is that these things are extraneous and I think your example shows this best. Karlin's new practice of LARPing as a postgenderist progressive freak on steroids HRT is entirely downstream of Russia's military humiliation. Could the «elite human capital» have convinced him of the potency of their memes without the demonstration of superior (to Russia) kinetic power it can compel? Clearly they have failed to do so over his years in the West, so he came to Russia to venerate Based Putin's symbolic cult of power (I admit I also like the fact that this… thing exists, The Statue notwithstanding). Could the Russians reconvince him of the validity of Russian Nationalism without taking Odessa at the least? He mocks their ideas openly after years of sympathetic writing. In fact, this suggests he doesn't understand either – he cannot recognize the nugget of moral truth in the progressive doctrine, only see its power and grovel at its feet. Progressives, on the other hand, are vindicated in having not deigned to debate his type: Javelins succeeded where words had proven useless. They will likewise prevail over this clown.

'Might makes right' is facile but it is also one of the major longstanding narratives in which the right engages, while it can just be discarded or even blatantly ignored when it becomes inconvenient

I am not a power worshipper, so I can produce arguments beside Chad "who cares lmao my team can fuck up your team" (which is especially helpful when it can't). And I have a consistent set of beliefs that made me deplore the war in the beginning, when it seemed like Ukrainian defenses are being overwhelmed, and make me deplore it now (as a bonus, they allow me to better predict how wars will go), so I hold Karlin's judgement in contempt both then and now.

I read an account of the final attempts at reform in China over the last decades of the Qing dynasty

Link?

My argument is that these things are extraneous and I think your example shows this best. Karlin's new practice of LARPing as a postgenderist progressive freak on steroids HRT is entirely downstream of Russia's military humiliation.

AK returned to his true self, his Russian phase was the LARP. For him, it never anything than play, nothing more than pixels on screen.

Imagine: long awaited and greatly hyped game is finally, after many delays, released.

You immediately download it and start playing - of course as Orc, because Orcs are cool. But when you spend few hours, in is not as cool as you expected. The game mechanics are crappy, the gameplay is unbalanced, the story line makes no sense, and Orcs and Orc land are just plain ugly, dirty, covered in filth and cockroaches everywhere.

What to do? No hard feelings, just delete your character and start again, this time as Elf (and then find it is the same, except Elves are all maximally up-your-face LGBTQ+ and everything is in most garish eye-hurting rainbow colors imaginable).

It was one of the descriptive panels in an extraordinary just-opened exhibition at the British Museum that is on until October called China’s Hidden Century about China between 1850 and 1912. There is a whole section on failed Qing reforms; the exhibition itself is told through artifacts (including fascinating early manufactured Chinese goods that venerated late Qing political figures), many of which I believe have never been exhibited before. I will try to do a post on it. I know your interest in China, if there’s any way you make it to London before October I’d recommend it. It really is one of the best, most interesting museum exhibits I’ve ever seen.

I am unlikely to make it to the Old World in the next two years or so, thus would be interested in a detailed post.

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