domain:vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com?page=2?page=0
hydroacetylene
14m ago
Monasteries in the late Middle Ages, mostly.
These were well known for obesity.
hydroacetylene
16m ago
It’s a civilizational horror of mediocrity. A deracinated and atomized people always, from every perch, know deep down that they don’t matter. In the Anglosphere you aren’t born someone unless you happen to be born into the British royal family; to not make something notable of yourself is to be no one.
In other societies- the ones humans are designed to live in- everyone is someone. Male or female, slave or free, old or young- there is a role, a set of marching orders from the top of society to the bottom, and it is no great sin to be average at whatever your role is. In the Anglosphere, to be average is to be so bad as to not have a role, not have a spot in society.
This may have gotten worse over time, but it is not a new problem- the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life is about Mr Bailey despairing at being no one and being convinced that he is some one. Further back, Great Expectations was already deconstructing the trope with Pip heading off to become someone.
ThenElection
22m ago
Not quite a suicide and more "nothing to see here, just bad luck," but the crash of the airplane carrying Lin Biao.
The official story: Lin Biao was planning a coup against Mao, but once he realized it was going to fail, he hopped on a plane with his family to flee to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, he forgot to put any fuel in it, so it ran out of fuel early on and crashed in Mongolia.
There are some conspiracy theorists who find this suspicious.
urquan
26m ago
I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women.
Heck, I'm surprised horror-qua-horror has such a hold on women! All the people I know who are into horror movies are women. Not to mention True Crime!
It seems like women are either really not into horror, or they're really, really really into horror.
daguerrean
28m ago
Agreed, I think the anger at Aloy is often misidentified, even by the people that are angry themselves. She’s just a 5/10, and there should be a place in media for people that aren’t attractive, there’s really nothing objectionable about her in isolation. The issue is that she’s a product of a movement that doesn’t just seek to establish representation for unattractive women but also seeks to abolish representation of attractive women: see replacing Lara Croft.
Lizzardspawn
29m ago
Some riff on Tzatziki is the best - semi-strained yoghurt, plenty of lemon juice, garlic and dill, salt to taste. You look for naturally lactofermented yoghurts, with nothing added, on the tangier side.
srf0638
41m ago
One I remember was about consumption in New York
I don't have a link handy, but I seem to recall it being demonstrated to my satisfaction that what the Fire in a Bottle guy and the Slime Mold Time Mold guy were presenting as evidence of high historical calorie consumption failed to account for food wasted rather than eaten. Like annual production divided by number of people or something.
vorpa-glavo
46m ago
I just think the picture is at a bad angle. In this picture, Aloy looks fine. She's not a supermodel or anything, but she looks like a woman.
vorpa-glavo
56m ago
I think this is why cultural products from the more feminists countries, such as the US, feature mannish-looking women, acting in a masculine manner.
I don't want to get too bogged down in the object level discussion of Aloy, but I think her having peach fuzz is a defensible choice. In our world, there are products to remove such hair. But Aloy is living in a post-apocalyptic world in 3040, isn't she? It's not hard to believe at all that grooming habits have changed, and women with peach fuzz just leave it as is.
Honestly, this kind of thing is something that takes me out of a lot of media. While we know that the Romans were big about hair removal, we also know plenty of ancient societies that weren't, and it's always strange to see "cave man" media where the women look like they stepped out of a modern Instagram photo, with shaved legs and armpits. I think a lot of creators across time have been cowards, unwilling to contend with the fact that humans are all, men and women, hairy apes.
Bartender_Venator
1hr ago
They expected one of us in the wreckage, brother.
WhiningCoil
1hr ago
I mean, you can clearly also see she has Ron Perlman's jaw. Which as it turns out is actually a disorder?!
daguerrean
1hr ago
1950s suburban nightmare
I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women. I truly don't understand it. Don't Worry Darling, Revolutionary Road, Stepford Wives, Jeanne Dielman. To me it's reminiscent of a corresponding male genre that expresses existential horror at the idea of a boring office job (Fight Club, Office Space, The Matrix).
Lazuli
1hr ago
Week 13 thread live: https://www.themotte.org/post/1268/weekly-nfl-thread-week-13
07mk
1hr ago
However, I don't think that changes the fact that Republicans really have become the party of choice for conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality.
This seems like a strange comment in the wake of an election in which one of the most commonly talked about theories about why the Democrats lost as much as they did is that the electorate rejected their embrace of a massive conspiracy theory that has very little grounding reality, i.e. CRT, "wokeness," identity politics, social justice, etc. I think it's more accurate to say that Republicans have become the party of choice for low status conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
but part of that problem is that Americans are just so unhealthy
Couldn't agree more. If you strip away chronic maladies that are directly due to poor lifestyle choices, you get rid of 50% of medical spend annually right there. If you then also exclude last two years of life care, you're at something like 90% of medical spend annually. And these two things interact. Getting old sucks, but it shouldn't be particularly painful or burdensome - but it is because people are getting obese first, then developing metabolic syndrome, and then getting old. Modern medicine and ethics keeps them alive, albeit with drastically reduced quality of life, pretty much up until the whole body just gives out.
Eventually, social security, medicare, and medicaid are going to run out of money. And, as this thread discusses, we're playing with the idea of a fundamental medical care shortage a la the NHS in Britain. If we don't grow our way out of this / come up with some seriously amazing medical technology innovations, I have two predictions:
-
The cohabitation with an elderly parent will become ubiquitous in American society outside of the top 5%. For the top 5%, assisted living and retirement communities will become even more opulent and lavish then they are now. The wealthy elderly will become bizarrely hedonistic.
-
There will be a large scale campaign for legalization of assisted suicide. It's already happening as a movement in the USA and they're already doing it in Canada.
I hate both of these things, personally. But I still believe they will happen. Getting wealthy in the next 50 years will be as simple as staying healthy, getting and staying married, staying employed (at pretty much any wage level that isn't working poverty), and caring about your children and family. Individualism will claim at least a third of society, perhaps more.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
1hr ago
Feminism as a concrete social movement is about advancing the material and social interests of women (or at least, the interests of a certain subset of women). It's not about "giving people the freedom to explore their identities" or "recognizing the complexity of every human" or any claptrap like that.
Until men or other women disagree with it, whereupon they retreat to "Feminism is simply the radical notion that women are people!" (This is why it is helpful to replace the symbol with the substance; yes, I Am Once Again Asking You To Read The Sequences.)
07mk
1hr ago
This comment suffers from implying that a woman having a bodily feature that women are known to have can't also make the woman look mannish.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
Even with the current regulatory environment...
I am arguing in the exact opposite direction. I would write that sentence as "Because of the current regulatory environment..."
We over-regulated general aviation and so froze it in time. If we had more people flying more planes more often, GA safety would progress faster. This is exactly what happened with cars - seatbelts, cruple zones, airbags etc.
I definitely agree that if cars were to be magically re-introduced today, we would preemptively ban them. And this is safteyism run amok and horrible for human growth and development. It is sad that people die in car crashes, I wish that wouldn't happen. I am extremely grateful for automotive transport, commerce, and sport - it helps the species generate more wealth, interact more broadly, and deliver more individual freedom.
Imagine the kind of wealth, interaction, and individual freedom one could get in an affordable and easy to fly aircraft.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1hr ago
I'm going against this advice, albeit temporarily. The counter advice is -
you can only prioritize 1 hard thing at a time.
In 2024, I took the 'just do it' advice. I wanted to start a startup asap. I began moonlighting. Built decks, figma walkthroughs, demos, talked to customers. But, all I have to show for it is a YC reject. I lost my cofounder (still my best friend) when he decided to pursue family goals instead. I couldn't do the startup justice while juggling another taxing job. I burnt the candle at both ends, and ended the year with a bad health scare.
I should've 'set myself up for success'. But the desperation to move at all costs put me on the back foot. I still want to start the startup, but I'm now going to do it by going back the basics.
2025, I'm taking a chill stop gap job. I want to take my time evaluating the right cofounder, getting health sorted so I can do a startup long-term and proposing my GF so my long term relationships are solid. It seems like a detour, but I'm hoping it'll make the start up doable the next time I try.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1hr ago
I don't think anyone is thinking about it that deeply
Sure, but you don't need to think deeply about it to have an intuitive understanding of what things (policies, ethical commitments, artistic portrayals, etc) will be helpful or harmful to your agenda. People tend to have good noses for these things.
If progressives wanted to avoid the perception that femininity could be dangerous they wouldn't have imposed toxic femininity - e.g. totally unchecked forms of feminine-coded social combat like gossip and cancelling
I mean, the point of accruing power is that you have to exercise it at some point, and that's necessarily going to generate some pushback. That's unavoidable. That's where the thought policing comes in, to try and minimize dissent.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
Where are the historic sedentary-by-modern-standards men full stop?
Based on my own calorie requirement, a "sedentary" lifestyle without a car requires at least an extra 500 calories per day compared to a US-suburban sedentary lifestyle.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
It looks like the specific departments where >75% of the employees were fired (primarily ad sales and content moderation, on my understanding) did fall over - ad revenue crashed, and content moderation is (quite deliberately on the part of Musk) no longer happening, except when Musk wants to ban one of his political opponents on a whim. There were also some moderately serious legal problems that looked like they stemmed from too many HR/finance/etc. staff being fired too fast. (If you fire the HR lady first, you replace her before you fire anyone else).
I think the fraction of the core technical staff fired was closer to 25%. And, per Jack Welch et. al, any organisation which hasn't been purged recently (which Twitter so hadn't been) can usefully fire the lowest-performing 20% of the staff - so the cull of the technical teams was no big deal.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
I started Dance Dance Dance on my Thanksgiving trip flight and it has all the hallmarks of the Murakami novels I prefer.
hooser
1hr ago
Alas, I can't comment on those three. I put the first one on my viewing list because on it's on the streaming service I have.
However, I do recommend the 1994 "Queen Margot" (French, "La Reine Margot"), which is a very good adaptation and does a great job developing the logic of that story consistent with the norms of the time. Its two main female protagonists (Margueritte and her mother Catherine de Medicci) use various aspects of femininity to secure their positions. They do not wield swords, and they're no strangers to wounds or death.
Innocent black men are routinely killed by corrupt police in large numbers, and the murders are covered up.
Donald Trump is a Russian Asset, controlled through Kompromat.
The Russians hacked the 2016 election
Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist, and the Republican machine helped him cover it up.
It seems to me that these four fit your definition of "conspiracy theory", do they not?
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