Zompist Bboard Again

Is income the correct measure? If your wealth isn't in financial instruments or real estate, you're poor by definition. Are you being sarcastic? No. Are you? Your entire net worth is in cash? Like, in a bank? In America, if you're not poor, you at least have a 401k and an IRA. You probably also own...

Polities shmolities. If you can figure out how to become ungovernable you don't even have to think in terms of countries. Is income the correct measure? If your wealth isn't in financial instruments or real estate, you're poor by definition. What's the wealth distribution over time like? According t...

Not that similar to South American - fewer nasal vowels and more coda consonants. A prototypical Papuan inventory would be something like /p t k mb nd Ng s m n N l r/ + optional /f h B G/ + /j w/ + labiovelars. Five vowels (some Tehit dialects have only four but this is unusual) and CVC syllable str...

When your grandfather was most likely a young man home ownership (and car-ownership) rates were lower than they are now, people used less energy and spent a larger portion of their income on food. It's nontrivial to find economic statistics from more than a few years before 1970, but the ratio of t...

The only thing I still don't understand is why you brought Thiel in after discussing Taiwan - for a bit I thought you implied that homesteading would somehow help if we get a nuclear winter, but that doesn't make sense, so what am I missing here? Do you think he could be the man some people thought...

@Nort: Like so very often, I have no idea what you're saying there. It would help if you wouldn't speak in a code and in allusions that only you (and maybe people in whatever circle you're part of) understand. (NB: I know who Peter Thiel is, but how is he relevant here?) What's hard to understand? ...

/p pʰ t tʰ ts tsʰ k kʰ ʔ/ <b p d t dz ts g k '> /s z ʃ h/ <s z j h> /m n r l j w/ <m n r l y w> /i u ie uo e ə o æ a ɑ/ <i u ie uo e v o ae aa a> /pitʰietə ktəʃʔətʰi ninkut suopsotnikun ksɑsjuhi ksænisik | ktəpir pu ut kʰieksuo pinkɑməʃ nuotʰwəʃkʰuzi unʔukʰuokrohəzi hkɑtu ksæni || prəʃkʰuowhi kʰinkʰ...

With the first post-2020 national election (actually a gubernatorial election in a state that happens to contain the rich and #relevant suburbs of DC, and, relatedly, the highest proportion of GOP consultants of the old school of anywhere in the country) we see a return to the pre-Obama party system...

/p t ts~tʃʲ k/ <p t ç k> /b~mⁿ dz~dʒʲ d~ɾ g~ŋⁿ/ <b~m c d~r g~ñ> /l~nⁿ/ <l~n> /v s~ʃʲ x ɣ/ | <v s~ş h ğ> /j w/ <y w> [ɯ u i y] : <ı u~w i~y ü> [ʌ o e œ] : <ə o e ö> [a r] : <a r> [d͡ʒyʃuɾájyʃ] : <Cüşudayüş> /woɾʷ-ɾ/ <wr>, /ʌ-woɾʷ-ɾ/ <əwor> /jɯɾ/ <yr>, /ʌ-jɯɾ/ <əyır> /mjakaⁿ/ <mikan>

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Nov 06, 2021 5:57 pm

you can get halfway to whatever mental disorder Ziz developed by just, like, reading foundational rationalist texts and taking them seriously.

How do you come to this conclusion?

Personal experience, unfortunately.

Aleister Crowley said (to paraphrase extensively) that you shouldn't fuck with weird shit until you've mastered normal shit. He was right. That's probably good advice, but seems like the sort of thing anyone interested in weird shit will ignore. I mean, my impression is that people go for weird shi...

Never mind Scott's freakout when topher brennan released a letter from him stating interest in neoreactionary stuff, and he felt his reputation was ruined so he 1) deleted his old blog 2) created a new one 3) quit his old psychiatrist job and made a private practice which only accepts previous pati...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:49 am

Nachtswalbe wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:31 am Has anyone read Ligotti before?

And should we?

no

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 2:29 pm If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

it is, unfortunately

The existence of crack seems like a civilizational failure that could've been avoided if we'd just normalized coca tea. But who knows, maybe people would do that with caffeine if it had a wider efficacy window. Maybe if coffee and tea were illegal we would have people taking hits of powder caffeine...

You're supposed to leave three seconds of travel time between you and the car in front of you. Nobody does this.

This is two different questions. Do we want our law enforcement to work well? Yes, of course we do, otherwise the institution of laws is pointless. Do we want every law presently on the books to be on the books? Certainly not, whether we've engaged in recreational drug use or not. Conflating the tw...

I dunno, I’d say a young woman should be able to do that across the entire length of Australia, too. (At least, the dangers I immediately think of relate to the climate rather than the people.) I’d expect the same in Europe, too. It’s the US which is an outlier here. In parts of Europe, but maybe n...

The conservative spellings have the advantage of cross-generational recognisability, and being broadly understandable. I simply take for granted that "have to" probably sounds something like ['hæf.tə] unless the "have" is emphasised — "you have to" would presumably be ...

Likewise, with gun ownership, the US today shows what happens when you have widespread gun ownership, and shows why gun control is needed by providing an example of what happens without it. The US is a violent country by European standards and a peaceful one by New World standards. Why apply the st...

I’ve come to the conclusion that, short of remaking the whole of society, very little can be done about gangs. Until we do remake society, the best that can be done is to prevent them from getting ahold of tools which they can use to do harm. What? Isn't the state supposed to be the one legitimate ...