domain:open.substack.com
WhiningCoil
2hr ago
Awe man. I just got off my last ban for venting a bit too hard about my fervent hatred of trans activist. You gotta get me going again?
To reign it in as best I can, no part of my problems has to do with trans people per se. Although their disfigured bodies and alien voices squick me out as badly as the worst (or best?) body horror film. But for the most part, if they can leave me alone, I can leave them alone.
But they can't leave me alone. Maybe it's less them and more the activist. I don't know. I've seen a smattering of trans people who agree all the shit going on in schools with other people's kids is pure insanity. But, they tend to not get treated well by their own "community", however much validity appeals to that fictional construct even matter.
Back to not being left alone, they're pushing the trans experience on children in public schools at incredibly young ages. Compulsory exercises at young ages forcing them to question or ponder their gender identity. Graphic pornographic material in school libraries, including elementary and middle school. Secretly socially transitioning children. Forcing penises into young girls private spaces.
The horrors they wish to subject my young daughter to fill me with a wrath and a loathing that is beyond words. At least words I'm allowed to speak here. Get them the fuck out of public schools, leave my kids alone, and they may earn back my disregard. They've forever lost my respect.
In my limited experience their personalities seem to not just be male, but hyper male. Like take for instance the prevalence of trannies in the speedrunning community, it is hard to think of a more hypermasculine activity than speedrunning.
I have an acquaintance who came out as a trans woman a few years ago, and the irony of her situation has not escaped my attention. She claims to be a woman trapped in an "assigned male at birth" body, and yet the number of cis women I know personally who
- compose angsty math-rock
- have logged 1,000+ hours in League of Legends
- spend a great deal of time in Games Workshop
- consume so much pornography that they've actually had to confront the ethical dilemma of whether or not they should pay the "content creators" for it
are zero, zero, zero and zero, respectively. Likewise the recent micro-scene of bedroom black metal solo projects whose members identify as trans women (most famously Liturgy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_(band)], but it seems every other band on this label meets that description exactly): does anything scream "socially awkward man with some autistic traits" more than starting a bedroom black metal solo project?
What you're describing is autistic traits, and many feminists have argued that autism is "extreme masculinity" (men tend to be high-systematising, and autistic men are almost totally systematising). I'm sure you're already aware that the correlation between autism and gender dysphoria is extremely strong and seems to becoming stronger with every year.
I have always suspected that I am in the "at-risk for AGP" demographic, even though I've never felt it myself.
I'm a man who several people have independently suggested might be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, high-systematising, bookish, socially awkward, didn't fit in at school (as a result of which I retreated into social media and anonymous online chatrooms), love video games enough to have done a master's in game design, listened to black metal obsessively as a teenager, passively interested in anime and manga as a teenager. If I'd been born ten or even five years later, dollars to donuts I'd be calling myself Lilith right now. (At least then my enormous ass would have been more of an asset in my dating life.) By the same token, had my aforementioned acquaintance been born five or ten years earlier, I think the chances of them coming out as trans at the age they did would have been somewhere around nil. Anyone who thinks social contagion plays no role in this phenomenon must be blind.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2hr ago
I agree with you in principal. As a straight man, I have the same inherent revulsion you do to the thought of men having sex, but as a non-religious person, I don't think it's wrong or immoral, just something that turns me off, and lots of people have sexual practices that turn me off. If you don't make me watch/participate, it's not my business.
And I try to have the same empathy for trans people. Yes, I have a strong disgust reaction to trans women. I think they mostly look hideous and freakish, but I also think it would be wrong to judge people because they are aesthetically unappealing to me. Part of the reason I think the "They don't pass" argument from TERFs and other anti-trans people is a losing one; how "pretty" and "feminine" trans women are really isn't the point. There are actual women who are ugly and gross-looking to me, but I wouldn't be so cruel as to degrade them and call them "not women" because of their unfortunate appearance.
The problem with trans women (and to a lesser extent, a lot of LGTBQ people nowadays) is that it's not enough for them to be allowed to live their lives in peace while we politely refrain from commenting on their appearance. Many of them literally want to "shove it in our faces." See all the dissatisfaction about Pride events, which LGTBQ folks mistaken claim is a homophobic backlash. In some cases it is - there are people who genuinely hate gays and all forms of gender non-conforming people. But I think are a lot like me; I am fine with you living your life and being happy about it, but why do I have to celebrate your sexual preferences and fetishes? Why are you looking around the room to see who stops clapping first?
I can have a lot more empathy for someone who is struggling but just wants to live their life and not be harassed and abused than I do for someone who decides that harassing and abusing other people for being insufficiently affirming is appropriate.
It's activists who have degraded our charity and tolerance. As I said in another comment, 20 years ago there were people who thought transsexuals were deviants and perverts, but they really were mostly left alone. Use the bathroom you prefer? Okay, whatever. Call yourself a woman/man, or even use weird pronouns? Okay, whatever. Some people will roll their eyes at you, but most people didn't want to make a big deal about it. Now, however, it is a big deal, always, and that makes it hard to be empathic to people who clearly are not empathetic to anyone else's reaction.
roche
2hr ago
I get you, but IMO this is a "High intelligence + High openness" result. There are some profoundly intelligent people like Schopenhauer who never second-guessed their axioms or sought out a higher authority or basis for them, and when questioned on what authority they're derived from, he and others always defer to Plato's forms or the "laws of nature" or whatever. And rather than infinite regress, they arrive at some bedrock idea like entelechy and say "Yep, this explains everything" and there is nothing before it. And to their defense is the Eleatic argument that something cannot come from nothing, and this is the most widely loved idea by philosophers because it spits in the face of infinite regress.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
2hr ago
Because of my father's auction habits, the family has around a dozen grandparent clocks of varying quality already.
The vacation thing isn't a bad idea but it isn't practical for us as a couple, my vacation punch card is booked between family and friends beach properties, visiting my godparents/aunts in Florida.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
Dang it, I wish I could be more creative, because I love the idea of the chair and think the obvious choice is a great one.
A clock, already suggested, is a great option. My parents have disabled the grandfather clock they have that mine built. They found the ringing too annoying. I disagree, but be aware of the potential downside.
For my grandmother, we spent a fraction of the money on a vacation to some of her favorite places, and generated pictures and experiences from it that will stick around for a while. I assume you considered and discarded this, but wanted to throw it out there.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2hr ago
I don't mean masculine in some spiritual sense of idealized masculinity (masculinity of war, hunting, bravery, leadership etc) but in the empirical sense of percentage of partakers in the activity.
Right. But shouldn't we take special note of this distinction? When you look at this personality type that's "at risk" for AGP - nerds, aspies, autists, whatever you want to call it - isn't there something about it that's "in between" masculine and feminine? (Appropriate, given the topic at hand). In one sense you are correct that it's "hyper male" just in terms of sheer statistics. But at the same time, these men tend to display traits that are decidedly unmasculine - higher in neuroticism, more emotional in general, higher verbal ability, less physically aggressive, often averse to traditionally masculine interests like (physical) sports, etc.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
You're not even trying.
Sorry that I'm sooooo stupid that after I have considered the answers to the question you've asked, I still find your position on my explanation of Chesterton's Fence unclear. You're gonna have to stoop down real low and actually explain what you're thinking in a way that is comprehensible to us normal 'little' people.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
If you consider the answer to the questions I asked it will be clear.
Attempt to understand what you are advocating for.
roche
2hr ago
I don’t buy that meditation can reliably lead to “any emotion or experience”. I don’t think the evidence is weighty enough to support that idea. Certainly you can’t trust the old writings of an institution of monks who are interested in getting monks to meditate as much as possible.
Yeah, fair. This is more or less a supposition that meditation has the same mechanism as a psychedelic experience, but even if that's true, you can do virtually anything on something like LSD whereas meditation is limiting your experiences as much as humanly possible, so by the time you get to a profound state there's a small handful of consistent attainments we can get, and these become the jhana states, deep samadhi, etc.
This is a more realistic aim. Non-effortful meditation is probably beneficial for the Domain Mode Network, resulting in greater rest and general awareness. But if anything, I’d bet the benefits of meditation are precisely insofar as they don’t cause a preferable emotional state. If meditation is boring, unpleasant, but restful, then your “real life” will be more interesting, pleasant, and energetic. It’s like a nap.
You're making the opposite error of me, which is lowballing it while I'm aiming too high. We're not sure what these practices amount to at most, but they absolutely give us more than restful sleep and greater focus.
I don't think your comparison of gender dysphoria to intense romantic infatuation is quite as illuminating as you seem to think it is.
We've all had the experience of being romantically infatuated with another person. Probably almost all of us have felt "lovesick" at one point or another, in the sense of being romantically attracted to someone who's unavailable, or being attracted to someone but being too afraid to tell them how we feel for fear of rejection, or telling someone how we feel and finding out that it's unreciprocated, or getting dumped by someone we're still very much in love with. Short of bereavement, romantic rejection is one of the most unpleasant, destabilising and humiliating emotional states that the average person is likely to find themselves in, and I would never dream of making fun of someone who's having a tough time because they got rejected by their crush or broken up with (one of the reasons "Radicalizing the Romanceless" really resonated with me). (Of all the toxic, antisocial behaviours that social media aids and abets, there are few worse than that trend when a guy texts a girl to tell her he really likes her, and she immediately screenshots the conversation and sends it to her group chat with the caption "OMG CAN YOU IMAGINE 😂😂😂".)
But some people's intense romantic fixations can lead them to behave in extremely unhealthy ways which violate the boundaries of the object of their affection: repeatedly texting them, calling them or buying them gifts when they've made it perfectly clear they aren't interested; following them; bothering them in public places; sending them hateful messages; and (much more rarely, of course) physically intimidating or assaulting the object of their affection, or their current romantic partner. We call such a person a "stalker", and much of the aforementioned behaviour is actually illegal (however difficult it is to enforce), and rightfully so. As sympathetic as I might be towards someone whose affections aren't reciprocated and is feeling sad about it, my sympathy ends when they engage in unacceptable behaviour like this.
Likewise with gender dysphoria. Obviously I have no idea what gender dysphoria feels like, having never experienced it personally. But I can certainly relate to the experience of hating how your body looks in the mirror (both directly and indirectly, as I've had multiple friends who suffered from severe anorexia). I've been depressed for lengthy periods of time, and sincerely wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Much as I'd never make fun of someone who's sad because they love someone who doesn't feel the same way, I'd never make fun of someone whose gender dysphoria is causing them intense emotional distress. I am sincerely sympathetic.
But some people's gender dysphoria can lead them to behave in extremely unhealthy or toxic ways: emotionally manipulating lesbians into having sex with you by accusing them of bigotry if they don't; getting lesbian speed dating events cancelled; suing women who refuse to wax your male genitalia; sending rape and death threats to a female victim of sexual assault who expressed discomfort about using a bathroom alongside trans women; physically assaulting a gender-critical woman in her sixties; shooting up a primary school and so on. As sympathetic as I might be towards someone suffering from gender dysphoria, my sympathy vanishes the instant they engage in behaviour like this.
So I think I'm actually being perfectly consistent, per the terms of your analogy.
I'm open to correction on this and fully admit I may be falling victim to confirmation bias or the availability heuristic, but my impression from this community is that, when trans issues come up, it's usually not so much people complaining about the former (i.e. "this person has gender dysphoria, gross, what a disgusting fetishist") and more people complaining about the latter (i.e. "this person is suffering from gender dysphoria, which is leading them to engage in behaviours which would be grossly unacceptable if carried out by anyone"). And I admit there's a bit of Chinese-robbering going on, wherein people highlight bad behaviour by self-identified trans people which obviously bears no causal relationship to their gender dysphoria as a means of casting aspersions on the whole group, which I'm not cool with for the same reason I'm not cool with any use of the Chinese robber fallacy.
AnarchyDice
2hr ago
Thanks for the formatting fix! The nice thing about infusing is that once you've got some larger jars and good strainers, you can infuse just about anything.
Brown Sugar Oatmeal Vodka
In a 1 Gallon glass jar, add:
6c dry oats (rolled/steel cut doesn't matter), 2c brown sugar, 11c vodka(I use Costco. Any flavorless vodka will do), 2 tps cinnamon.
Let it infuse for a 7-10 days. Invert and shake every day or so to mix it.
Filter. I start with a colander to remove the oats, and pour it into a tall bottle to rest.
After a day or so, the sediment falls to the bottom.
Then carefully pour it through ultra-fine nylon mesh strainers and a funnel into bottles. Go too fast or shake the bottle and the sediment will wake up and clog your mesh. You can push your luck by pouring the dregs through the strainer, but that will net you maybe an extra shot of cloudy liqueur.
You can repeat the process for a clearer liqueur, but I typically do only one or two passes because I like a bit of cloudiness.
Enjoy it straight or over ice.
Maple Bacon Bourbon
In a 1 Gallon glass jar, add:
1 handle of your preferred bourbon
Make 1lb of bacon. Enjoy the bacon. Retain the grease. (We bake it in the oven on foil lined sheets at 400F, but I think pan fried could work too. Maybe 1/2C of grease?)
Add the slightly cooled but still liquid grease to the bourbon. Don't put the bacon in, it is a mess and the grease does a better job imparting flavor.
Add 1/4C of maple syrup to taste.
Stir.
Let it sit for a couple days, mixing occasionally. Then put it in the freezer overnight.
Once frozen, the grease should form a sheet at the top that you remove and throw away.
Filter the liquid through ultra-fine mesh strainers and funnel into bottles. This catches any remaining bacon bits or frozen fat shards.
Enjoy it straight, over ice, or as part of your preferred bourbon delivery method.
I will note that straining can take a bit of time, so I often have two sets of strainers and funnels filtering into two bottles so I can keep topping them off as they drain. If they slow down too much, dump it back into the infusing jar, rinse off the strainer, and keep going. This is especially true of sediment heavy infusions like the oatmeal.
I can have empathy for gay men
I can have sympathy for all sinners. All are tempted by sin. None of us has lived a perfect life. Yet we are commanded to turn away from sin and repent, while bearing our burdens.
Unrepentant sinners can be treated as pagans or tax collectors. If I'm not expected to have fellowship them why would I be expected to endorse a social or cultural belief that this behavior is fine. Where we will not be heard, we should shake of the dust and move on, our pearls are not for swine. We should not give what is holy to dogs the unrepentant dressed as dogs or cartoon animals as part of degenerate sexual role play.
The idolatry and love of sin is the problem, not lack of empathy.
roche
2hr ago
Good stuff. Will also add keeping your muscles relaxed before bed is quite important.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
I don't agree with your characterization of the fence, previous message describes why.
No, it does not. You lurched erratically off on a different direction. Please explain why you don't agree with my characterization of how/why the fence was put into place.
Do you think he has a ghostwriter, er, ghostplayer?
Knowing nothing about Diablo...yes, I'm very suspicious of a man who is already busy (and also shit posts half the day) also finding time to become the best in the world at any competitive video game.
At least a lot of the games I'm familiar with would need a lot of grinding and not just raw skill to climb up the rankings. Maybe Diablo is different.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
So, a word of warning. I am an LDR vet. 5 years of LDR dating before I was 21.
My "big" breakup that fucked me good was a 3 month situationship where we knew we should break up, but she pushed to stay together after a month, we kept falling deeper in love, and then cheated on me a couple months later. I'm fairly confident if we hadn't done that it would have been a good relationship when I returned.
In short, just don't expose yourself to more risk of heartbreak than you need to. Keep moving forward while she's gone and make the call to rekindle or not when (if) she comes back.
daguerrean
3hr ago
They rarely displayed overtly feminine behavior as young children, and their personalities run the entire gamut of the male distribution.
In my limited experience their personalities seem to not just be male, but hyper male. Like take for instance the prevalence of trannies in the speedrunning community, it is hard to think of a more hypermasculine activity than speedrunning. I don't mean masculine in some spiritual sense of idealized masculinity (masculinity of war, hunting, bravery, leadership etc) but in the empirical sense of percentage of partakers in the activity. The motte is similarly hypermasculine, so it doesn't surprise me we have a few AGP types such as yourself around here. But why do you think this is? Are you generally hypermasculine in your other interests and thought patterns?
I have always suspected that I am in the "at-risk for AGP" demographic, even though I've never felt it myself. I imagine that some AI classifier, upon taking stock of my job, my hobbies and even my writing style would probably say that I am male with the an unimaginably high degree of certainty. Job in software (probably 90% male), enjoys Paradox games (probably 99% male), main hobby is a collecting hobby (probably 90% male), participates on The Motte (probably 99% male)...I imagine these things are even more heavily male coded than things that stereotypically come to mind like UFC, hunting, Joe Rogan etc.
Magusoflight
3hr ago
So it’s the opposite of reddit circa 2016 then? Okay, so turn about is fair play
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3hr ago
These people hate you, they will say it to your face, and then you will ask for more.
To be clear, I don’t watch TV (I haven’t watched a new TV series since Game of Thrones ended) and I haven’t watched a full episode of Modern Family in probably over ten years. So I may be misremembering it somewhat, or maybe I just didn’t have the political consciousness I have now and I would notice everything you’re pointing out if I were to watch it now with clear eyes.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
3hr ago
Also, suspected former CWRer.
Throwaway05
3hr ago
I don't agree with your characterization of the fence, previous message describes why.
With respect to test, previously I said:
"Do patients ask for these? What's the ratio of people who actually need them versus just think they need them? Are their side effects? Are they bad? Are the risks something that someone can easily understand and make informed decisions based off of? Are patients willing to try safer and more effective interventions first? What's the evidence base and recommendations, how sure are we about them? Are their bad actors involved who are incentivizing certain behaviors? What is the level of excess supplementation that production can carry? How many of these questions can you answer?"
Given your lack of response and changing the subject I think I can safely assume you can answer none of these things.
--
-Benefits and risks of a given action exist, for oneself and for others.
-In order to determine the benefits and risks of this substance as a medication you need to know the answers to those questions, and others.
-You do not know the answers to these questions.
-Therefore you do not know the benefits and risks of testosterone.
-Other medications may or may not have similar risks and benefits.
-You do not know them.
-Therefore you do know if medications are safe, for the taker or for others.
-Expanding on that, you do not know the cost to the patient or others have a given medication.
-Decisions should be made with an awareness of the costs and benefits.
-You personally, and patients in general do not have the information to make these decisions.
-Therefore you shouldn't.
Smuggled in there is the premise that people should not be allowed to grossly harm themselves or others, if you are fine with that ....then sure, but if that's the case I'm not sure how you are going to argue against me putting one in the head when someone hurts others with their decisions.
You may say "well sure but they can harm themselves a little bit" but the same frame holds and you don't have the knowledge to know what actions will cause no, a little bit, or significant harm.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
For what it's worth, from the perspective of someone who's very religious, the worst and most frustrating attitude I've ever run into from non-religious people is the idea that because religion is "a choice" it must always come second to other identities. A gay person (supposedly) can't choose not to be gay, but a Christian can choose not to be Christian, or can choose not to be an anti-gay Christian, so gay identity comes first.
But that's not how any serious follower of any religion I've ever spoken to experiences their religion, and it's certainly not how I experience it. I'm not just choosing this or that on the basis of arbitrary preference, such that I could change my mind. Faith is not like picking which car to drive. I'm practicing a particular religion because it's actually true. Telling me "well, you could just choose not to be Christian" feels like, ironically, someone telling a scientist, "well, you could just choose not to be Darwinist, look, Lysenkoism is a perfectly good choice, why not believe that?"
The atheist who thinks that I'm wrong and my beliefs are false is, to my mind at least, better and more tolerable than the atheist who thinks that my beliefs are mere affectation or aesthetic preference. No, I can't just believe something else, because that would be switching from something true to something false. If you want me to change my beliefs, you have to actually convince me that my beliefs are false. There is no shortcut.
yofuckreddit
3hr ago
While Visual Studio and C# are my drugs of choice, the worst thing about them may be the default linter & style guide's insistence on Allman.
K&R has always been the best, and as you say, it's not close.
It is probably dangerous if you achieve higher control of yourself than average people can. Changing an emotion into another is fairly exotic, but changing the target of emotions is a common defense mechanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(psychology) As far as I'm concerned, all alchemy is actually psychology, but projected into the real world. Embodying an emotion sounds like it could just be a result of attention directed towards an emotion, such that said emotion is the meditation object?
Am I right to assume that you've read this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/20/meditative-states-as-mental-feedback-loops/ I think the main take away is that feedback loops are unnatural, and that the brain tries to prevent them by default. Which is why you need a great concentration and ability to avoid distractions. When accelerating in a fast car or listening to music, I sometimes get chills (ASMR response), but it depends on how I tune my attention. I have to sort of "surf" on the stimuli. This likely generalizes to all senses and emotional responses (chills doing massages and the build-up of tension/anticipation doing important scenes in movies, etc). Does this not imply that feedback loops are the norm? Merely that with most peoples ability to concentrate, they only last a few seconds.
The link you sent sounds like a manic episode. heightened energy, racing thoughts, feeling that things are connected, higher and higher escalation. I sometimes feel like that on stimulants, and when I think about important things thoroughly until I have very strong beliefs (in other words, tidying up doubts and loose ends and other internal conflicts and inconsistencies. If you want to feel really great, spend a few hours doing this). I've often heard that Kundalini has strong effects, and that the "out of body" aspect is dangerous (makes some people go crazy). I think the positive effects come from focusing on your body, mainly the "chakra" areas, and creating feedback-loops on these sensations. By the way, the reason why "out of body" experiences is bad may be because our perception of yourself has a specific place in your head, say between the eyes and back a bit, and that it's dangerous to disconnect from this. You know how it feels like you're floating doing sleep paralysis? This is the brains model of the body, often called the spirit body by mystics, and it may be related to our sense of Proprioception. I don't know if you can accidentally mess up this sense, but it's possible. I personally experience discomfort at times because it feels like my "point of self" is slightly off center, maybe because the left and right side of my face have different sensitivities. Anyway, I've heard that some cultures place their "selves" in the heart rather than in the head, and some crazy book (I forgot which one) recommend shifting this area around as an exercise, so maybe it's not that dangerous as long as you don't move outside of your body, but this is guesswork on my part.
I'm not sure why just focusing on ones heart (or chakras, or kundalini) has strong positive effects, but our brains relation to the body is probably more important than we thought (hence Yoga and such). Books like "The body keeps the score" and some obscure books claim that discomfort and even trauma is basically located in the body and causes muscle stiffness and "blockades" in the "flow of energy" whatever that means.
And about consciousness, what people call "awake" is simply not living on autopilot. To have a consistent sense of self rather than periodic self-awareness with blurs in between, you make your sense of self the object of meditation and train yourself to maintain it at all times. I've read a book on this once as well, but I don't remember the name. Sometimes, meditating on something strengthens it, but sometimes it breaks it down (say a word over and over again and it will lose meaning). I'm not sure how meditation which strengthens the self and meditation which dissolves the self are different. The ways to reinforce things and destroy things seem eerly similar. Meditation makes some people more alert, more alive and more anchored in the moment, while it causes other people to disassociate, have no ego, and become apathetic or stoic. I wish I knew the tiny differences in approach which causes these wildly different outcomes.
Finally, I have a bonus insight for you. The strength of your senses is what makes you feel alive. Having dirty glasses, ears blocked by earwax, a loss of smell due to a cold, etc. always makes me feel like reality is less real. So it seems like sensory inputs is what ground us in reality (which may be why the numbening effects of dissociation makes reality feel like a game, movie or dream rather than reality). I hope these insights were useful! If you want, I will try to dig up the titles of some of the books I've read on this, though 40% of it is my own original ideas and guesses.
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