domain:alexepstein.substack.com
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
3hr ago
The male disaster action hero fantasy is characterized by the main character specifically having a chance to massively increase their relative social standing and personal control over their life.
The female equivalent is the increase of one's social status massively, by way of her sexual value being threatened/desired for control by multiple parties. If you're a pink collar woman in HR, you have maybe an inattentive leaf-eating boyfriend or husband who doesn't really get that worked up over you or value control over you. In Handmaid's Tale type fantasy/dystopia the entirety of society is built around controlling and possessing you and your sexuality.
DradisPing
3hr ago
I really liked the Jacques McKeown audiobooks (Will Save the Galaxy for Food, Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash, Will Leave the Galaxy for Good). He reads them himself so you get his presentation skills.
I am particularly fond of spaceships, so it got points for that. It's a light and funny listen that's easy to follow. So it's great if you're doing chores or going for a walk where there may be some distractions.
I played it on a drive with my father and he asked me to turn it off because he liked it but it was too distracting. Usually he's fine with audiobooks on drives.
I had trouble getting into "Differently Morphous". I'm less familiar with some of the Lovecraftian & Harry Potterish material that the story involves. Plus there are POV jumps that make it harder to follow in while playing the background.
I'm planning to give it another try.
His books are not anything dense or deep, but I find them enjoyable.
Tanista
4hr ago
I'm biased against progressives on certain issues so I'm inclined to think that the reason the trans thing is such a red line is precisely because it's just not true and is the most obviously ridiculous stance Democrats take. So you have to suppress any hostile discussion of it or basically go with DARVO. If you can't discuss trans stuff besides "it isn't happening" or "you're the weird one for caring" then you need to be able to control the tempo of the discussion because that is just bullshitting. At this point I think progressive takes on crime have also worn out their welcome so it can happen on multiple issues.
Another answer that doesn't depend on people we disagree with being secretly doubtful of their most cherished beliefs is that Democrats thought they had cultural hegemony so they had less to gain from going on to other sites. Twitter is only a couple of years out from being a left-wing stronghold that was more dangerous than Reddit given how it allowed the cool kids to set up cancellations. Rogan was attacked precisely because he felt like an oasis - and he wasn't even right wing! They legit thought they could have closed off all meaningful alternatives. At least for people not hooked on Fox News.
In that sort of environment it may feel like the incumbent has more to lose from stretching themselves than they have to gain. Meanwhile Trumpists have to take any platform offered.
As for liberals putting up signs: you have seen it, everywhere. It's the rainbow flag.
I don't really see much of a meaningful distinction between "Covid was too infectious to be controlled" and "it is possible to control Covid, provided your country is a geographically isolated island nation without land borders and you keep your borders shut indefinitely". It's so telling that "zero Covid" types always fall back on the examples of Australia and New Zealand to demonstrate that of course lockdowns work at controlling Covid (and it's just a complete coincidence that both countries are geogprahically isolated island nations without land borders). Show me an example of a country which isn't a geographically isolated island nation with land borders which was able to control Covid with vaccines and NPIs. I'm going to assume we can't. Given that most countries are not geographically isolated island nations without land borders, it seems perfectly reasonable to argue that, for 90%+ of countries on earth, Covid is too infectious to be controlled.
And insofar as you're labelling the decision to reopen the Australian borders a "conservative" one, we both know full well that if Anthony Albanese (Labor party) had taken office a few months earlier, he would have made the same decision. In point of fact, Albanese did take office in May 2022, and did not immediately reverse the previous administration's decision to reopen the border. New Zealand reopened its borders a few months after Australia did, a decision made by a Labor prime minister (who was previously, consistently praised for her aggressive response to Covid and "girlboss" energy throughout the Anglosphere), and saw the same dramatic spike in Covid deaths. Are you just defining "conservative" policies as any policies which do not pursue the minimisation of Covid deaths as a terminal goal, at the expense of all other considerations? Or are you only interested in discussing the relative rates of Covid deaths when you can blame conservative decisions for them, and studiously ignoring progressive politicians who make almost identical decisions in almost identical circumstances?
If elderly lives are worth radically less, why does murdering someone in their 80s carry the same penalty?
I never said elderly lives are worth radically less. You claimed that Covid is more lethal than AIDS, but this is obviously untrue for the simple reason that it is much easier to kill a sick elderly person than a young healthy person.
it took a year just to work out that it was sexually transmitted, and you couldn't just post that information on a website because the internet didn't really exist
TIL the Internet was the first ever medium for disseminating medical information. In point of fact the CDC (among other bodies) ran massive nationwide campaigns throughout the 1980s intended to raise awareness of the disease and how to avoid catching it, as did various governmental bodies in the UK. There was a very brief window, only a few years, in which a person who'd contracted AIDS could legitimately plead ignorance and say they didn't now better.
With AIDS, avoiding it would have required not having any relationships for the next decade or two
Or, you know, wearing a condom.
With COVID, you were asked to wear a mask and avoid big parties for a few months.
Yes, we were asked to do that. But even getting massive buy-in from the public on both counts had virtually zero demonstrable impact on the rate of transmission of the virus. China was unable to control Covid even using vastly more punitive measures (like literally locking people inside their apartment buildings) than any Western government, even in 2022 after 90%+ of their adult population had been vaccinated. I mean, even in your preferred example of Australia, even while their borders were shut, people still died. Or are you claiming that Australia really could have gotten its Covid death rate down to zero if literally everyone had always worn a mask outside the home?
Failure to do so placed everyone around you at risk.
Well, no: it placed every old and immunocompromised person around you at risk. Most people are neither, and Covid poses little more threat to them than the flu.
DelendaEst
4hr ago
If you are in favor of ideals then Republican immigration policy sounds like it would be a better fit for you. In order for American Ideals to continue to be American Ideals we need to assimilate immigrants into them, and that means taking in a manageable flow, and preferably from all sorts of places. Too large a flow and the existing culture and ideals get diluted too quickly. Too much from a single source means they form enclaves which makes assimilation harder (I am especially thinking of the majority muslim areas of Michigan here). Republican policy preferences are the ones that will meet this goal the best.
stuckinbathroom
4hr ago
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4hr ago
Nobody is saying it’s easy, but Trump leaning people do exactly that. Trump’s base has absolutely no problem going onto any platform available to them. They have no problem putting up signs — even in hostile places — or wearing Trump gear, or posting pro-Trump messages on social media. Trumpers are like CrossFit fans, you don’t have to ask, because they will absolutely tell you.
I think it’s a belief problem. Liberals don’t seem to actually believe in the message. They don’t advertise in hostile environments, they don’t put out signs or wear gear, they don’t talk about it with friends and family. They mostly flee.
SophisticatedHillbilly
4hr ago
Objectively, pretty much just white men in the like 25-45 range (definitely blurry at the edges there) who are some combination of wealthyish, charismatic, and healthy (or maybe just agentic? I’ve always felt that was a bigger factor.)
The thing is, you assume that 'ideals-based identity' and 'ancestral identity' are separate and orthogonal to one another. But even if we put aside tribal allegiance, it's pretty clear that emotional predispositions (openness, authoritarianism, neuroticism, etc.) are at least partially genetic. And this is going to correlate somewhat with race, because most places have had fairly stable demographics for hundreds or thousands of years.
The ideal of "free speech" is going to look very different in a country of high-openness, high-extroversion people vs high-neuroticism, low-openness. Likewise "self-governance". Moved from one country that considers itself meritocratic, self-governing and devoted to free speech to a very ethnically-different country with the same ideals really drove that home for me.
American notions of what their founding ideals mean has already shifted pretty clearly since the country was founded, and I doubt that's independent of the demographic changes that America has been through since the founding. Anyone who wants to preserve modern American values has to consider the demographics of the population upholding those values and passing them down to their children.
(Look at how much work it took for Roosevelt et al to get federal jobs allocated by exam scores not patronage. Both factions considered themselves thoroughly American, but one defined 'merit' as 'decades of loyal service' and the other as 'intelligence and diligence").
Tanista
4hr ago
It's weird because a lot of the manosphere is black. Especially in the post-Kevin Samuels era.
They have zero interest in HBD on race (though they are quite fine with male-female differences and questions that could be considered racist if asked of them like "name 10 female inventors").
In some cases these black redpillers have larger platforms than people like Fuentes they're platforming. Fresh and Fit was making a ludicrous amount of money bashing Miami women and lost it to platform antisemites whose beef with the Jews is that they let in black migrants as "biological weapons" as they put it.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
4hr ago
a certain kind of entitlement to other people’s money
I know what you’re talking about, but I have to wonder to what extent it’s due to actual objective differences in the “national character”, or whether it’s due to my own political biases, or perhaps whether it’s due to America’s (my country of residence) geopolitical relationship with the countries in question.
India and China both come off to me as being notably entitled (not just in terms of “other people’s money”, but more broadly). But I don’t feel that way about Russia, or Japan, or Latin America, or basically anywhere else in the world.
there342
4hr ago
If you're at the point of freeing all your nation's prisoners to stir up trouble and keep the heat off yourself, I have to wonder if you're still the one defending the nation or just what it needs defending from.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
4hr ago
The recent huge, unprecedented influx of low-intelligence Indians into Canada, IMO, plays a huge role in the spread of the "pajeet" stereotype.
faceh
4hr ago
If it truly is a situation of molochian hypercompetition, NOBODY is getting the "better" end of it. Everyone is working harder than ever for less reward than ever.
It's crab buckets everywhere, and any perception that it is better somewhere else is just grass is greener effect.
iprayiam3
4hr ago
Tulsi is not particularly MAGA. Her warm reception is mostly just about owning the libs or more charitably the tendency of conservatives to welcome agreement wherever it’s found. It’s the same way Bill Maher is praised by the right whenever he’s slightly critical of the far left.
Meanwhile Tulsi is not particularly establishment GOP. She’s a non woke democrat.
A tulsi presidential bid from the left would mean the left was moderating on progressivism. From the right it just means the right continues to move left.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
As a non-American I don't feel very confident in my impression of these intra-party struggles for power, but somehow the way you talk about it feels off. You don't feel like "guys can beat the shit out of each other, and drink a beer together the following evening" applies here?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
- Sexual harassment. There are all these newspaper headlines coming out of India about animals being raped to death, women who go there instantly regretting their decision. Or on university campuses at home women complain. We are the ones who invented #metoo and expended great effort getting Afghan girls into university, this does not go down well at all.
- A certain attitude. The Chinese probably do much more scamming than India but they're stealing turbine information, IP, software, schematics. They don't tend to go after grandma's savings saying they're from Microsoft. China comes off as threatening (nearly every day we have war propaganda in TV and newspapers against China). India is not threatening at all. But there's a certain kind of boasting/hypernationalism that you can see sometimes online, a certain level of entitlement to other people's money. Kitboga has done immense damage to India's reputation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6m8Ln1yqeJE
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5hr ago
Trump is a 2nd-term President - he doesn't have any meaningful political rivals. I can see him wanting to punish DeSantis for disloyalty out of wounded ego, but I can also see him not bothering.
The political rivalry that now matters is the battle to succeed Trump - between Vance and DeSantis (and others, but as the sitting VP and the most popular conservative governor they are the best-positioned candidates for the 2028 primary).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5hr ago
I think the Democrats unleashed the most massive wave of bot and shill astroturfing that they ever have before onto Reddit in the last year or so.
I swear even we got hit with splash damage on this one. I even got a response to that post telling me how I'm wrong and how all the responder's friends are posting coconut memes, which he promptly deleted possibly realizing it made even less sense in the context of the conversation than to comment I was complaining about.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
5hr ago
I don't think "it was inevitable", but I do think it's currently "unsalvageable" (unless you consider "just shut it down and start again" as a valid solution).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5hr ago
And it is also obvious that replacing a Senator is a much higher-leverage move than replacing a house member, in general.
Also that replacing a House member requires a special election, which means that the Republicans are down a seat (with a single-figure majority) until the special election can be held, a period which will include a key budget battle. Johnson has already warned Trump not to appoint too many Republican House members - it isn't clear to me how much this is a joke and how much is a genuine worry about the size of his majority.
Tanista
5hr ago
It's easy to get volunteers to try to take over mostly-left spaces. Things get harder in other spaces, not just because they can be out of touch with those people but because their defense mechanism is avoiding unfriendly (aka not explicitly left-wing) spaces for being impure. Or attacking other leftists for going into them.
This is how they decided a normie-bro like Rogan with many left-friendly views was somehow unreachable and radioactive.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
5hr ago
Incel forums and looksmaxxing becoming more mainstream plays a big part too. Most would use the term currycel for self-description with ricecel being for east asians. The oxford study results paint a grim picture for East Asians where it states that women of east asia are more likely to prefer dating people of other races with whites being highest rated, I would argue that the subcontinent and south-east Asia has the similar issues. Posters on incel forums would self-deprecate quite heavily, whilst I mention the shortcomings of people here sometimes, it is never me saying stuff like ethnic tax. Quite a lot of the info you see out there did come from these forums.
It's fascinating to me how every race seems to have romantic/sexual ethnic grievances. Every race has men who think they are getting the raw end of the deal. And yet, who is getting the better end of it?
Tanista
5hr ago
Yes, a lot of it is structural but reddit policy made it infinitely worse. They banned basically most conservative subs that could have created a less progressive set of mods. Beyond that, they seem to have aided mod takeovers by exactly the sorts of obsessed supermods who never should have been given power (I recall at least one story of a mod being told to get new mods ASAP by admins and this acting as a way for these people to get in)
Mods of heterodox subs have to stress over some random stuff nuking the entire sub while supermods don't have it so hard. Of course one side loses in this environment.
There's always someone complaining about dating. Both males and females. Of all races.
White men , unlike Indians and Asians, don't complain about racial barriers specifically. The other groups have all of the standard grievances plus the feeling that their race is disfavored by the majority.
So they're probably the winners, as a race.
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