It’s the end of summer. Time to have a proper Open Thread at last (with links).
I should be moving into a new apartment by late September. It was in a dreadful state when I acquired it, and the remont (refurbishment) has used up most of my savings – and I still need to furnish it. The quicker I finish with that, the sooner I’ll be able to return to high productivity blogging. Making piecemeal purchases of furniture and various odds and ends from month to month isn’t the most efficient approach.
You can help speed that up by donating via PayPal, sponsoring me on Patreon, or sending BTC to 17tDufZUEK3DvQh3rY75F3xtVgxj4TzdtB
All contributions are appreciated, and encourage me to continue blogging – from small symbolic sums to the occasional three-figure gift. That said, please only donate if it’s not a burden.
Unless something drastic happens, my glorious NEETdom will come to a partial end around October. I’ll poast more on this later, but the job will involve academic research around the intersection of Russian demographics, economics, and psychometrics. One can hardly think of a better synchronization with this blog’s contents, so I don’t even expect it to substantially affect output here.
In the pipeline for September: A couple more Kholmogorov translations (we will soon have enough material for a book); a few more travel reports from provincial Russian cities; some more Russian/Soviet history and statistical comparisons; several book reviews; and several more “futurist” posts on the Age of Malthusian Industrialism (this may also eventually be expanded into a book).
Featured News
- TURKEY. After its devaluation, it now has Europe’s third lowest wage after the Ukraine and Moldova.
- DECOUPLING. Leonid Bershidsky (Bloomberg): The U.S. Can’t Bring Russia ‘to Its Knees’. This tallies with my take – even if Russian liberasts such as Karina Orlova and Konstantin Eggert wish things were otherwise.
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US starts implementing the Skripal sanctions as of August 27.
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David Becker releases the final version (1.3.1) of his National IQ dataset.
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BEAR & DRAGON. Paul Goncharoff (The Duran): Russia and China build bridges together, successfully fulfill MAJOR infrastructure projects
Russia
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MORE DECOUPLING. Leonid Bershidsky (Bloomberg): Large Russian Companies Are Turning Inward
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UPPER VOLTA. The Economist: Russia leads the world at nuclear-reactor exports
Flat domestic demand for electricity has curtailed construction of new plants at home, so Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear-power company, has been flogging its wares abroad. It is focused on what some call the “great grand middle”: countries that are close allies of neither the United States nor Russia. In April Russia started building Turkey’s first nuclear plant, worth $20bn. Its first reactor is due for completion in 2023. Rosatom says it has 33 new plants on its order book, worth some $130bn.
- RBC: 39% fewer Russian schoolchildren in British schools. In fairness, I think this has more to do with ruble devaluation than a lessening of the Anglo cargo cult amongst Russia’s rich.
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PEW: Russians Say Their Government Did Not Try to Influence U.S. Presidential Election
* RETRO. That old Lada-like electric car? Just a publicity stunt by Kalashnikov Concern, which has actually enjoyed good growth in the past few years. See Bershidsky.
- NOT EXACTLY SPY-LIKE. Washington Post: Before her arrest as an alleged Russian agent, Maria Butina’s proud defense of her homeland drew notice at American University
* Encyclopedia Russophobica – new Wiki (in Russian) classifying Russophobic tropes [in Russian]. Currently in its embryonic stages.
* BOOMER NATIONALISM. The Derb thinks people who critiqued his highly negative characterization of Russia (“Putin is the illegitimate leader of a corrupt and dysfunctional nation, an economic nonentity among nations, geographically overstretched, with a rusting military and a population increasingly composed of aging drunks“) are pro-Putin trolls.
- BLAST FROM THE PAST. Ben Aris (BNE) remembers: Russia’s 1998 crisis redux
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MAGNITSKY. Lucy Komisar: I’ve Been Browder’s Number One Journalist Critic for Two Decades. Here’s What President Trump Should Know About Handling Him
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Global Times: Russian student wins world’s largest Chinese language contest
World
- SINOTRIUMPH
- NBF: Future US versus China Navy Sizes
- South Front on Chinese naval expansion
- NBF: In 2019, China and Russia will start using floating nuclear reactors for oil and gas rigs and military bases. I wrote about Russia’s floating NPPs here.
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Surprisingly, Indonesia may also be getting into floating NPPs in a big way.
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DEEP ROOTS. Gregory Clark, Neil Cummins: The big sort: The decline of northern England, 1780–2018
Northern England is now less educated and less productive than the south. This north-south divide is often characterised by policymakers as evidence of market failure. This column uses surname distributions to show that the northern decline can instead be explained by persistent outmigration of talent from the north. People of northern origin perform as well on average as those of southern origin. Talented northerners, however, are now mainly located in the south, where they are an economic elite.
Incidentally, he will soon have another book out, For Whom The Bell Curve Tolls.
- FOOM. Gwern Branwen: Did John von Neumann (brightest man on the Manhattan Project) also invent the technological singularity? (as opposed to Good).
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LONGEVITY. Josh Mitteldorf: The Most Effective Personal Anti-aging Program
* Athanasios Lapatinas, Anastasia Litina (2018): Intelligence and economic sophistication
Backed by strong empirical results, obtained from several different specification and sensitivity analyses, this paper contends that countries with high-intellectual quotient populations produce and export more sophisticated/complex products.
- Peter Frost: Why is IQ declining in the Arab world?
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IMPRESSIVE RAM. Quanta: A Master of Numbers and Shapes Who Is Rewriting Arithmetic
In his mathematics classes there, he never took notes, recalled Hellmann, who was his classmate. Scholze could understand the course material in real time, Hellmann said. “Not just understand, but really understand on some kind of deep level, so that he also would not forget.”
- Samo Burja: The risk of an American Civil War is remote
* CYBERPUNK AS FUCK: First Assassination Markets Appear on Prediction Platform Augur
Culture War
- POWERFUL TAKE. Disavowing all nationalism forthwith.
- Ron Unz has been hard at work on the JQ this month:
- ZOG. Philip Giraldi: The Crucifixion of Jeremy Corbyn
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ULTIMATE REDPILL: ROG IS BEHIND ZOG. Times of Israel: Is Putin’s Kremlin subverting Israeli democracy? A Russia expert thinks so
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BLAST FROM THE PAST. While at a nationalist bookstore in Moscow, I discovered this book about the Black Hundreds. A few pages in, and I found that they apparently they had a daughter organization called “Muslim Union of the Russian People out of Kazan Tatars.” For some really strange reason I am getting the feeling that almost nothing that sovoks & liberasts claim about the Black Hundreds is true. I’ll need to study this issue sometime.
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WHITE POWER. Audacious Epigone: Gun ownership rates by race.
- COCKS OR KIDS? Audacious Epigone: Inverse relationship between number of partners and number of children
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Audacious Epigone: Meditations on America and Rome
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USA IS FULL OF PAVLIK MOROZOVS. Greg Hood (Amren): Nation of Little Swine
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SAD. Greg Hood (Amren): Forbidden Research: How the study of intelligence is crippled by ideology
Full paper by Woodley, Michael et al. (2018): Communicating intelligence research: Media misrepresentation, the Gould Effect, and unexpected forces
- Russia Insider: Richard Spencer’s Views on Russia – an Exclusive Interview With an Alt-Right Leader
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Emil Kirkegaard: How information control works at big tech, according to one insider.
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Dan Decarlo (The American Conservative): The Gentrification Trade-Off in Buffalo. BAPism cannot be contained!
Gone are the old dive bars, tackily decorated pizza shops, and bowling alleys, replaced by upscale wine bars full of young professionals enjoying tasteful banter with their girlfriends
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BRITCUCKS. Male, pale and stale university professors to be given ‘reverse mentors’
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BOOM! Cool visualization of US vs. Soviet/Russian arms’ exports from 1950-2017.
https://vimeo.com/286751571
Hi everyone, I’m Nightfox. Since this is my very first comment here on Anatoly’s blog, I should introduce myself. I’ve been reading Anatoly’s blog since I was 13 or 14 years old, and it has probably been one of the greatest influences on my life. It’s very rare that you will come across someone who shares 90%+ of your opinions, and Anatoly is one of them. It’s also rare that you will come across such an intelligent, open-minded and diverse commentariat; it’s no surprise that many commentators here have aristocratic descent and elite university connections. My future posts will probably be delayed as I try to research before I write, but I think it’s about time I stopped lurking and began contributing a bit.
Like our friend Thorfinnsson, I’m dying to meet the AK commentariat in real life, and would be greatly interested helping organize a meetup. If I am not mistaken, there is an email thread already available. I suppose Anatoly can have my email address added to the thread, unless there is some kind of minimum commenting requirement.
By the way, Anatoly, if you need someone to do translations for you, I happen to be currently available. My Russian is not completely fluent, but since I speak English fluently I can crank out a decent translation with the help of a dictionary. I tend to translate rather literally though.
Whoops, it looks like I accidentally posted my comment twice. Is there a way of deleting the second one?
I speculate that the “Asian” category here obfuscates big differences among the very different constituent groups. My local diehard pro-gun group, which finds the NRA to be sellouts (as I do) is about 90% white and 10% Asian (mostly Koreans and Vietnamese), with virtually no blacks, Hispanics, and Indians (South Asians).
Remember the LA Riots shootout video with Korean merchants? They were defending their gun store.
The question I was wondering today, is it worth buying a Nintendo Switch?
Bloomberg was saying the PS5 is still not going to be released for a long time.
Actually, it looks like Moskvich:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/AZLK-2140_%22Moskvich%22_%281%2C5L%29_%28front_view%29.jpg/250px-AZLK-2140_%22Moskvich%22_%281%2C5L%29_%28front_view%29.jpg
Really weird design choice.
After 5 minutes, it’s impossible to edit your old comments, unfortunately.
Thanks for the kind compliments and the offer of help with translations.
I am always up for meeting my readers, you can email me (address given here: http://akarlin.com/) or contact me via Facebook/Twitter if or when you are in Moscow.
We don’t really have anything organized. That said, even if we do manage to arrange a community meetup, we will not be able to invite a person with only a few comments to his name for opsec reasons. Of course this will change if/when you become a regular commenter.
The deal between US and North Korea appears to be disintegrating: US has announced it will continue war exercises, demands immediate “denuclearisation” (capitulation) from North Korea.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/08/how-media-failures-complicate-the-nuclear-talks-with-north-korea.html
There seems to be a pattern here.
which finds the NRA to be sellouts (as I do)
?
No – my 9 year old has one. While it is an impressive piece of hardware, if you are an adult, don’t waste your money on kid stuff.
Peace.
Fight after school in the parking lot!!! Bring bullet-proof vests – it’s going down!
Peace.
What kind of games do you like? That’s the most relevant to consoles.
The survey makes sense, though I still don’t get why the onus is only on the women in society – I assume there are male partners involved when they say they’ve slept around with male partners. Don’t want women sluts walking around – great – stop sleeping around with them. It’s not rocket science.
Peace.
So Rosie, how many kids did you say you have?
The onus is on the woman because eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap. Additionally, broad sexual experience severely damages a woman’s ability to pair bond (not saying players are innocent in this regard either–you develop a problem similar to someone who’s eaten too much fine cuisine).
Mathematically, men who have had many partners are highly likely to have more children for obvious reasons.
And then there’s game theory. If you take a pass someone else will tap that.
While moral reform is laudable, ultimately the solution is political. It’s not surprising that a lot of men who started out as PUAs in the 2000s are now radical reactionaries who would make even many pious Mohammedans blush. Witness the evolution of Roosh for instance. Roissy/Heartiste is now to the right of Ayatollah Khomeini.
In the past (and present in some Islamic states) this matter was not left up to individual virtue. There’s a reason for that.
The Thorfinnsson prophecy on Tesla is in the process of being fulfilled.
Musk and Tesla are now officially under SEC investigation, which means Tesla cannot raise money from capital markets anymore.
Hope Polish Perspective is hedged. 😀
https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1033904468465733633
If you click on this link on Twitter you should be able to bypass the WSJ paywall.
WSJ is also available in PDF format from The Pirate Bay.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlJSnG8U4AA4unG.jpg
Can the Magyar Miracle comment on this? Seems worrying for Hungary.
Somewhat positive news regarding Russian demographics:
Births for January-July 2018 are down 4,2% from same period of last year. July 2018 is 1,5% down from July 2017. Decline appears to have stabilized.
http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/2018/demo/edn07-18.htm
To give you some perspective, in the Ukraine January-June 2018 is 7,1% down from last year, including Lvov region – 7,5% down, Ivano-Frankovsk – 8,2% down.
http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2018/ds/pp/pp_e/pp0618_e.html
Welcome aboard Nightfox.
I suggest you develop a niche as a commenting strategy.
On PS4 I only have Fifa 2017, Call of duty black ops, Doom, Grand theft Auto 5. I had to leave it in my room and move to another country, a few months after getting it. So I didn’t get a chance for any newer ones.
I try to keep my laptop clean of games because I work on it all day (and night). (So forums like this and YouTube are the only distraction from work).
Lol even your children have a Nintendo Switch.
I have got an OLED tv now, but not license to watch television, and nothing connected to it yet apart from a chromecast or my laptop. It’s feeling unappreciated.
There are actually a lot of weird girls around who are virgins in their early 20s (especially if in computer science courses).
I guess most people here are born around early 1990s. But already current teenagers, are having less drugs and sex than in the past. .
This is an international phenomena (levels of sex and drugs among teenagers falling in recent years in America, Russia, etc).
If you want to see this as a good or bad thing, is another question. Moralists should be celebrating the current teenagers – utilitarians, the opposite.
If that Russophobia wiki allowed versions of articles in other languages like Wikipedia does, I’d be willing to help with the English translation (at least, after their Russian-language articles became more-or-less stable).
Well, this is clowning. But China can be actually serious, that there is an opportunity now for them to become an internationally competitive, not based on subsidiaries, car industry.
Electric cars industry will have lower barriers to entry, (in a few years, a startup like Tesla could produce them), and years of investment in internal combustion technology and patents, of competitor companies, can be bypassed.
I wonder if the next Toyota or Hyundai will be from China.
Speaking from experience here?
Teens are having less sex (and doing fewer drugs) owing to helicopter parenting, digital entertainment, and so forth. But they’re not then going on to get married (young) and reproduce. Nothing to celebrate here from a moral or civilizational perspective.
That said it seems that there is a very real reaction against divorce among the triple digit IQ crowd (the proles are simply negrizing and foregoing marriage). Probably because so many of us suffered from it as children.
Tesla has raised $19bn in capital since its founding and arranged for another $9bn in credit via vendor financing and revolving credit. Not exactly chump change, even if your basic point is correct.
There are also a number of complexities with electric cars even if they are simpler than internal combustion cars. Not like manufacturing and servicing high quality suspensions is simple. The automotive industry is the most brutally competitive one on the planet and standards are very, very high.
China has already demonstrated some ability to produce high quality products. Xiaomi and Huawei come to mind. No reason it can’t do so in the automotive sector.
That said it seems like the world is divorcing into two economic systems. A “Western” one and a Chinese one.
While the former is true, I doubt the latter. Never seen any commenter mention Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. or working in an elite job like an investment bank or management consulting firm. Readership is mostly made up of people who are instinctively contrarian and follow current affairs closely.
There are at least two entrepreneurs like Thor the factory owner and Philip(?) the trader/business finder.
Switch should be fine for your purposes with Breath of the Wild, etc, then.
Well, I know a quite attractive girl (of ‘balkanoid swine’ heritage) in engineering who fits this bill. Though on the whole accurate, I suspect that the view of PUAs is very negatively skewed in that the better types of girls avoid such characters.
My response to Thorfinnsson regarding Tesla
http://tinyurl.com/ew9efwfiuges
no way Tesla goes to zero
https://www.usacarry.com/forums/politics-and-news/9308-nra-continues-compromise-second-amendment.html
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nra-bump-stocks-20171006-story.html
“weird girls” = won’t sleep with you.
I went directly short brah.
Including one position I took out at 297 which sucks but them’s the breaks.
Where’s your long position Eugene Fama?
according to David Becker’s IQ dataset, Belarus has the highest national IQ outside of East Asia, at 101.60
I am moderately paranoid and especially concerned that the US based far right is (mostly) a psyop. As a result I’ve become alarmed at Russia Insider offering a platform to obvious AstroTurf assets “Andrew Anglin” and now Dick Spencer. What is their their thinking? I thought they were the edgy counterpart to the Duran, but now I fear…well I don’t know what exactly but I don’t like it. Perhaps the goal is simply to improve the perception of Russia amongst US far right people, and for better or worse those two have some cache within that set. Still, I don’t like it. I don’t see how you can be pro Russia while promoting people who would stir up trouble with Russia’s non European but indigenous groups.
This is the Logos/Gnon in action. I would have hoped use of daycares would be declining but I see little evidence of that, anecdotally. Perhaps because the insanity and negative effects of daycare aren’t as obvious nor as publicized as those of divorce.
Indeed. Your Red Chinese and (outside gas station owners) your south Asians will hardly ever own guns. Vietnamese on the other hand are in many ways much more like whites. I recall them being the only non white group to narrowly break for the GOP.
https://i.imgur.com/LcM85wB.jpg
The ‘Eternal Anglo’ meme was not created out of thin air. Anyone knowing anything about the history of SA also knows that the Anglos backstabbed the Boers more than any other. It also solidifies my opinion of the UK as the single worst major Western European country.
While France and Germany have their problems, would we see a government minister come out like this in any of those countries?
https://i.imgur.com/XhiijnW.jpg
I’m glad you’re finally coming back to life, Thor, after I posted a series of news of Tesla shorts losing billions and where you were mysteriously silent 😉
Musk backed away from the private funding because he was told by existing institutional investors, not because there was no money. The SEC investigation will go nowhere. This is also why your “tesla will go bankrupt” bet is yet another money loser, if things go haywire, Musk can always go private because the funding is there. It would also give me a guaranteed sell price at $420 or thereabouts whereas I bought the stocks at $280.
That said, the problems at Tesla remain what they were for years. Musk is A) overstretched between two very demanding companies and B) he is an extremely ambitious man. He’s going to introduce four new models in the new few years (Tesla Truck, Tesla Pickup, Tesla Model Y and Tesla Roadster). He is also going to try to build a new factory in China, which is now not even needing to share ownership because of the new Chinese rules regarding EVs. If he would just calm down and allow the current pipeline to be optimised it wouldn’t be a problem. But then again, he is Elon Musk, he’s constantly in a hurry. My guess is that he’ll likely go private in the end, get the big cash infusion needed to do all the models/capital buildout and then just burn the costs down and start acting like a normal car company (5% growth instead of insane 50% growth rates).
Well, do we now use nominal prices when it suits us or do we stick with PPP? Sort of reminds me of Felix using nominal GDP per capita to diss Ukraine but insisting on using PPP for Russia. FWIW, here’s the PPP-adjusted picture.
https://i.imgur.com/93RY1ND.png
The map is still flawed for at least two reasons.
But it’s still better than nominal maps.
OK – lots of stuff to unpack here, so…to commence…
It is beyond the biological equation, keep in mind what the blog post stated:
You cannot both place the onus on women to safeguard civilization and concurrently deem them not capable of being involved in the decision making to run society. Men, in a serious patriarchy, recognize that they must put forward the proposal that they are in positions of power precisely to protect women and for their benefit. This cannot happen unless the men prove, through their actions that they are not behaving like; a) predators or b) children in a candy shop. Self-control is a necessary part of masculinity.
Correct, which is why men should not contribute to the break down of women that will be future wives and mothers.
Indeed and you brought up good examples which we will explore later.
In this day and age, they are only more liable to contribute to raising the statistical rates of abortions in society – women are not willing to have the children of hump-and-dump men. And they have the means to ensure they don’t.
OK – but two points:
1) Why do you want to be a contributing factor in the downward spiral of society?
2) According to the chart, the numbers of partners does have an affect on the later decision-making of the woman. You holding yourself in check could be the factor that determines whether she ends up in the 2-5 category or the 6-10 one – you can make the difference. Remember…”Choose wisely–civilization depends on it.”
Yes, ultimately, but you cannot put the cart before the horse.
I agree – and this is the kind of damage that can happen to PUAs. This is not good. Going from one extreme to another is of no help to anyone; better to map out a reasonable path from the get-go instead of setting up a bi-polar approach that will ensure the pendulum keeps swinging from one extreme to another ad infinitum.
Correct, but these kinds of laws can only be enforced if they already have a wide level of sign-off from the greater society. These laws are meant to force the hands of those exceptions to the rule – you cannot have 80% of society being an exception to the rule.
Example; some level of alcohol prohibition is enforced in plenty of Muslim countries. Yes there are a few people that skirt the rules and either bribe their way out or get punished, but the majority of the population adheres to the rule because they already consider it a vice – you can handle the exceptions logistically. Compare that with the utter failure of prohibition in the US – even the cops were pissed off they couldn’t drink booze.
Look, I’m coming from a community that is tackling this stuff head on. We are trying to preserve the our next generation and hold the line (and do it well enough that they will be able to hold the line for at least seven generations or more). I’m also very well connected with plenty of spiritual teachers that share what’s going on in the Muslim community and our points of failure based on counseling hundreds of families.
One obvious point is in the families that tend to treat their gigolo sons with kid gloves but go ballistic when their girls mess around. Almost every single time, you will lose the girl because they see right through the hypocrisy – nobody respects hypocrisy. There have been plenty of times when I have been able to win over my daughter by pointing out that I don’t have lax expectations for her brothers as opposed to her.
These are some major issues I’m seeing in the Alt-Right/WN community – you guys need to be able to make this thing more appealing to women by stressing how it is in their best interest. Trust me, women will be on board to police themselves and not waste time with players when you do so:
But you, as men, need to provide the serious alternative to the players otherwise how are they going to know the difference if you’re just trying to get into their pants just as much as the next guy?
Peace.
PUAs becoming extreme right wingers is not a pendulum swing – it has always been about cruelty and domination, not sex.
It has been pointed out many times that manipulating the insecurities of women and preying on their weaknesses and fears to get loveless sex based on an artificially crafted presentation of yourself is far less cost and time effective than simply paying a prostitute, if sex is what you’re after.
Yet PUAs are notoriously opposed to paid sex, because it doesn’t validate their ability to manipulate and intimidate. Domination is the point. Cruelty is the point.
Its no surprise these men eventually gravitate towards tyrant-based political systems.
Men who gravitate towards PUA – even those just attracted to the concepts and terminology – are damaged men shaped by a toxic society, so we should have sympathy – but we should also be clear on what kind of men they’ve become.
I think this is a significant error of the manosphere – they profess to want a traditional society, but they are not prepared to make the personal sacrifices to actually create it.
Hopefully, more orthodox American reactionaries can influence their more wayward dissidents-in-arms.
https://www.socialmatter.net/2018/03/27/sexual-dynamics-average-partner-numbers-are-gender-identical/
Richard Spencer has not only come out as a neo-Nazi, he seems to have failed even at that and his cult followers have abandoned him. He is now just David Duke 2.0, the lonely white supremacist “voice” who willingly performs the role of the devil and embraces whatever the media wants to demonize either because he’s too narcissistic to give up the attention or because he’s an actual regime psy-op.
When they want to demonize X, they remind us that neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer is pro-X, and it does very little good for Russia’s image in the West that neo-Nazi rallies are proclaiming Russia to be their friend that these people seem to still be getting sympathetic treatment in the Russian media even after outing themselves.
Unfortunately it seems like Russians are just prone to listening to those foreigners who tell them what they want to hear and Spencer knows what to say about Ukraine and about how small countries are terrible and big countries should just swallow them into spheres of influence. The narrative over here for years now has been that it’s World War II again and Russia wants to ally with the Nazis to carve up Europe again. Pro-NATO propagandists don’t even have to do anything to paint the picture as Russia does it itself.
OBOR debt trap spreads to Central Asia
Seems to confirm two things. One, Chinese influnce in CIS is increasing at the expense of Russia’s due to monetary factors and two, their reach will go beyond just Central Asia and will increasingly reach into the Caucasus, Eastern Europe.
I suppose this is the Chinese way of saying, you don’t have much choice except us, Moscow, so these are the terms. And at any rate, wouldn’t Moscow prefer Beijing in their neighbourhood over Washington?
I would say the key is validation, not so much cruelty. If it was cruelty, you’d see actual violent rape scandals surrounding these guys (not fake “regret rape” or even faker “rape culture” scandals) but that doesn’t seem to happen.
A few generations ago, the cultural ideal was a man who finds a woman to marry and provides and takes care of his family but Western media now paints such men as uncool, pale and stale conservative dolts. Pop media idolizes men who get a lot of female attention and men who grow up immersed in it will grow up believing that failure to bed a lot of women is an invalidation of their manhood. Prostitutes do not help since having to pay for something is the opposite of getting validation.
There are still religious subcultures that isolate their members from mainstream media and in an Amish community they still have traditional standards – a faithful husband is viewed positively by his community and gets social validation while a man who just tries to seduce women for sex quickly becomes an outcast. If any of the PUA guys had grown up in such a community, they would have very likely just been normal members.
Modern society has produced a weird class of men. There were always some extremely promiscuous sociopaths but they were men who ignored the social disapproval they received. Now we have the opposite of sociopaths, men who deeply want the approval of society, ending up believing that to get the approval of society they need to be promiscuous.
Such men are dangerous psychopathic predators by nature, with zero moral compass. That’s why they are attracted to the “Game”, the far right, organized crime, sadism, gangsterism etc. And no, they do not deserve any sympathy.
Those who sympathize with evil men betray their own inclinations.
It was used to illustrate the size of the Turkish devaluation, not to “prove” that Turkish living standards have plummeted. (Why would I have a particular agenda on that score wrt Turkey, anyway?).
Debt Trap = Neo-Colonialism.
China is imitating Europe.
http://www.worldbulletin.net/m/haber/152967/french-colonial-tax-still-enforce-for-africa
When Guinea demanded independence from French colonial rule in 1958, the French unleashed their fury with more than 3,000 leaving the country taking their entire property. In addition, they destroyed anything that couldn’t be taken – destroying schools, nurseries, public administration buildings, cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged, animals killed and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned. In effect they were sending a message to all other colonies that the [consequences] for rejecting France would be high.
The article called attention to an ongoing practice by which former African [colonies] are forced to pay a colonial tax to France – even today. In fact, France continues to thrive on the practice, which extracts approximately 500 billion dollars from African countries each year.
As Koutonin notes, this outrageous tax deprives African economies of much needed funds, exacerbates debt, and strips their authority over their own natural reserves. But the detriments are more than just economic, as the ills of colonialism manifest in social ways that are equally devastating to the dignity and identity of the African people:
I also thought it looked like a Moskvich. A car with even lower prestige than a Dacia. Still better than a Zaporozhets, though. I’m not sure about the Trabant. The Trabant was definitely worse than the Moskvich, at least on paper, but probably way more reliable, so most people probably preferred the Trabant. A Wartburg was both better and more reliable than the Moskvich, so had higher prestige.
But the best car available for most customers in communist Hungary was the Lada, especially in my childhood the Lada 2107. The best communist car, designed by the Italians. The Volga was only used by lower officialdom, so doesn’t count. The ZIL limousines were shunned by higher level officials, who preferred Mercedes-Benz.
I’ve been observing nerdy students (both men and women) for a number of years, both in various western countries and now in Russia. While I don’t enquire about their sexual habits, I suspect that most of them practice serial monogamy punctuated by periods of involuntary celibacy.
Setting aside the moral and strategic aspect, on which Talha and I agree, there is also the question of arithmetic. Even if somehow or another you convince one-third of women to be paragons of sexual virtue while men to continue their philandering ways, then the average promiscuity coefficient of a woman in the other two-thirds must increase.
Quoting Wikipedia:
No doubt some blogger from the “manosphere” has already come up with a more context-specific name than pigeonhole principle.
https://twitter.com/jc_mittelstadt/status/1033668879808163842
Volgas where the absolute worst from what I recall from friends who had them, though again they were quite old by that point. Dacias were crappy cars no doubt, but fairly reliable.
What a life you had! 🙂
A surprising amount of Hungarians feel nostalgic for it.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/04/28/hungary-better-off-under-communism/
In the meantime Putin announces his concessions on pension reform:
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-announces-concessions-retirement-age-hike-62702
The main argument I heard against pension reform is that Russian men (life expectancy 67) won’t live till the new retirement age, so naturally, we are lowering it for women (life expectancy 77), not men.
In Hungary Dacias had a bad reputation, they were considered unreliable. Altogether they weren’t that bad (it was basically an older Renault model), and I think in Hungary their reputation was worse than deserved due to crappy support (spare parts were difficult to find, etc.), which I think had something to do with Ceausescu’s constantly worsening relations with Hungary. There were also rumors that Romania kept sending the worst quality products to Hungary (probably a general problem of COMECON trade, where the best quality products went to “capitalist exports” where they received hard currency; then to the domestic market where it was politically the most advantageous to the regime; and the worst was reserved for other COMECON countries), but again, it might have been made worse by politics.
It would make more sense (both fairer and more efficient) to fully equalize the retirement age for both sexes, while cutting off a year for women for every child they have up to some rational limit like 5 or 6.
Putin did propose the latter, but structured in a bizarre way. There will be a year cut off for every child that women have above two, while the retirement age will remain 50 years for those with 5 or more children.
Pretty much the only people to have such families are various lower IQ ethnic minorities. This means that we might now get the spectacle of a Russian man in Irkutsk with an LE of 65 retiring at 65, while a Chechen woman with an LE of 80 gets to retire at 50.
I’ve only sat in a Volga once, when the driver of a director of the company where my dad worked did a favor for my dad and transported me and my brother for a short distance. It felt extremely prestigious and big, though it felt much wider than long, since I think the passenger cabin wasn’t very long relative to the length of the car. I guess adults didn’t find it so very comfortable. It also must’ve been difficult to drive and park due to its size.
But to be honest, even West German or Italian or French cars of the era were often small, uncomfortable and crappy. Still less crappy than Eastern Bloc cars.
There are two things which were better: proles had a better life (only recently did life get better for them due to the large scale emigration to the EU and the resulting labor shortage), and there was a general sense of continuity: you were expected to live your life out in Hungary, with things worse than in Western Europe but better than our neighbors (and constantly improving), and you didn’t expect to see your children leave the country. Just to give an example of how life was better, meat consumption was at its all time high in the 1970s.
To put it in perspective, when I was a child, most old people were quite nostalgic for the previous Horthy era, which was probably even better than the communist system in many ways, and not much worse even for proles. It must be kept in mind that a lot of the improvements is coming from technological progress and not the switch to capitalism. (The same was true back then.) Of course, not much of the innovation happened in communist countries, and when it did, it was often not implemented.
I disagree with much of this:
Russia remains the no.1 foreign investor in the Ukraine. Ukrainian regime is trying to blame its atrocious business climate on “aggression” from Russia, but in reality Russia is its chief financial benefactor.
What is the point building “Belt Road”, that will run through the Turkmen desert and Caucasian mountains? Goods would have to be transported by railroad till Caspian sea, then loaded onto ships to reach Azerbaijan, then loaded onto rail again. This is going to increase transportation costs, produce delays. With no significant economic centers along this route, and lots of instability in the region the whole endeavor just looks pointless to me. For Chinese businessmen it will be both cheaper and safer to just use the traditional sea route.
Kazakhstan-Russia-Belarus-Poland is what economically viable “Belt Road” could look like, transporting goods exclusively by rail. But political conflict between Russia and the West is the main issue here.
China’s expansion does not threaten Russia’s military dominance of the region. We just made a deal with Caspian littoral states, that ruled out Chinese and American military presence in the region.
We cannot forbid China from investing in Kazakhstan, but we have effectively forbidden China’s bases there. Contrast it with “European integration” in ex-Communist Europe, where joining NATO alliance is arguably the first necessary step in such “integration”.
I was unaware of that, and frankly find it a bit surprising in light of the fact that HUF interest rates have been basically zero for several years now. Is debt owed by Hungarian subsidiaries of foreign firms to their parent companies included in the number?
I thought our foreign financing position didn’t look so bad. I will try to look into this.
It doesn’t help that the Hungarian central bank is led by an Orbán loyalist dodo who organized the interior of the main central bank office building in accordance with the principles of feng shui.
I took one as a taxi once, it felt like a bit of a silly car, trying to be something it wasn’t; a supposed luxury car with cloth seats, a ridiculously long throw on the gearbox, leaf springs and a 4pot engine. They were quite roomy though and the older versions had nice 50s-60s American styling. The zhigulis and zapos at least weren’t pretending to be anything other than basic. Having said that, there was probably a period from the mid 70s to the late 80s where they were at least snapping at the heels of American cars in terms of performance, thanks to smog controls, slushy suspensions and autoboxes. I don’t think any of the commie cars, with the exception of the Trabant were terrible, they just stayed in production for far too long.
US warns Russia, Syria against chemical weapons use
US plans to use fake chemical weapons attack to strike Syria – Russian MoD
If there is a chemical incident —
And if there is not a chemical incident —
And who will the rest of the world (ROW) support?
Russia’s Syria chemical weapons attack warning dubious, experts say
“The Russian government is warning of a staged gas attack by Syrian rebels in Idlib. Experts doubt the validity of that information, however, and see the move as a telltale sign of desperation in Moscow.”
it’s the other way round
PUA started as a very individualistic reaction to feminism, pro-sex but anti-relationship – young PUA influenced dudes who later got involved with the far-right have been slowly switching to pater familias mode for reasons which should be obvious.
(trive vs individual)
tribvs would have been a much better typo, doh!
This seems like an odd way to stimulate birthrate: you think that women will be more enthusiastic about having one extra kid, knowing they’ll be able to retire one year early? Women IRL do not calculate like that.
Common sense suggests that retirement age should correspond to life expectancy for both sexes (i.e. it should be lower for men in Russia), but the most efficient way to reform the pension system would be to abolish it altogether.
Here is some Hungarian nostalgia for you by a British writer who grew up in Hungary. It was meant to be a teaser for her book Goulash and Solidarity, which never found a publisher because (or so says her husband, the occasional RT columnist Neil Clark) UK publishers had no interest in accounts that showed any positive sides of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Oppressive and grey? No, growing up under communism was the happiest time of my life
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221064/Oppressive-grey-No-growing-communism-happiest-time-life.html
Christcuck
Make a post on the link between female education and the fertility crisis
https://www.nap.edu/read/6272/chapter/3#25
http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
In Ethiopia, a woman who’s been to school has 1.3 children versus 5+
500 billion to screw all the white women you want? Hmm.
Anatoly, have you seen the latest news about McCain
s coffin? RUKOPOZHATNOSTLEVEL KARAMURZA, literally.Unbelievable.
Poor little Africans, being exploited by Europeans giving them hundreds of billions of dollars in debt relief
Not being particularly interested in 5 million plus or minus 1 million, late I’ve had to get my crimethink thrills elsewhere, so have been reading Moldbug, who makes some good points, and is certainly entertaining, but leaves many questions under-explored.
Daniel Chieh (and others) what to read next in NRx?
Speaking of the JQ, it turns out that USA Vice-President Mike Pence, bound for even more fame if things get impeachy, is part of an extended proud Jewish family
Thanks to Aangirfan on her site, from the Christian Zionist press, “Meet Mike Pence’s Orthodox, Jewish, Israeli Cousins”
Pences of Indiana, including US Vice-President Mike Pence, have Jewish cousins, some in Israel … Mike Pence is a cousin of Jewish Jesse Socher, living on the Golan Heights, whose son is in a photo wearing an Israeli military uniform. Other connections are Tammy Socher, Richard Pence, and Merrill Socher-Axelrod, who told Mike Pence, “You have Orthodox Jewish cousins in Israel. Your cousins are my cousins.”
Mike Pence’s mom, Nancy, was born as ‘Cawley’ which can be a Jewish name … Apparently ‘Pence’ is a “made-up Ellis Island name … It doesn’t really come from England.”
The shorts who lost money were the ones playing the puts. Timing is hard.
The money to go private is there–now (maybe?). Read the Wall Street Journal article I posted. Silver Lake Partners, Volkswagen AG, and the Saudis were all kicking tires. There was never a formal offer, committed partners, or something for shareholders to vote on. And in financial markets money is there–until it isn’t. The telecom bubble is a classic example.
https://25iq.com/2017/11/11/the-1990s-telecom-bubble-what-can-we-learn/
Companies being investigated by the SEC cannot raise money from capital markets, which means Tesla is now dependent on banks and vendors to sustain its cash burn. While the investigation might not go anywhere, while it’s going on Tesla can’t issue new shares or bonds.
And as for that $420 per share price, apparently “Grimes” (???) got Musk really into weed and he finds the whole 420 thing HILARIOUS: https://www.thestreet.com/markets/azealia-banks-confirms-elon-musk-smokes-weed-14689682
Have fun being bullish on this dog.
$TSLAQ 420 blaze it
This is nonsense. PUA is just an amoral set of observations rather than any life strategy, its no more “evil” than say, hypnosis. As notanon noted, its actually highly individualistic and doesn’t really have anything to say about how society should handle women at all: its just about “getting your own” with no regard for anything else.
People who take that philosophy and propose political solutions for women are actually less selfish in that sense.
The idea of advocating religion over Game observations as a means of handling loneliness seems ridiculous. Religion took my money. PUA saved my life, arguably.
http://neoreaction.net/bestofnrx.html
https://thefutureprimaeval.net/material-and-social-technologies/
https://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-tyranny/
https://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-circle-of-equity/
https://thefutureprimaeval.net/a-short-argument-for-traditions/
I largely agree, but I do think simple cruelty and power over others plays a significant role in their motivations for many, although domination and validation – and isn’t domination always about validation really? – is the primary factor for most.
What disturbs me is that sociopathic behavior is gradually becoming mainstreamed – lots of tv shows glorify it, breaking bad, house of cards, sneaky Pete, etc.
I know that sociopaths are supposed to be unconcerned with social approval, but in their own way I think they are people obsessed with it – otherwise, they would not care do much about status, wealth, and power. These things have no intrinsic value – they are primarily instruments of social approval.
We should have sympathy for the broken.
PUA started as a response to feminism, and became a male version of feminism – both are movements for the harsh domination of their respective genders.
PUA version of patriarchy isn’t the benevolent guidance of mature and experienced men looking out for the interests of everyone, but the harsh domination of callous and immature men interested in personal power over females – the stuff of feminists nightmares.
I don’t think the onus should be on women. The onus should be on the state (and churches, schools, media, and other major institutions). Women then will police eachother’s behavior since women are conformists. Traditionally the people who “slut shame” are other women who don’t like the competition.
Good points otherwise, though the pendulum metaphor isn’t right. The PUA movement emerged in response to sexual liberation. Basically men who were simply trying to figure out how to get laid. As a result of that experience they came to see the wisdom in the traditional arrangements that, for instance, your community practices.
Dude are you gay?
Interview of Kryshtanovskaya about the Putin state’s succession process:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-25/putin-s-succession-plan-could-be-trouble-for-russia
You should never be shorting individual stocks: your options will decay over time, and by selling stock short your loss is potentially unlimited. You are also in danger of wild overnight moves.
You might get lucky occasionally, but it’s a losing strategy in the long-run.
Nonsense. MRA is the male version of feminism. PUA is just a tool.
Want to comment on the Ukraine’s ongoing demographic collapse?
In January-June 2018 births are down 7,1% down from last year, including Lvov region – 7,5% down, Ivano-Frankovsk – 8,2% down.
http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2018/ds/pp/pp_e/pp0618_e.html
Doesn’t seem to support your idea of a recovery in living standards. Also interesting that Galicia is hardest hit.
How are Ukrainian wages that high anyway!? The country seems like an outlier, although many poor Balkan countries look weird as well. Both Ukraine’s nominal and PPP GDP per capita are many times lower than Russia’s, for instance. Ukrotriumph? Their living standards aren’t really low after all? Or is that map BS?
Not my (or JL’s) impression. Well, apart from the specific point of Andropovophilia.
Current favorite in Kremlin circles, according to a sufficiently connected journalist I talked with a couple of months ago, is Dmitry Patrushev. Though it’s all speculation, of course.
Math is getting more diverse.
This is a great summary of my longer posts. Or even more concise; if you want civilization, men need to learn to keep it in their pants.
Or, as a quote attributed to Saladin (ra) states:
“If you want to destroy any nation without war, make adultery and nudity common in the next generation.”
Peace.
Daniel, every theory of man woman relations implies a social system.
If you believe women wish to be “dominated” – the basic premise of PUA – this implies a particular social system.
If you believe women want to share power, even if in different areas, and want to be treated with love, kindness, and respect, that implies an entirely different social organization.
Desiring to dominate another human being isn’t morally neutral – it’s probably the essence of evil, as well as driven by personal weakness.
I’m not accusing you of these attributes, so don’t take it personally – I have no idea how you personally “implemented” PUA, and it’s likely your wife found you endearing despite your attempts to be dominant, not because of them. You seem to have other morally worthwhile qualities.
But the theory is evil.
I’m aware of the dangers of stock shorting.
My portfolio is 90% long, and I always keep some dry powder.
No tool is neutral. No technology is neutral.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey_poster.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51CyB0PHbAL.jpg
http://bangertgardens.com/gallery/7096885417d8f44fffdf953ae407bf5f.jpg
No need to listen to PUAs on this. Take it from the ladies themselves.
Humans are a social, tribal species who exist in dominance hierarchies. Dominance is not something we get to opt out of unless we choose to become hermits.
You have a definition of domination that is not used by PUA and frankly is so emotionally overwrought that its hardly worth engaging. However, I am amused by the thought: you should sell a version of PUA that focuses on lonely, ancient rich women so that it can “dominate” by maximizing widower inheritance. Real domination is money, most of the time, so it logically follows that EvilPUA should be maximizing money.
Anyway, PUA opines that many women are sexually aroused by the notion of domination, which is as moral or lack of thereof by my marketing awareness that emotionally charged advertising is more successful for women. Therefore, in order to sexually arouse women, signals should be made to appear dominant and in order for an ad to work on women, emotional appeals should be made.
Not much else to be said. I think that you’re projecting some personal trauma of poor treatment of women upon PUA; I can sympathize with that, but you should be blaming modernity, not the response to modernity.
Agreed – eventually – how do you get there though? The state and institutions are a reflection of the people – why is marijuana now growing in legal usage when it wasn’t 10 years ago. I posted a video of Sr. Yasmin Mogahed who speaks at large conferences to many young women – if you watched it, she was applauded by the audience (full of women) for stating publicly that women should not waste their time with men who are not man enough to approach their fathers at the outset. This is what our community is fighting to preserve, it is absolutely precious in this day and age, you guys need to get somewhere close to it again somehow (basically the way the West was many decades ago). This requires that young women have an immense amount of confidence in their fathers…and that cannot happen if their fathers are gigolos like every other man-child out there that can’t control his appetites.
That is the key here and the essence of patriarchy; how do fathers re-establish that normative guardian relationship with their daughters in the West? Any changes in laws will reflect a change in these norms. But men have to act like father material first.
I agree here, many people in the West have no clue that for every bint taking off her hijab on the streets of some upper-class neighborhood in Tehran, there are plenty of women that would force a scarf on her if they had a chance. Shaming negative behavior is a very powerful tool for society.
That is a good point. Though, you have to admit, men were full partners in the nonsense – I remember seeing stock footage of Woodstock – plenty of guys hanging around taking advantage of easy pickings.
The current sexual market norms in the West reminds me of Lord of the Flies – these kinds of various movements were inevitable.
Anyway, just my two cents based on my experience (and that of my community); feel free to use whatever helps.
Peace.
The other major trend of thought is Dark Enlightenment, which is the Nick Landian version of NRX:
https://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/
I also recommend Spandrell & Jim:
https://spandrell.com/tag/best/
https://blog.jim.com/
Somewhat entertaining and well-researched, is the Mad Monarchist:
https://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/
Grey-enlightenment here is also interesting. As per his name, its a more moderate but still solidly dissident Right.
https://greyenlightenment.com/sample-page/
Mohammedans themselves seem to be cracking under the assault of modernity as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/opinion/sunday/hoejabi-hijabi-muslim-culture.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44933748 (note the photo of this vicious thot)
https://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/women/nike-pro-hijab
We have to go back more than “many decades” ago. Dating itself needs to be abolished (note: homosexuals invented dating) and replaced with courting.
How to get there? We start by ourselves becoming pater familias, teaching our own sons how to be men, and guarding our daughters rather than encouraging them to pursue “education”. From there perhaps we can form our own neighborhoods and even entire communities.
The Amish are an interesting model, though not without issues (rejection of technology, pacifism, rumspringa, bad aesthetics).
Young people traveling to Poland for months at a time? The decline is largely an artifact of a larger number of people having left, and these are mostly of child-bearing age.
A friend just got back from a long trip to Poland, which is full of Ukrainians. There are even Ukrainian cops there now!
Galicia has had above average birth rates so despite being “hardest hit” its birth rate remains above average. For example there were over 11,300 live birth in Lviv oblast vs. 9,632 in Kharkiv oblast, despite Lviv oblast having 2.5 million people and Kharkiv oblast having 2.7 million people. So we see the ongoing demographic shift towards the western nationalistic parts of the country continues in 2018.
::::::::::::
As for “demographic collapse.”
Assuming the official figure of 2.5 million people in Lviv oblast, 11,3000 births there in the first six months of 2018 would be about 9.04/1,000 for the year. This makes the oblast a little better than Romania’s 9.02 (which is boosted by gypsies – so much better than ethnic Romanian Romania) and well ahead of Germany and Spain (8.6).
But taking into account people living in Poland and actual population being smaller than the official figure, Lviv oblast’s birth rate is probably similar to that of Hungary or Croatia (9.3 or so). Your dream of “demographic collapse” is an exaggeration.
Unless you believe the fairytale that half of Galicia has unofficially left. In that case, Galicia’s birth rate must be at Mexican levels :-).
I hear, I am not interested in making this personal 🙂 You say PUA saved your life. That’s probably too personal.
We shall have to agree to disagree.
Big time – like I said, we are just holding the line.
We are dealing with this kind of madness:
http://everyoneisgay.com/mahdia-lynn/
The above person is not a woman, it is a White male – I kid you not.
I have no delusions about how bad it is out there – especially because I am in contact directly with spiritual teachers that hundreds of families come to for help:
https://i2.wp.com/www.thefyi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FYI-College-Students-Infographic1.jpg
We are simply behind everyone else as far as stats are concerned. However, we do have one thing that the West might want to revive. That concept is that of repentance. I have seen plenty of people who lived bad lives in their youth (whether born Muslims or converts) that were able to have and uphold very healthy family lives after they turned their lives around. The concept that they are not spiritually anchored by the mistakes of their past was an immense part of them being able to move forward with their lives. But that also requires shunning that past life, not lauding “sexual conquests”.
You make excellent proposals – which is exactly along the lines that I would recommend. Which is why I’m big on men acting like would-be fathers from the outset. Politics will follow the communities.
You guys are smart – borrow what works, reject what does not.
Peace.
I particularly enjoyed the ravaged by raptors one 🙂 Chicks dig raptors!
I agree, some kind of dominance hierarchy is essential for society, but there are differing levels of force and harshness.
Medieval society seems considerably more free and merry than modern industrial society while based on a very clear hierarchy – in many ways clearer than today. It also incorporated reciprocal obligations and parallel hierarchies.
A marriage is based on parallel hierarchy systems – male and female areas of control. That’s not PUA.
PUA is like all modern systems – harsh, degrading dominance of one element.
Like raptors.
Perhaps something to ponder for South Africa.
That hardly means they pay $500bn per year though. It’s probably a net good that France manages their currency accounts rather than Best Bank of Togo or whatever.
That would put his ‘harsh domination’ comments in a different light.
The Bible is pretty clear on marriage. Wives are commanded by God to submit to their husbands.
Dominance is not necessarily degrading or harsh. It can be, which is of course why the Medieval society you romanticize also placed many obligations and duties on husbands as part of exercising marital headship.
And it’s not just the Bible. The Roman Pater Familias had the power of life and death over his family.
1. The success of the Switch. Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?
I haven’t been following the industry closely lately, as I’ve been more into retro gaming, but I have to say that the Switch’s success was and is a huge surprise. I thought I knew and understood the gaming industry and its trends quite well, but apparently not.
Well, I suppose very few people expected the Wii U to flop as hard as it did and atleast the Switch is actually fully portable, but I just don’t understand the mass appeal of it at all, in 2018. Who are those people buying it?
I mean I understand its appeal in Japan, the lifestyle there and all that, but in the West. WTF is going on? Is it for kids mainly? But don’t they already have their tablets and smartphones? And it’s not like the Switch is cheap, on the contrary, it’s massively overpriced in my opinion.
So in the West, especially in the US (Nintendo is actually nowhere near as popular in Europe) we have: 1. the declining demographic of hardcore Nintendo fans (look at the sales trends from the original NES to Wii U, decline after every generation, the DS and Wii obviously don’t count) and especially look at the Wii U sales numbers… So how big is that Nintendo fan demographic? 10-20 million, maybe, 2. then we have PS4, Xbox One and PC with their third-party support. The PS4 especially has been a big success and 3. casual gamers that already have their mobile devices.
So who are those people buying the Switch in their millions? Where were they when the Wii U was in the market? Or maybe even more interestingly, why didn’t those people buy more Playstation Vitas? As I said, it was probably inevitable that the Switch was going to do better than the Wii U, but I still predicted Xbox One or N64 numbers at best. I don’t understand this at all. Dedicated mass market handheld gaming should be almost dead, more of a niche market than ever before. What’s going on?
2. The system itself and alternatives (This is like… my actual reply lol)
That said, I really like handhelds myself and the PS Vita is one of the most underrated things ever, so I’m certainly going to pick up a Switch eventually. Those third-party ports, like Dark Souls, Doom and Wolfenstein look really interesting, and of course its Japanese offerings.
However, I really think that the system is too expensive currently, it’s not worth much more than €200. So Dmitry, certainly don’t pay the full price for it. Also, in a typical Nintendo fashion game prices are probably going to remain high for most first-party titles, including for used copies.
Looking at your PS4 collection, I’m not even sure whether you are really interested in Switch’s library of games. So if you’re not big into Japanesese games or handheld gaming, there are probably better options for you. How about a standard Xbox One? You could probably pick one up for cheap, especially used and it has all the Call of Dutys and GTAs. I haven’t read that Bloomberg article, but the PS5 probably won’t launch before 2020-21. One thing to keep in mind as well is that Nintendo might release an improved version of the Switch in a few years time.
3. The current state of gaming and SJWs
While I’ve never actually disliked Nintendo and its games, I really don’t have nostalgia for it either. Except Pokemon, I was born in the early 90s and around 99-01 Pokemon was the biggest thing ever. So I somehow and for some reason would really like them to go third-party. Nintendo (or rather, the NES) is terribly overrated in American retro gaming circles (and hence, on the Internet as a whole, gotta love that soft power influence) and Nintendo fanboys are very annoying.
Although recent events and trends have sort of made me respect Nintendo (and even Japan) more. Looking at Western AAA gaming, it doesn’t look too good currently. There’s more and more focus on multiplayer and the game-as-service model and it seems that big-budget games are more Anglo and US centric than ever before as well (probably related to that “Europe can’t into big tech” issue), due to Japan’s relative decline and the total cucking of Europe.
I’m not sure what happened, but I guess the European studios (10 to 20 years ago) were smaller on average, so they got more or less literally owned by the big American publishers, etc. (There are of course exceptions, like Poland’s CDPR. But even their next game is set… in the US.) And of course the worst trend of them all: SJWs. The mainstream gaming has been tainted big-time by them lately.
Those readers who are not into gaming, I really suggest that even you watch this Battlefield 5 (aka Genderfield 5: Feminism Strikes Back) reveal trailer:
Yes, that is really supposed to be WW2. The like-to-dislike ratio is impressive: 335K vs 470K. Which is even more amazing, considering how well their previous game was received, because it was set in WW1 (possibly the biggest… “entertainment product” about that conflict ever?). So they’ve lost a huge amount of goodwill among hardcore fans and gamers in general. This is how our neo-communists are going to rewrite history. It probably won’t come as a huge surprise that the game is developed in… Sweden.
I think Jaakko has excellent points. I remember reading into the background of someone like Roosh and he didn’t seem to start out like Caligula or anything. He just seemed to be kind of a semi-dorky guy that was upset that a bunch of other guys were getting women and he was being left out – basically a potential-incel that decided to figure out how to get himself out of his hole.
I don’t know how much cruelty there is, but there does seem to be a callous indifference in many of their actions. Every woman is simply a conquest, like some elusive prize at the end of a video game if you play it right. New and exotic countries are new frontiers for PUA.
It seems chivalry was killed somewhere along the way (maybe finally decapitated with the sexual revolution) and the PUA rose up like a zombie in its place.
The extreme position some of the ex-PUA take is eerily familiar to anyone who has read deeply into the kinds of people that join Daesh. These people are often those who were into clubbing, drugs, women – you name it. And at some point they turn around because they realize how empty it all is, but it isn’t a spiritual turn-about – it’s about revenge not repentance. Taking revenge on that society or institution or whatever that wasted their lives, that took their innocence, etc.
For Daesh-fanboiz it’s the evil West and for many of these ex-PUAs, it seems to be evil women.
Yup – the popularity of movies like “Saw” should be a huge wake up call.
Soon it may even be even less time and cost effective now that they have to compete with the new girl on the block:
Peace.
And the men are commanded to submit to God – which means that you can’t stick your willy into everything you want to. God is also fairly clear on that.
Which comes back to one of my earlier points; you cannot point to the Bible and ask women to conform while men take the back door out of its restrictions on their behavior. That kind of hypocrisy will be called out and women will fight it tooth and nail.
Agreed – it is also the basis of guardianship and protection.
Peace.
Thanks for the link. I can relate to that woman.
Yes, exactly. The Western narrative on Communist experience is awfully one-sided. I am no fun of the Communist system but even so this relentless propaganda rubs me the wrong way.
Also true about the USSR. I don’t believe it was such a good thing. Everyone wants to be entertained at his own level. Dumb people need dumb entertainment. You can’t just pour high culture down their throats, they will turn you off. In Russia, they will begin drinking.
In this light, kudos to the American culture. No one in the world is better at creating trash for dummies. People knock this but keeps the left side of the bell curve properly anesthetized.
The lack of SJWness is probably the best thing about Japanese offerings and shows that stonewalling is an effective strategy at times. Don’t fight the power. Just ignore it and pretend not to understand and eventually the mob wanders off to burn some other witch. Still love the response to Neir: Automata when the designer was criticized for having a goth-loli girl as a character.
“But I like girls. Bye.”
Ah, if only we could do that here.
I’ve noticed it too. Wages in the Ukraine seem to have recovered much faster, than GDP. Some weird shit is going on, and it will probably end badly for the Ukraine.
I’m not sure, but my sons play FortNite on it if that means anything. I’ve heard FortNite is very popular.
If it is, then perhaps it is the only mobile platform to play a very popular game.
Peace.
Civic Chinese Imperialism or another data-point in favour of Igbo Supremacism?
My grandmother asked me what it was last week (I didn’t know).
I hate FortNite and don’t know how it got so popular. The ultimate distillation of mindless FPS with a strong gambling component, I suppose.
The SJWness of it – the fact that you can’t even pick your sex, really annoys me.
I hear.
When people enter into a social contract in order to accomplish a mutually beneficial goal that requires social organization to succeed then dominance hierarchies are natural and good.
If I was an apprentice electrician say it would be retarded to not accept the authority of the master electrician.
Society needs these kinds of mutually beneficial hierarchies.
But when one person seeks to impose his will on another using force or treachery for his own benefit solely that is, it seems to me, they very quintessence and source of all evil in society.
That’s the tyrant.
PUA is like the latter – an attempt by one party to use techniques of intimidation, undermining, and deceit in order to impose ones will on another for ones own benefit.
As for PUAs veering from being playboys towards being extreme right wingers, I just see that as a natural development of the same impulse. The impulse to dominate and control others through force or deceit for your own benefit.
It’s a natural development. I don’t think these people were ever innocent, and they did not get spoiled.
I have known quite a few PUAs, asides from being bad with women lol they were all the types that enjoyed controlling other people.
After meeting PUAs it became very clear that it did not work – I was puzzled by the attraction to it despite its complete ineffectiveness. It became clear that these men did not want a relationship not based on personal control and dominance.
https://youtu.be/IrrADTN-dvg
Sure. The penalty for adultery is also quite clear–death.
Sam Dickson, who has long been active in our movement, was an atheist as a young man. He has since returned to God. His observation is that man does not do well without someone above him to keep him centered.
Though I will say Richard Dawkins seems like a decent fellow. One of the few atheists who isn’t ugly inside and out.
I basically agree, see my response to Talha about the different types of hierarchies, good and bad.
This does not mean the man has complete authority to impose his personal will on his wife for any reason – but that he is required to exercise his authority for the benefit of the family unit in a restrained manner using good judgement and following principles of justice and fairness, and that he is responsible to the community and God.
In such a system, women have both input into the decision making as well as considerable influence and power in other ways over the family as a whole.
One does not imagine the man in such a system enjoying his personal domination of others – but rather submitting to a heavy responsibility for the greater good.
It is very very far from the kind of personal tyranny envisioned by roosh or heartiste, who clearly salivate over the prospect of personally controlling other prople, men or women.
I think its obvious that you met with unsuccessful examples of a group which naturally will exhibit bitter tendencies. This has less to do with their chosen beliefs and more to do with the fact that they are natural losers.
Thanks.
I didn’t look at sales figures, but I don’t think Nintendo Switch is so popular yet in Russia – because of its price and price of games hasn’t fallen.
I post on a forum and whenever Switch topic is discussed so far, it’s been dozens a lot of angry (very angry) guys who hate it because the price, – and it just results in people whining about prices, and then other people calling them poorfags. It’s better to ask on an American forum.
I was thinking about buying instead the Xbox One X – it might be better for showing off a really good television. There’s a lot of mixed reviews for XB1X though. And no Zelda.
I like leading people and have a born talent for it.
The heavy responsibility is, of course, leading people unselfishly.
Heartiste/Roissy may be as you say (but I’ll give him a pass as he is the single most talented writer of the 21st century). Roosh is not.
Recent piece by Roosh: http://www.rooshv.com/pick-only-one-for-your-society-pre-marital-sex-or-marriage
Also worth noting that Roosh’s sister died of cancer this year and he was close with her: http://www.rooshv.com/goodbye-sister
https://i.imgur.com/93RY1ND.png
This “PPP-adjusted” map implies that Belarus is more prosperous than Russia, and pretty much on the level of Portugal. However, economic powerhouse Azerbaijan leaves them all in the dust. And Polish wages are almost as high as wages in Britain – a country where they emigrate en mass to work as bartenders.
In what way? It fails to explain economic migration for example.
More on Tesla
https://twitter.com/CGrantWSJ/status/1034519246603214850
Musk is now alleging that rogue Tesla employees are acting as paid saboteurs on behalf of short sellers.
And he’s about to get sued for libel:
https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1034817540495564801
When Tesla goes to zero Polish Perspective should be required to change his name to Baggy Perspective. 😀
https://twitter.com/BagholderQuotes/status/1033900862387695624
I don’t know about this terminology.
But AaronB is true, and describing psychopaths/sociopaths, narcissists (and some other personality disorders) – as known in clinical psychology.
Dating shouldn’t be very complicated – either you go well with a girl (boy) or not.
But psychopath falsifies their real personality, and presents mask of whatever is suitable for whoever they meet. And once some sentimental attraction is there, just using it as levers of power like a parasite.
Obviously it is a spectrum, and a lot of them are not very extreme.
Notice a lot weird girls like this in a moderate way, trying to use manipulation just in the way they send whatsapp messages. “Oh you sent message at 1am. You are a nightowl like me!” (From girl that goes to bed early).
In a perfect world, psychopaths would be detected early and can live in a psychiatric hospital.
But people with just moderate, manipulation personalities, are inevitable, and could probably be reformed when clinical psychology becomes more developed.
Leading people and having a talent for it is fine, even necessary – imposing your will on people through force or deceit for your own personal benefit, and delighting in it, is a different thing.
Heartiste is a moral sewer – his writing style is full of extreme histrionics and hyperventilating. Not my taste. He strikes me as a weak man, and he also worships women but in a negative way.
Roosh is a broken man – but he has always had sociopathic tendencies. I had an email exchange with him in 2010 or thereabouts – he tried a bunch of sociopathic tricks on me. I strongly suspect his image is carefully curated.
Could be. Tough to say.
I disagree with some of the assessments there – Romania is certainly still poorer than Portugal according to my observations, for instance – but I think that’s a flawed argument.
A Pole can still emigrate to Britain for work, spend little on himself while earning a lot of nominal currency, then take it back with him to enjoy much greater purchasing power in Poland.
Indeed, in most of Eastern Europe, people who can do this sort of arbitrage may well have higher living standards than normie wagecucks in the West.
PUA is not super-duper moral – the closest I can think of of the founder is Mystery, who was an illusionist by profession. But neither was it evul; in many ways, his life is very Casanova-like, and there was an element of light silliness and playfulness to how he led his life, and how he taught other guys. He believed that an illusionist used deception to illustrate fundamental truths about people, and so for example, women actually did want to have sex but by playing around with deceptions, he allowed them to be their truer, more gentle and giving selves. Well, that’s me being generous to him. But even being ungenerous to him, he just enjoyed the seduction process a great deal and wanted to understand it, to find out the “rules” of the “Game.”
He never expressed any interest in domination like you suggest, so its just weird as heck.
I actually think that you’d like him.
Yes, very much so. A few years ago I rented an apartment in Yerevan from a guy who did a stint as a forklift driver in some provincial shithole in east anglia; he eventually got fed up with this once he’d saved up enough money and went back to being a senior civil servant there, getting paid practically nothing. This apartment was the local equivalent of a Manhatten penthouse. People from there who work in finance in the west but still live out east can have a lifestlye comparable to gulf-arab sheiks.
LOOOL! There’s a lot of truth in that public service announcement though! Thanks!
Peace.
I’ve never heard of such thing. This doesn’t sound like something an actual person, who works for a living, would do. I mean, just look at AP. Definitely uncommon.
Consider the fact that a typical Eastern European migrant will not be earning the average wage in Britain. His wage will be closer to minimum wage. He will also need to pay rent, which is much higher in Britain than in Poland, buy food, and cover other expenses. He won’t be in the position to save much at all.
LOL I reckon it was the civil servant job that paid for the apartment.
I don’t think heartiste is one person and I’m pretty sure the original writer is long gone. I think someone bought the blog from the original man after he exploded in popularity and it has been used only for spreading political propaganda for years. The original blog didn’t write about racial politics at all.
Once the politics stuff started those posts had a completely different style (and that’s when the histrionics started and the humor disappeared). The comment section also changed, originally it had a bunch of the authors real life friends (many of them black) and the quality of discussion was pretty good. It has been an angry white nationalist sewer for years now.
The kids seem to like it – it might have to do with a low bar for entry, the controls don’t seem super complicated and it isn’t very violent so I don’t even mind my youngest son playing a few rounds. My boys play on teams with their friends and apparently it matches them up against people of their skill level – no idea how they determine this (maybe from kill count, shot accuracy, etc.), but that’s what they tell me – so it doesn’t get boring. I don’t know what the age range for it is. Last game I enjoyed of this kind was HALO (wasn’t very good though) and then they just became complicated and I had kids…
They have no clue about the SJW stuff right now. The boys tend to pick avatars that look like ninjas, saboteurs or some other combination of cyber-punk, robot madness. I’d get worried if they were playing as one of the female characters though.
Peace.
They should play League of Legends instead. It’ll teach them about cooperation. Or trolling.
But I’m basically a hardcore gamer(as much as I can find time for it), so meh.
According to your holiest Scripture, the Quran, Allah says you can “stick your willy” at will into 4 easily divorceable (and beatable) wives, and as many slave girls as you can afford to buy. No need to spend a lot of time and energy using psychological tactics on women who don’t find you attractive, to get laid.
Don’t pretend that’s a good deal for women.
In fact, traditional Christianity stresses mutual submission and taming of the ego. When I was first married, my parish priest told me over and over “Obey your wife. If she tells you to take an umbrella on the sunniest day of the year, shut up and take the umbrella.” And he probably told my wife something similar.
That’s entirely possible, I haven’t read heartiste in years. At a certain point I just realized he lives in a dark world and I don’t want to live there with him.
It’s not uncommon for blogs to change authorship the way you describe.
The rules of the Game are – approach women and talk to them. Don’t be afraid. Assortative mating will take care of the rest 🙂
Be nice to people – good people you are meant to be with will be nice to you back. Bad people you don’t need in your life anyways.
We complicate things too much in modern life.
It adjusts for cost of living. Ukraine is very cheap.
For example, one of my favorite restaurants in Lviv, and one of the most expensive in the city:
http://monspius.lviv.ua/en.html
Steak almost as good as in Texas, for about $6.00. Looked at a menu at a comparable place in the USA near me, and it was $50.00.
Also, there has been some upward pressure on wages in Ukraine because so many people work in Poland.
Ukraine’s GDP PPP per capita was about 1/3 that of Russia in 2017 ($25,533 vs. $8,667), so not “many times lower.” However Ukraine’s figure is an underestimate because it doesn’t take into account all the Ukrainians temporarily living abroad. Also, per capita GDP is not the same as average wage. Oil and gas add a lot to Russia’s GDP and their impact on wages is probably not directly corresponding.
Correct. Noticeably lower than in Russia but not “1/3” of Russia’s, whatever that might mean.
I would question that.
Ask your wife.
This is Churchianity, not Christianity.
Your parish priest (Romish Popery?) is a heretic. Or perhaps worse, as it’s increasingly clear that the so-called Bishop of Rome serves the Lord of Lies.
Ephesians 5:22-33
I think there is some level of infiltration among Japanese companies, probably mostly predicated on the international/US market and social media. The recent Mario game has blacks in the city wearing a conservative-style dress which predates their arrival into cities in any significant numbers. Probably not politically possible to create a simulacrum of a NYC-style city without blacks, I suppose. Also, there are more gay characters, in Japanese games then is desirable. Though, in general the product is less-PC, and therefore more desirable.
One of those Nintendo guys even made some SJW comment, back when Trump was trying to ban immigration from certain Muslim countries. Of course, very non-sequitur coming from a Japanese. I forget the exact quote, but in spirit he was defending the right of infinite Somalis to immigrate to the US, and pretending as though they have economic value to the software development industry.
I’m reminded a little about how Nintendo previously dived into politics in the US in some congressional hearing on violence in video games, in the era of Mortal Kombat, trying to boost the narrative to sell their product. Although the guy who testified for Nintendo was a Westerner, and it may have been his ass-kissing strategy, rather than coming from Japanese HQ.
That’s like saying that cooking is applying heat to food, and if it was meant to be, it will come out delicious.
Both true and useless.
Yeah, I knew you’d like that. Since Orthodox Christian parish priests are married and typically have more children than I do, I tend to take their advice more seriously than that of some guys from the “manosphere”.
By the way, don’t you like Ephesians 5:21?
That’s funny coming from a guy who says that PUA ‘saved his life’….
Because you are ignorant of how eastern Europe works. It is very common.
Nonsense. He will be earning what skilled workers make, minus 10% or whatever. It is still a lot. Plumbers and electricians make decent money in the West. In England the average plumber’s salary is £15.65 per hour. These Poles will share a cheap apartment in a cheap part of town and save most of what they make.
Ukrainians in Poland make the same wages that Poles in Poland make. Which is, a lot less than Poles in England are making but about 3.5 times the Ukrainian wage in average terms.
Illegals in America make more, but because it is much harder to come to the USA those illegals tend to stay for 5-10 years or so. When they return they buy cars, build houses, etc. with the money they squirreled away while making $12 an hour 50 hours a week. I knew an engineer from Ukraine who did just this.
Well at least you’re not a Papist.
Ephesians 5:21 doesn’t endorse a husband obeying his wife.
4 wives and unlimited concubines sounds about right if you can afford them (which really didn’t do much for your average man on the street, but the elites totally took full advantage). What does this have to do with PUA exactly?
Of course not, you also have to get past their fathers who will beat the snot out of you if you try to pull a fast one on their daughters.
Plenty of Muslim women, including my wife disagree – thanks for trying to White Knight for Muslim women though.
Well, in fact that’s how cooking works – you try different spices and flavors together, and some mate, and some repel each other. You don’t really have any control – you can’t make a bad flavor combination work by figuring out how to seduce it 🙂
Recipes are just our memories of which spices “assortatively mated” well in the past.
At some point, you have to give up control and let things happen, Daniel. I suggest romance might be a good area for spontaneity.
Very interesting. One of my spiritual teachers advised similarly; he said the husband should of service to the wife and the wife should be of service to the husband. So, yes – it’s a mutual give and take.
One thing I have learned over the years in marriage and through the advice of my teachers is that a good marriage is never built on the letter of the law (that’s there for when things have already started breaking down) but mutual understanding, compromise and a dedication to grow mutually.
Super important and marriage is often one of the best training grounds for this, such as sometimes even dropping the argument even when you know you are right or admitting you are wrong, taking criticism, etc.
Peace.
This all sounds like hogwash to me. Here are the kind of jobs that Ukrainians in Poland do:
BTW, why won’t you relocate to the Ukraine to take advantage of your massive purchasing power in that country?
Japanese norms aren’t progressive norms, but they’re not exactly strictly anti-progressive ones either. There’s plenty of Japanese media that’s made only for Japanese consumption that espouses attitudes that could be considered as “diverse”(Macross comes hugely to mind, so does Inuyasha). They mostly do their own thing.
The general distinction is formal versus informal norms. Informally, they seem to basically espouse a similar attitude to the Chinese government that “rapid changes in ethnic composition will cause unwanted disruption” while formally they won’t put anything like that in print and indeed, mentally compartmentalize themselves such that they don’t even actually believe in such outright. Instead, everything is just stonewalled: anyone can get legal residence in Japan, but all paperwork will have to be Japanese. Or you have to speak Japanese. Or you have to pass some other obstacle. Etc, etc.
Nothing is impossible, which is important to the Asian “effort/gambatte” culture and its almost a fundamental ethical belief. But they can make things difficult, and that’s the intention.
I’ll mention it to them. Though, likely they’ve already come across it, and I’ll end up looking like an uncool dad.
Peace.
No, but you can learn how certain flavors work with others and how certain preparations work better than others. The notion that cooking or life is something to just slapdash together and then hope for the best…well…
Let’s just say that not much would get done.
I do think that it has worked out plenty well for me. I just object to your ‘advice’ because I’m pretty sure it’ll hurt rather than help someone in a similar situation that I was in.
Yes how do you live between two countries if you have a normal job? Live like the Spartans when you are abroad, because you cannot buy anything that you can’t put in a suitcase?
But a lot of emigrants from Poland, Baltic states, Romania, etc, in West Europe, are working as temporary jobs, like baristas, plumbers, prostitutes, collectors of fruit.
For people with seasonal jobs like prostitute or fruit collector, I can imagine some can leverage difference in currency between countries, and relax half of the year in their home country.
But there are also Baltic state and Polish people who have good jobs, some very high salaries (I know of Estonian guy with really high for his age, position in Google in Ireland).
–
Differences in currency between countries, and measurements like PPP, are not that relevant if you have a normal job. You will have a lot of extra money in the end of each month if in a normal job, more because your time available to spend money limited by job requirements.
What is worse: using PUA or slavery for sex?
It is obscene to see someone like you acting holier than thou….
Reality is hard for you, we know.
Ukrainians have all kinds of jobs in Poland. Some ever work as police officers.
https://www.ft.com/content/aeda9ebe-3afa-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec
Ukrainians earn the same wages as Poles, they’re not cheap labour, as opposed to Poles hired in
western Europe,” says Blazej Madejski, vice-president of Pro-Net Media, which installs telecoms and electricity transmission lines and is Mr Talalai’s employer. “There are few Poles left in [construction] here as they work in the EU. Without the Ukrainians, our company couldn’t be efficient.”
Yuri Kariagin, a Ukrainian with Polish origins who heads a Ukrainian workers’ union in Poland, says that before 2014, many Ukrainians went to Russia to work.
“Now the majority come to Poland,” he says. “It’s six months working, then back to their family with the money, to renovate the apartment, or help children with their education.”
In my field (I won’t be specific, in order to maintain anonymity – AK knows what I do) the USA offers the highest wages in the world. But if not for kids and hopefully eventually grandkids, I would certainly love to retire in Ukraine. Or Russia, for that matter, though money goes much further in Ukraine.
No, was an unprofitable department.
I would not like to be part of a company building a nuclear power plant in South Africa.
an angry white nationalist sewer
Is there any other kind of WN forum?
When they return
Why would anyone return to the Ukraine after escaping?
If you are asking from a Muslim perspective; PUA obviously, since fornication is haram…having conjugal relations with one’s slave was perfectly OK. If it wasn’t, the Qur’an wouldn’t have mentioned it in the same verses that mention conjugal relations with one’s wife.
I see what you are trying to do with the whole slavery thing, but it’s only relevant in a place that actually has slavery which seems to be some remote areas of Mauritania and even there it is actually illegal. When have I ever advocated a return to slavery?
Trigg…ered.
I’m not – I was pointing out the detrimental effects of not adhering to a serious patriarchal model (which are pretty plain to see in society) – one that would never tolerate men trying to smooth talk their way into their daughters’ pants. And that people should live by the principle they expect others to adhere to; if you want a society where men aren’t trying to hookup with easy women, don’t be a man who tries to hookup with easy women. Again, not rocket science.
If people want to continue on the current route, feel free and see what happens.
Don’t ask me, this was Karlin’s idea. He thinks this would be a cool lifestyle. I don’t agree.
You can’t save much working as a fruit collector in a foreign country, and most people would never take that job, unless driven to it by desperation. The very existance of large-scale labor migration proves that living standards are grossly unequal between countries, regards of what “PPP-adjusted” charts say.
What is worse: using PUA or slavery for sex?
This is an easy question.
The PUA discards the woman.
The man with multiple wives and concubines must provide for them.
Damn I should probably start commenting then if I ever want to meet up given I’ve been reading this thing for years.
Daaaamn! That was awesome!
Peace.
This Chesterton’s quote applies to PUA
after substituting “women” for “money”.
This confirms my ideas about economic migrants: those who find decent jobs abroad, that allow them to save, do not return. Better to have a job in USA and “overpay” for everything, than live and “save money” in the Ukraine. Purchasing parity doesn’t get you very far. Ultimately most people migrate because their countries suck.
LOL! Chesterton had some really witty quips.
From one angle, I really don’t get why tons of sexual conquests is such a great thing. I mean, I might even understand if the guy was actually having kids with these women and providing for them – then I’d be like; bro, you’re killing it and about to start your own little tribe – bravo!
That would be impressive – at least to me.
But otherwise, I’m wouldn’t be impressed with a guy that couldn’t restrain himself from any meal you put in front of him to the point that he’s walking around like a corpulent mess bragging about how many tacos he just had. So I don’t understand the great thing about bedding every woman you come across, but a lot of this has to do with personal views about what one’s purpose is in the first place. I mean, if a guy makes that his purpose in life, then I guess he’s achieving his purpose – can’t fault him for that any more than the guy who makes his purpose to eat the biggest hot dog in the world.
Peace.
And this is the perspective you are extolling as the height of holiness. Shame on you.
That place is the Quran itself, the final message of Allah to mankind.
How can slavery be illegal in Islam when Allah sanctions it?
Sex slavery is legal wherever the Islamic State aka Caliphate rules: in parts of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan…
What exactly is the big deal here?
Ever hear of situational alphas?
Who’s gonna be hotter to a slave girl than her master?
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/02/5d/e9/025de916348f7925ba5679ba8b011255–slave-girl-fantasy-series.jpg
And as Iffen said, the slave girl is being provided for.
Meanwhile the modern woman is getting pumped and dumped and self-medicating her pain with box wine and binge watching premium television.
I’ve lived in Russia, but never Ukraine. Only visited Ukraine repeatedly and am in regular contact with cousins and aunts/uncles there.
In the USA, most migrants leave their families behind but return after a few years with their savings. Because they will not be able to come back to the USA they make the most for it by working for several years. It is pretty bad for marriages (typically the married guy working in the USA for 5 years wasn’t celibate) but they return with tens of thousands in American dollars in savings, enough to build a nice western-style house, car and seed money for a new business.
In Poland it is easier because it is only a few hours away by car or train, so they got for 3 month or 6 month stints and return home often. One of my cousins managed to work in Germany for 6 months in late 2014, before the EU visa-less travel, and came back with a 4 year old VW Golf and enough money to support his family for a year, until the local economy improved. He’s a skilled builder.
Coming back to Ivano-Frankivsk oblast with $10,000s in savings gets you very far.
If you see a large well-built western-style house in some village in Western Ukraine it probably belongs to a migrant.
In Ireland, minimum legal salary is around €10 per hour.
So for (legal EU) temporary fruit collectors receiving €10 per hour – maybe it would be clever for them to follow Karlin’s concept, and live like Spartans for a few months, then spend most of the income in their home country.
For higher income jobs like prostitutes from EU countries of Poland, Romania, Latvia- it could be easy for them to do this.
Obviously, for those with normal jobs, this makes no sense.
Woe is me, some anonymous guy on the internet doesn’t like the classical rulings of Islam on slavery…get in line.
Because Muslim countries have signed onto international protocols that prohibit it. Violating those protocols is a breach of a covenant – which is haram.
It’s the same as if Muslim countries signed up to limit chopping down trees due to international protocols they have signed up to for curbing deforestation. It is not intrinsically haram to chop down trees, but it would be a breach of a covenant and a trust – which is haram.
It’s a fairly simple principle to understand.
Pffffshshsshwahahahahaha!!!! Oh yeah – those dead-end losers.
“A man with severe psychiatric problems killed his mother and sister and seriously injured another woman in a knife attack Thursday in a Paris-region town, officials said. Police shot and killed the man soon afterward. The Islamic State group, which has a history of opportunistic claims, swiftly claimed responsibility…He described the man as ‘unstable, rather than someone who was engaged, someone who could respond, for example, to orders and instructions from a terrorist organization, in particular from Daesh.'”
https://abc7ny.com/man-fatally-stabs-mother-sister;-isis-claims-responsibility/4038258/
Daesh: “We’re sill relevant, we’re still relevant – please look at us!!! And that Muslim who stole a chicken from that supermarket in Amsterdam – we, the glorious caliphate, totally plotted it!!! Now, where did our intrepid leader go?”
It’s normal for young man, to want more better looking women.
But to be as a psychopath, which is what AaronB describes.
Psychopaths (and some other personality disordered people) pretend to be perfect boyfriend for one woman, then soon later another one, etc, and are always creating weird power and control relations to manipulate their victims in the relationship, while feeling no emotion themselves.
There’s quite a lot of women who are like this as well. It’s very much a spectrum though, where some are more extreme than others.
I’m sure we all have experience of women which are trying manipulate them, even the moment you meet them. Although most girls are not like this, which is why it is so weird when you encounter a manipulating one (and your phone -the first victim).
But sociopaths/psychopaths/narcissists (just as born swindlers) exist in every society in the world. The personality can take advantage of societies with high social capital and a lot of gullible people. And in current modern society, there are a lot of gullible people (even a lot of gullible rich men, who marry the first manipulative girl that looks at their wallet).
Anybody who has read seriously into the lives of how the concubines of Ottoman elites lived will agree they lived lives well above your average free woman of the realm.
That’s not to say some men didn’t abuse their slave women – it would have been a miracle if that was never the case. Of course, plenty of men have abused their wives, so there’s that.
Peace.
The only advice I would give anyone, Daniel, is stop caring. If you’re trying, you care too much.
Remember, I’m some sort of Buddhist. They’re just women. If you get em you get em, if you don’t you don’t. If you’re implementing strategies, you’re a cuck 🙂
The number one way to de-cuckify the West , Daniel, is to remind everyone they’re just women. There’s far too much caring going on. Its very cucky.
Allah in his infinite mercy will dispose of the matter for us!
The love story of Suleiman the Magnificent and the Polish slave girl (and later Imperial Consort) Roxelana comes to mind.
Granted, Bliss is a negress and Islamic slavers behaved more brutally towards slaves taken from the Zanj than those taken from elsewhere (though there are horror stories about white slaves as well). So she is no doubt salty about the subject.
Lol I wouldn’t take too seriously, book covers.
It’s not a great documentary of real life.
Plus, the “height of holiness” with regards to slaves in Islam has always been to emancipate them which is a highly rewarded act:
“Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes prayer and gives zakah; [those who] fulfill their promise when they promise; and [those who] are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous.” (2:177)
Anyone who has explored this topic seriously knows that purchasing and owning a slave is merely permissible, while freeing slaves is a commended act of worship.
But 11 books with covers like that, all about slave girls!
Where are these slave girls that I’ve been promised?
Am I expected to run Game on them?
Are slaves girls respectable in the PUA community?
Bliss has some trolling. But Talha you don’t have to defend blindly, every criticism of Islam.
You should be able to see both points of view on these topics. Because life, is not so simple – even for things which you might like for various reasons, are not perfect. When we can acknowledge this, it is a sign of a person who has some humanity.
They did and paid a massive price for it in the Zanj rebellion – one of the bloodier episodes in Muslim history.
From what I’ve read, I would actually say the worst slavers were the Barbary Pirates and their prey were Whites. Living life as a castrated galley slave who was beaten and worked to death is not a fun way to go – but not much can be expected of pirates.
However, Black concubines were also married by elite men (perhaps not as often). My family descends from Imam Ali Ridha (ra) – one of the Shiah and Sunni Imams – who was the son of Musa al-Kadhim (ra) from his Nubian concubine, the Lady Najmah (ra).
It’s OK, Bliss gets triggered every time I post, I’ve gotten used to it.
Peace.
If I see someone with these books in their home – I will try to leave as leave as soon as possible
I think Thorffinssons book covers are by far the best contribution to this thread – especially the raptor one 🙂 My God, raptors as Alphas. Chuckle. That’s just awesome.
That captures something – I’m not sure what – in a nutshell. Its peak something or other.
Where does Thor find this stuff…
Good point. I shouldn’t feed the trolls – sound advice.
Peace.
Perhaps this serious work of history would be more to your liking:
http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781501129230/the-adventures-of-a-roman-slave-9781501129230_hr.jpg
But in fairness, it must be said there were slave girls who appreciated their captivity a bit less:
https://www.hipcomic.com/uploads/cache/3c49e8fb371314ceda5150af55f3c458-460×699.png
And as quietly as possible, on tip toes 🙂
Sounds like you won’t be invited to Thor’s house, though.
I would be very, very disappointed if Thor did not have raptors in the basement of his luxury palace in the Midwest, with slave girls in shackles tied to walls, as he sits in an armchair sipping fine whiskey and stroking a purring cat.
Very disappointed.
It’s sucks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the pirates sometimes sodomized them as well.
http://scstylecaster.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/taken_by_the_t-rex.jpg?w=496&h=662
http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/mounted-by-the-gryphon.jpg?quality=100&w=650&h=909
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7161815.Christie_Sims
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQdmYYOwK9M
Hahaha, good stuff, good stuff…
I can see why girls might dig graceful gryphons, but only trashy low class girls are attracted to t-rex’s. This is well known.
This is true. We really need to stop thinking about this stuff.
I repeat myself endlessly.
Vietnames, Filipinos, and Koreans have the highest assimilation indices in America among major immigrants (except Canadians) as well as vote the most Republican among all Asians. Indians and Chinese have the lowest assimilation indices among Asians (closer to Hispanic indices). Indians also vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
While that doubtlessly should be embarrassing to the Ukraine and Moldova, the more proper comparison would not be to Europe, but to such other countries of the Middle East as don’t have oil.
I agree, you should stop caring and part with all of your worldly possessions. Please refer to top post on divesting it to Karlin. Certainly Allah shall provide for you.
Limiting deforestation is not comparable to banning slavery altogether for moral reasons, you irrational imbecile. Try another excuse.
Muslim nations were among the last to make slavery illegal. By thus accepting the moral superiority of liberal European Enlightenment values the muslim world effectively acknowledged the moral bankruptcy of the Quran-based Islam practiced for 13 centuries.
In other words you admit that the Quran is not the Final Word and Mohammad was not the Last Prophet. In short: Islam is false.
Do people who afford “premium television” drink box wine?
I’nshallah, Daniel, I’nshallah.
I’ve always wanted to make that phrase part of my regular vocabulary. It expresses a proper uncaring fatalism. The Muslims know how to be free of the mind forge’d manacles – well, they used to. The new Muslims care far too much, and have become cucks. They no longer have faith in Allah’s unbounded munificence.
If Anatoly were to be the recipient of my unbounded munificence, he’d have to de-cuckify himself and adopt a glorious attitude of uncaring fatalism, which, I am sorry to say, he is far from doing.
It is not time yet for me to disappear into the deserts lonely wastes, but i’nshallah, soon.
No. Is that a term you incel dorks use to stroke each other in your pitiful circle jerks?
I am guessing the term was coined by that Iranian immigrant PUA guru who taught you native bumpkins how to talk to your own women. Am I right Thugfinnson?
Netflix is what, $10 a month?
Basic bitches go through a Bota Box every week.
Roxelana was what we now call Ukrainian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrem_Sultan
Sources indicate that Hurrem Sultan was originally from Ruthenia, which was then part of the Polish Kingdom.[4] She was born in the town of Rohatyn, 68 km south-east of Lwów, a major city of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.[5] According to late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources, such as the Polish poet Samuel Twardowski (died 1661), who researched the subject in Turkey, Hurrem was seemingly born to a father who was an Orthodox priest.[6][5]
In the 1520s, Crimean Tatars captured her during one of their frequent raids into Ruthenia.
Such a charming young woman…
A situational alpha is a man who is on top because of the situation he is in. The classic example is a boss/manager.
Uh…congratulations.
È un sogno la vita
che par sì gradita,
è breve gioire,
bisogna morire.
Non val medicina,
non giova la China,
non si può guarire,
bisogna morire.
Thugfinnson is back! I missed.
A situational alpha is like when you meet a girl in a corridor, and you are at that moment the strongest guy there, and you scowl at her to assert your dominance, and she has sex with you, because it reminds her of that time she was ravished by a raptor, who had to fight a t-rex for her, as a gryphon dolefully watched from the sidelines, as slave girls captured by Muslim pirates strum guitars and a sweet melody is carried by a gentle breeze.
There, I’ve neatly summed up all themes on this thread.
Ok, I really have to stop now.
With a proper uncaring fatalism, you can find that it won’t matter who you give your beneficence to. After all, who is to say that I am not the hand of some god to guide your actions to serve a secret divine plan of which it is for you to give and for Karlin to receive?
Be holy. Gibe monies.
That requires the internet, no?
I thought by “premium,” you meant one of those $200-300 cable/Fios tv packages.
You make, in fact, an excellent point, I must admit. Very good.
But there is an even higherlevel of uncaring fatalism, which, i’nshallah, I shall attain – and that is, if one truly does not care, what matters it if one is rich or poor? If one has or does not have money – it is all alike one and the same!
Giving away my money would be caring – may Allah defend me from such a spiritual blemish!
By premium I had in mind the current trend of high quality, serialized television programs. Perhaps not the best terminology since premium TV traditionally means HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc.
And yes you need the internet for Netflix.
Drinking is a lot more expensive than any kind of TV, so heavy drinkers aside from the very rich always economize in various ways.
I used to go through a handle of liquor a night and definitely did not buy top shelf.
I sort of believe in this, but nonetheless think that there is beauty in the struggle. I don’t know who to credit and google doesn’t pull anything up, but I faintly recall a notion that life itself is a daily defiance against the eternal law of gravity that must drag us down. And one day, we will no longer be able to defy it and surrender to it to become inanimate matter. But yet, awareness of that inevitability should not consign us to mere passivity.
Though we may be but brains in a jar and life itself be an illusion, we am yet part of it and why should we not strive? In our successes and our failures, in our victories and tragedies, in the stories we live and leave behind, spins something like meaning into existence.
And that, I think, is beautiful.
40 shots of liquor a night? I’ve heard of people doing this – apparently actors used to. Supposedly it was even somewhat common.
Is it really possible?
How much do you drink now?
But if life is a dream, then everything is already perfect, and we have but to free ourselves of delusion and realize it, and then striving appears merely as a misunderstanding. All meaning is already present, and no striving can add anything.
The sage does not strive, Daniel.
The wisdom of your noble and high-minded ancestors should not be so lightly cast aside in favor of the childish murmuring of a tribe of hairy barbarians.
More background for friendly Ukrainian and Turkish relations!
Peace.
It’s definitely possible, though not for everyone.
I drink infrequently now and in modest amounts. Spent a long period completely dry. Did some AA as well. I truly liked the people in my AA group, but ultimately could not accept their beliefs and thus stopped attending.
Occasional slip up here and there.
Just a note on how we Muslims use it. It is a beautiful phrase we use often for the important (InshaAllah, the Ummah will unite.) to the very mundane (InshaAllah, I’ll get the milk this evening.).
However, it is not used to excuse oneself from making adequate preparations or exerting one’s best effort – rather, it is a recognition that – despite all efforts and preparations one makes – success is only through the grace of God and His willing it to be so, thus He gets all praise and credit.
Religious Muslims will also often use the phrase “Tie your camel” among themselves as a reminder to one another to put in one’s effort and due diligence:
“A man said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?’ The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said, ‘Tie her and trust in Allah.'” – reported in Tirmidhi
But I encourage its frequent use or even the translation “God willing”.
Peace.
Confucius was a sage and he certainly strived: he wanted to discover what was right or wrong, he wanted to find out how to achieve harmony without conformity(which he was actually against), he wanted to discover how to reconcile the desires of humans with the needs of society. In old age, he was frustrated by the thought that he had accomplished little, but it was his striving that provided the Analects, which if nothing else, is a work of art.
But more importantly, whether or not life is an illusion, we live in it. Passivity is boring. But you’re welcome to indulge in it.
There should be a movie about Roxelana. I think it would be very cool because you could have the women of the harem knitting or sewing – symbolic of them weaving plots against each other.
Very interesting, thanks. The most I ever drank across 12 hours of partying was 20 drinks, and I couldn’t do that now.
After ones riotous youth, modest drinking is surely best.
Thanks for the clarification. Of course, this makes sense. This is still very sensible and healthy fatalism that we should all adopt. Better than a xanax.
Bah! God willing has lost all its sting – it’s almost secular. I used to say it as an atheist. It’s lost its poetry. It’s ‘inshallah or nothing.
That’s true, Confucius, on the surface at least, was a striver. But I wonder – he wanted man to conform to timeless patterns that had been lost.
I do not encourage passivity – merely non-striving. Activity only becomes interesting when one realizes there is nothing worth striving for. Modern man is not deep enough to see life as play.
Obsessed with work, we are not yet worthy of such a profound philosophy. But we may be, soon. After the collapse.
The Turks beat you to it already with a TV series:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1848220/
Here is a scene where she initially grabs the attention of the Sultan, brilliantly done – feminine charms at full throttle!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TjY5zVvKSHQ
I don’t watch the series, but I’ve seen some clips here and there and it has the palace intrigues you mentioned.
Peace.
Buddha’s last words: Strive on with diligence
Here is a Canadian writing about America in a similar spirit to how some pro-Russian posters write about Ukraine:
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-case-for-invading-america/
No, it’s work out your salvation with diligence. Your salvation ends up being the insight that nothing in the phenomenal world is worth striving for. That is dispelling delusions. The path to bliss.
Some people only enjoy action films – I don’t begrudge them that. I enjoy the occasional action film, but too often and I am bored to tears. But some people prefer Brad Pitt films to Tarkovsky – that’s fine.
But even the uncouth enjoyer of Brad Pitt can benefit from a touch of that Buddhist detachment, and not take all that action entirely seriously….
Thanks, but, for the most part, I can’t stand serials. And it seems to have a really big episode count. It’s certainly an interesting period though, and the Ottoman Sultans were a pretty interesting group.
What was that custom they had? On the death of the Sultan all the sons but one were strangled. I mentioned it to someone once who had been a tourist in Istanbul, and they could hardly believe it. Then I joked that if his father were a king in medieval times and died, then he and his brothers would be instantly at each other’s throats, which given history, might be true.
https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/work-out-your-own-salvation-do-not-depend-on-others/
The Buddha’s last words were appamadena sampadetha, which is literally “strive diligently,” but which an early translator, Paul Carus, rendered rather liberally in his Gospel of Buddha as “work out your salvation with diligence.” I know from dipping into his translation (and it’s even obvious from the book’s title) that Carus was concerned to make Buddhism resemble Christianity
Your idea that the ‘sage does not strive’ is BS. You are misleading people. You have to strive diligently to achieve detachment.
The problem with this is that the Ukraine is Canada.
A fake and gay country which only exists owing to the benevolence/naivete of its far more powerful neighbor.
Canada is a completely fake country and its continued existence is extremely offensive.
So then strive. Life is an action movie 🙂 Go get em.
Confucius highly promoted self-improvement and cultivation, actually, and was pretty practical: he wanted to reduce poverty, war and rebellion. He saw injustice and misrule around him and wanted to make things better through the promotion of virtue(which he also believed would increase efficiency in government). More than anything else, that really defined his life and his philosophy is humanistic.
He was not a Taoist, and he did not get along with Laozi when they met. He did not seem to attach much importance in the supernatural.
At any rate, the more extreme Mozi, of course, dismissed the notion of a timeless pattern and stated that all traditional ideas were once innovative ideas and the progressively life could get better for everyone once the appropriate normative values were found. Although Mozi’s ideas did not catch on, its hardly only a foreign notion. Incidentally, one of their specific texts is named “Condemning Fatalism.”
It’s the same (well actually, quite a lot worse) in Romania or Armenia today. Whole villages and even many small towns wholly abandoned by anyone under 40. Living standards might be better on the whole, but seeing such things across the country gives very pessimistic feelings about the future.
The problem with the USA/Canada analogy is that Ukrainians speak a different language and have centuries more of a separate history.
So Ukraine is Russia’s or Poland’s Canada only in the sense that Romania is Italy’s Canada.
Benevolence is not true, on balance; naivete is true but this is expressed in the idea of Ukraine being fake.
English-speaking Canada is the part of America that did not betray its king, French-speaking Canada is the part of France that was betrayed by its king. How is this more fake than the country of rebels, justified by some 18th century philosophy?
He has a sense of humor unlike the Russian who write about Ukraine.
Reflecting on mortality is not fatalism or at least it was not when the song was written. ‘Memento mori’ was supposed to give meaning to your life. Certainly death was not seen as gravity that drags you down. Rather elevation and culmination.
I have not read much Confucius – I respect him but have never found him particularly inspiring. I know he is frequently made the butt of jokes in the Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu.
My sense is that he is far closer to Taoists than he is to the modern sensibility of hard work – and that he is in in some ways merely a more exoteric and formalistic version of Taoists, but I’d have to read more of him to really follow up on these hunches.
That being said, the kind of limited improvements you mention, like reducing poverty and the like, are not what I have in mind when I say don’t strive.
What I mean is there is no need to engage in any sustained and intense effort to fundamentally alter the state of mankind or the earth in a basic sense – in that sense, Confucius was quite as much against striving as anyone, seeing how he wished to restore timeless patterns that had already been discovered to best promote human flourishing and harmony.
This pre-modern sensibility was widespread – shared by the Greeks and Romans and medieval society. Aristotle and Thomas Acquinas both placed contemplation above activity, and otiumwas considered an essential ingredient of the good life.
In this scheme, one is not merely passive, of course, but engages in activities that are intrinsically satisfying – walking in nature, good conversation, friendship, poetry, wine, and the like, contemplation of God – rather than make a sustained effort to fundamentally alter man’s condition through physical activity.
In this scheme, small scale limited action to effect local improvement is quite in order, like alleviating poverty and suffering, but massive sustained effort – heavy work – was not in good repute, for the simple reason that strictly material conditions were not considered to be the determinants of mans happiness.
In such a world, you do not really take material things seriously – and physical activity is more like play than work.
The modern attitude is quite the reverse of this, because the underlying belief system has changed – we now take physical things quite seriously, and believe that by controlling them we can fundamentally alter our position and achieve happiness, thus heavy sustained effort towards this future goal has replaced intrinsically satisfying activity for its own sake, much less spontaneous, disorganised activity that seeks happiness by surrendering control to Nature and being dictated to by it rather than dictating to it.
This, by the way, is why China was not creative and the West was – China simply didn’t believe that we could achieve ultimate happiness through manipulating material things, though a few inventions every now and then as the need arose might make sense, and alleviating poverty somewhat might also be desirable, although hardly worth expending too much effort on as poverty wasn’t seen as the calamity it is today.
Or so I believe.
Which system tended to produce more happiness and satisfaction and sanity, and which is based on a truer and more profound metaphysics – that is for each of us to judge, although in my view the evidence is in and blindingly clear.
As for Mozi, you seem to be saying he too believed in ultimately discovering and settling down with normative values. Either way, I know little of him but I don’t think he’s considered one of the great sages of the world, although he may have been a prominent philosopher in China.
I was being a bit tongue in cheek when I said you should hew to the traditions of your ancestors and reject the beliefs of the hairy barbarians – hairy as they may be, they had strikingly similar notions to those of your ancestors and only deviated in modern times, and as you note, one cannot make a clean demarcation between East and West as similar ideas appeared in both regions at different times and in different guises.
To be short, traditional societies believe that the path to happiness, liberation, and release, was to not take this material world very seriously or care too much about anything in it, including your own precious self. To understand that it is merely an illusion, a dream.
This is obviously anti-progress, and to a certain extent, anti-activity even.
The modern word is based on the exact opposite idea. Everyone is extremely serious, takes everything extremely seriously, is always working towards some future goal rather than engaging in intrinsically satisfying activity, and is consequently full of anxiety, concern, anger, and resentment – and no fun, as well as all sorts of bizarre pathologies as people take physical things like gender and its impact on ones happiness far too seriously.
And that, is the long and short of it, and the end of my sermon.
More background for friendly Ukrainian and Turkish relations!
Indeed.
1 Corinthians 7:4
Mark 10:6
Christianity is a religion about the physical world and the flesh, in a literal sense. Any attempt to twist it into something “spiritual” or a platform of ideas or feelings is satanic.
Don’t argue with Muslims or Ukrainians. They have a hidden agenda and you’ll do no good.
The Turks are practically Ukrainians at that rate of concubinage!!! Even more reasons!
Peace.
It’s normal for an old man to want more better looking women. Women are at the top of men’s worldly desires – this is why this is such a big issue; if you screw up on this one, all hell breaks loose on your society and you can collapse your civilization.
It is also normal for a person to start salivating at the smell of every fresh pizza, doesn’t mean he should eat every one he comes across.
Honestly, the only women I interacted with on the subject of relationships were around 4 or 5 and that was because we were discussing/negotiating the possibility of getting married. None of them were manipulative, the majority simply didn’t work out since we were not compatible or the person was not ready to commit or went with another proposal – the discussions were fairly swift and to the point. You guys have likely interacted with way more women than me, but in a completely different context, so I’ll have to assume you have more experience on the subject.
As they say; a fool and his money are soon parted with. However, I assume that – in these sugar daddy relationships, assuming this is what you are speaking about – the man is not altogether the innocent victim and that he is getting the sugar he is paying through the nose for.
Peace.
The Ottomans were indeed a very interesting dynasty – straddling both the Asian and European spheres, they could be quite eclectic. And yes, they did have the custom of fratricide:
“Before then, Ottoman succession had been governed by the “law of fratricide” drawn up by Mehmed II in the middle of the 15th century. Under the terms of this remarkable piece of legislation, whichever member of the ruling dynasty succeeded in seizing the throne on the death of the old sultan was not merely permitted, but enjoined, to murder all his brothers (together with any inconvenient uncles and cousins) in order to reduce the risk of subsequent rebellion and civil war.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ottoman-empires-life-or-death-race-164064882/
I don’t justify it since there is no Shariah sanction for this kind of behavior – it was a Machiavellian solution to the possibility of bloody civil wars of succession. This was something the Ottomans experienced first hand during the interregnum that occurred when the standing sultan was captured by Tamerlane’s army at the Battle of Ankara.
The Ottomans definitely hold the world record for longest successive dynasty; at 600+ years. It is a not only a rare feat but even more so given the vast amount of change in the world that happened over that span of history.
Peace.
The Danish monarchy is over a millennium old.
Are you seriously going to defend Canada?
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/30/08/1A6D4B4B00000514-0-image-a-1_1522395724267.jpg
Under a single family name? Like the House of Osman?
Peace.
LOL, Canada has gone off the rails but in principle and historically it (both Anglo and French parts) has been the more correct North America.
I happen to agree that the American Revolution was a load of rubbish (though the “Patriots” had a good point about the English trying to stop expansion into Indian country), but it doesn’t change the fact that of the two Anglo states in North America that Canada is faker, gayer, weaker, and crappier.
This extends to Canadians themselves. They are mentally, morally, culturally, and even physically inferior to Americans. Canadians are demented and deformed and desperately in need of liberation.
That said old time Canada was pretty cool. Back when Canada was about logging, gold prospecting, selling liquor to Indians, and exceptionally violent ice hockey matches played without helmets.
They even produced a first-class jet interceptor prototype:
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs50/i/2009/278/4/b/AVRO_ARROW_2_by_PlunkettGW.jpg
That Canada expired around the time the Pearson Pennant replaced the Red Ensign and Justin’s alleged father came to power.
in a way; if you recognize feminism as partly being about unattractive women looking for an alternative career to motherhood (with massive assistance from an anti-natal media) then PUA was unattractive men (partly due to trying to be “nice”) looking for sex without reproduction but
in my experience there isn’t a specific PUA version of patriarchy it’s mostly just dudes unwinding the hostility and bitterness they picked up from school and college going back to the old version of patriarchy which had been defeated by the media.
if there is a PUA version of patriarchy it’s the old version but informed by genetics i.e. women may like “nice” and “sensitive” on a conscious level but at a lower level their prehistoric genes want sons who can kill lions.
#
(btw i agree that PUA is toxic on its own – i’m saying it doesn’t make people go far right (cos PUA on its own is individualist) and that going far-right mostly detoxifies it and leaves the good bits.)
it’s not that they want to be dominated exactly – it’s that women who are alive today are alive cos their female ancestors going back millions of years were attracted to men who could put recently killed meat on the table so they may not like “toxic masculinity” but it turns them on whether they like it or not.
In Orthodox Christianity, family life is sometimes compared to life in a monastery. If you read for example the Ladder of Divine Ascent (by St. John of the Ladder, sometime igumen of St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai), one begins to appreciate how far there is to go in living family life like a monk in a monastery. That said, the father in the family naturally plays some of the role of igumen.
And as I have said before, the difference between man and woman is very important in traditional Christian theology, which is the fuller context for the passage that Thorfinnsson quoted:
I think that you’re overreaching your case against activity. An excellent example, of say, Stoic thought is Marcus Aurelius who indeed often mused on the notion of the world as a dream – but he certainly was not anti-activity. Consider for example, both his considerations on the futility of life:
In man’s life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.
Yet it did not prevent him from seeking to act for a non-satisfying activity:
Always follow these two rules: first, act only on what your reasoning mind proposes for the good of humanity, and second, change your opinion if someone shows you it’s wrong. This change of mind must proceed only from the conviction that it’s both correct and for the common good, but not because it will give you pleasure and make you popular.
And thus his considerations on virtue:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
And yes, he was a very, very serious person. A very, very frustrated emperor and person, too. But hardly a poor thinker.
Interestingly, I’ve never actually heard anyone mention the dynastic name.
No, they don’t have the same name, since they are a cadet branch, but they are direct descendants and the family line have reigned uninterrupted over Denmark.
It is not uncommon for European dynasties to compound names or to undergo name changes, but they are still considered part of a larger line. Which is one of the reasons why there is a Canadian town named Guelph (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelph) despite the British ruling family being named, at the time, the House of Hanover.
By tradition, the Japanese monarchy is over 2600 years old. With a bit firmer evidence, about 1500 years old. Of course, they were mostly figureheads and Japan was very fractured for most of that time, so I don’t think it is very analogous to the Ottoman sultans, though still impressive in a way.
Its always been amusing to me how both extensive, and yet pointless that is.
I suppose it says something that they were restrained enough that no one thought to replace him in total.
For young men – normal and healthy. For old men – inappropriate, and sign of lack of development.
It will be different numbers for women for some disorders than men (and for others, higher numbers, but in less extreme form), but you will meet people with personality disorders.
Around 1 in 10 people with a personality disorder.
Some of the behaviour – very stereotypical things. But many people are not very when they meet it in real life.
–
People with narcissistic personality disorder, for example – more popular on first impression, than healthy people are. (But rapidly, after more acquaintance, making a bad impression).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40869027_Why_Are_Narcissists_so_Charming_at_First_Sight_Decoding_the_Narcissism-Popularity_Link_at_Zero_Acquaintance
I assume – a lot of potential to attract inappropriate characters.
Yet other dynasties managed to have orderly lines of succession for the most part without having to kill each other.
Big Red, it makes sense that you’d find a married man with children to be at least presumptively more credible & knowledgeable on matters of romance, marriage, sex, and raising good, honest, industrious children, compared to a man who lacks that life experience and perspective.
By contrast, as a cradle Catholic who stayed in the church till very recently, I found it less helpful to consult a priest on such matters. Much more so when he seemed homosexual or just plain odd, immature, and sheltered, as so many priests come across these days.
Perhaps that church needs to not only allow but REQUIRE their priests and deacons to be well-rounded married men.
Absolutely. And it is a sure sign of the rise of gender dysphoria that it is largely due to Christianity no longer being the mooring to which the West is attached.
Thanks for the insights into Orthodox doctrine on the matter of the family, much appreciated. It’s a shame that so many people feel the Church is no longer relevant to their lives.
Peace.
Sure, different strokes for different folks. Like I mentioned, it’s not something I would advocate in the least due to the moral dilemma.
Did it work? Yes, yes it did.
Peace.
Probably has a lot to do with geography. Korea Strait vs. English Channel. The mountainous interior of Japan. Of course, very different from China.
Once, you have those isolating conditions, there is probably a more or less a fixed narrative of legitimacy, which would influence the way a pedigree is constructed retroactively. A third cousin might become a son.
I’m a bit suspicious of it honestly, since I’m familiar with a few medieval pedigrees which go back to Noah, or someone like that.
Then I guess it depends on the parameters you use to measure it – from one perspective then, the Danish crown easily surpasses the House of Osman in legacy.
Peace.
There is a difference between desire and acting on it. I have very old spiritual teachers that have been working on their souls for decades and they plainly stated to us; anyone who says lust for women goes away with old age is a liar.
When you get to 80, let me know if the desire for beautiful women is gone.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf once asked his elderly father (who is not a Muslim) when he thought that lust left a man’s inclinations – to which his father replied; probably some time after the cadaver has cooled.
The point is how you deal with the desire. Assuming the desire isn’t there is playing with fire and setting oneself up for failure.
That sounds a bit high, but it is also not surprising for this day and age in which narcissism seems to be lauded. Thus even those that are not naturally narcissistic will try to adopt it in order to fit in.
Peace.
I’ve thought about this eventuality too, however, am not keen on giving up my US citizenship. As it stands now (as I understand things), a foreigner can only stay in Ukraine for no longer than 3 months, and then must leave for 3 months before returning. I’ve toyed with the idea of working in Ukraine, perhaps as an English language instructor. Perhaps, you know of some other way(s) to get around these onerous restrictions?
The Ottoman’s had a very large empire. Probably the best comparison in terms of size and longevity would be to the Roman Empire, which arguably had bloodier/more disruptive transitions to power. It’s especially impressive given their military culture.
Though it seems brutal, it was doubtlessly more civilized than civil war.
You think physical activity is futile, but at the same time you rebel against the notion that it is futile.
Your position may be described as the nobility of futility…
You are bounded by the assumption that one can only search for meaning in physical activity, but at the same time your intellect recognizes with cold clarity that such activity is meaningless…
So you are torn, your position is Sisyphean, existentialist…
At some point, you might want to cut the Gordian knot by questioning your initial assumption that meaning must be found in physical activity…
The existentialists were unable to advance for the same reason, they accepted the traditional religious conception of the physical world as absurd, meaningless, and futile on its own (as what thinking person cannot), but they also accepted the modern premise that it is real, really real, and total…
We know now from multiple points of view – philosophical, scientific, and logical – that the physical world is not really real, cannot be really real, and is not total, but the world is not yet ready to accept this….
But every so often, an individual snaps out of the dream. One by one, little lights go on.
Agreed. Though, again, I cannot agree with sanctioning fratricide (many Muslim rulers did tons of stuff that was not in the confines of the Shariah*), I cannot help but think – if I was a normal farmer or cobbler or baker living in that empire – that, if the elite were going to fight it out over their lust for power, I’d rather them go stab-and-poison-happy on each other and leave the common folk alone.
You should read about how the Ottoman Bey, Muhammad Ali, came into power in Egypt and replaced the Mamluk elite – straight up gangster style, it’s like a scene out of the Godfather:
“He organised a grand ceremonial procession in Cairo to which he invited some 500 Mameluke notables. Assembled in the citadel, they were warmly welcomed and treated to coffee, sweetmeats and polite conversation, but when the time came for the procession they had to go down a narrow, winding passageway between high walls in single file. Suddenly the gates at each end were slammed shut and the Wali’s soldiers appeared on top of the walls and opened a murderous fire with muskets. All or possibly all but one of the Mamelukes were killed. More Mamelukes were swiftly hunted down and killed in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, to a total of perhaps 3,000.”
https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/mamelukes-are-massacred-egypt
And that dude was Albanian; who says White people can’t live the thugg lyfe 4ever?
It’s kind of eerie, but that area where this took place has been preserved. I remember visiting it when I took a trip to Egypt. Very bizarre walking through an area where you know hundreds of people were gunned down.
Peace.
*A scholar that I quote from often, Imam Kharakhsi (ra) had to write many of the portions of his magnum opus, the 30 volume “Al-Mabsut” entirely from memory and without resort to his library from within prison because he had publicly denounced the validity of the marriage of the ruler of his area.
Imam Nawawi (ra) was exiled for publicly denouncing the Mamluks for raising unsanctioned taxes.
I always like to use the term Real to distinguish it from real, due to the gradations of quiddity.
What I’ve found fascinating is the nature of the phenomenal world is so full of little paradoxes…as if quantum mechanics isn’t enough – just a couple of examples:
1. Fractals – you can look at a projection of a fractal and it can be encompassed by your limited vision, yet you can also keep zooming in on it forever
2. Time increments – we can measure time in very small fractions and our technology keeps increasing to the point where we can capture stills/images of motion (frames) in these very slight increments and we will possibly be able to further dig deeper and split time and measure into further small increments and take further stills/images. Yet at some point it has to stop, right? I mean, it can’t go on splitting forever or motion wouldn’t occur, or can it? Or is motion simply an illusion done at a frame rate that is beyond any level of increasing human perception? If so, is the phenomenal world a 3d version of a movie with 3d frames instead of 2d ones we are used to?
Fun stuff.
Peace.
I’m reminded of the Stockholm Bloodbath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Bloodbath
To this day Danes have a reputation in Sweden for deceit and trickery.
Didn’t work out for Christian the Tyrant however. The great patriot Gustav Wasa traveled to Dalecarlia and roused the peasantry to support his war of liberation against the hated Danes.
LOL at calling Albanians white. Albanians are so bad they’re not even deserving of the title Balkanoid Swine. More like Sub-Balkanoid Sewage.
Yea, there’s a ton of stuff like this. Philosophers used to compile lists. Kant did a comprehensive survey. The time/motion thing is an ancient paradox.
But as we know, none of this has has had any effect on modern people. They just ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, deny it.
To me, that simply means this materialism thing has a life of its own and just has to wear itself out – it was never argued into, and it will never be argued out of. It’s almost like a spiritual entity that has taken possession of people’s minds for a time.
People just have to snap out of it, so to speak, one by one, like tiny bulbs going off in the head. Logic is helpless here. Even scientific proof failed to make a dent.
Intuition and experience is probably more important.
But it probably won’t happen soon on any large scale.
Reminds me a bit of the Massacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan.
No wonder the Arabs did not trust the Turks. Sort of surprising, since the Mamluks spoke Turkish. Cool that the site is still there.
Yup – the Swedes have never forgiven them their conquests – my in-laws still talk down about them.
https://www.vistaalmar.es/images/ampliadas/burgueses-visby-cargan-barriles-tesoro.jpg
Hey man, they’re White to us.
That kind of translates to White Trash…
Peace.
Of course, it falls. It’s mediated by hormones.
Testosterone levels are falling already in your 20s. (Remember when you were a teenager, and you think about girls every 2 seconds.)
And there is also a maturity aspect – we expect old people to be more developed, even if they are in reality rarely matching the archetypal image of wisdom we expect from them.
Psychopaths, for example, exist in all ages, races and societies – and are a character as old as the human race. There may be differences in prevalence, or how successful some societies are with resisting them, however.
America, for example, was politically well designed, to prevent a single one of these characters from obtaining total power in the country.
You will likely appreciate this then:
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad are probably the most articulate on translating these cocepts into the English language (Shaykh Nuh Keller as well).
You have to choose an interpretation of phenomenal reality* – everyone “believes” – even those that claim they don’t “believe” have faith that the scientists will eventually figure it out for us.
Peace.
*Or you can simply ignore it like you said.
Not really – if you don’t toe the line then the Cosa Nostra eliminates you with extreme prejudice even if you speak impeccable Italian and make a great cannoli.
Mamlukes were a rival power center – thus they were dealt with. Of course, Muhammad Ali then went on to basically become strong enough to be independent of the Ottomans also and pledge fealty mostly in name only – what goes around, comes around.
Peace.
I didn’t say decrease, I said “goes away”.
Sure, which is why they usually don’t do stupid things due to lust – wisdom and experience helps them keep themselves in check. Some of them of course screw up.
Agreed – the American government, with its institution of checks and balances (even at a theoretical level) is a fairly beautifully designed system.
Peace.
Unit of measurement is generally an artificial construct. (It’s just a standard for comparing things, not something observer independent).
But smallest unit hypothetically in which anything physical can happen, is “Planck time”.
Questions like whether time is continuous or discrete still not resolved yet.
(It would be really funny if time is actually discrete, in which case there will be observer independent units).
Agreed – break out the pop corn!
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/738387/Time-NOT-real-EVERYTHING-happens-same-time-einstein
I personally love this stuff!
Peace.
Where is that picture from Talha?
What a rich and colorful world we’ve lost! Its so cool.
I used to wonder what Europeans thought when they first came to India were they blown away by the color – but then Europe was probably somewhat similar back then.
All I would want out of life is to live in a place like that, maybe smaller more like a town, where the countryside is 5 minutes away so I can explore forests and hills.
I spent a year once in a neighborhood where every house looked like this https://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Gatos/14731-Golf-Links-Dr-95032/home/1299131
Shudder!
In America people work like dogs to live in a place like that.
This is an open thread so I can assume anything can be written here.
So akarlin had a twitter pic of Housing vs Houses, but is it just me, but the commie blocks and post-Communist muraveyniki make Russia/Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, the rest of Eastern Europe much more beautiful than Western Europe?
I’m not a fan of Khrushchevas, but any of the Russian highrises with over 10 stories built after say, 1980, give the cities super beautiful Asian-style character, feeling just like home. I believe Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia are the countries with the most amount of these “housing” outside of the former USSR. And the more beat up or shoddily built they look, the better.
The Japanese really had different rules of legitimacy than Europeans. A childless emperor could adopt his cousin or other relative, and if an empress was infertile, the throne would pass to a concubine’s son (Emperor Meiji for example was one). That’s why the dynasty lasted so long. If England had such rules, the Tudors could still reign – IIRC Henry VIII had enough sons by his mistresses.
The joke is on you pal. For naively thinking that the word ‘striving’ only applies to strenuous physical exertions. Buddha certainly wasn’t exhorting his disciples to get actively immersed in Maya, was he? Quite the opposite.
Maya has a powerful grip on the mind of man. And it is in the mind that the real ‘action’, the striving for liberation from the illusion, must take place. Buddha himself strived didn’t he? So what the hell makes you think that sages don’t strive?
I knew a couple of Germans once who said there are roads in the former East Germany where they have signs posted that say drive slowly, since there are old, abandoned communist-era apartment buildings that could collapse. Not sure if they were pulling my leg or not.
Anti-whites sometimes post pictures of rotten old communist buildings and say this is what Russia looks like because it is white. But it is a really poor comparison given Detroit, which had many beautiful buildings that were destroyed by decay.
From the cover of a book I have on Swedish history. It is a rendition of the Danish King Atterdag’s conquest over the Swedish town of Visby and how he forced them to fill barrels full of gold to save themselves from his troops plundering the city or razing it to the ground:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdemar_Atterdag_holding_Visby_to_ransom,_1361
Interesting that the author of the book chose that as his cover, no?
I remember seeing a documentary regarding the Muslims in Iran once and there was this one shot where the people had gathered for Friday prayer in some small remote town and the front row was full of these old men; their beards completely white, silently doing their dhikr on prayer beads, just a complete picture of serenity, wisdom and acceptance. And I remembered thinking, that’s how I want to be when I get old, remembering God at all times, just readying my soul to go.
Peace.
But I genuinely find these buildings beautiful. They make Russian cities look like real cities. Unlike Western Europe which looks too much like fake Disney live museums sometimes. The newer stuff you find in Germany and Scandinavia is plain ugly.
The ones in Russia and EE have a genuine style to them. And having your cities look like East Asian cities is a compliment. imo, cities shouldn’t have houses, but housing, and the bigger the city the taller and more expansive the apartment blocks should be.
The joke is on neither of us.
All effort builds the ego, all striving is karmic.
Just surrender. You’ll be allright.
Nevertheless, a period of striving is usually necessary – but then you realize there was never anything to achieve. Then you just let go.
Right now you’re embroiled in anger and resentment, because your striving is just building your ego – at some point, you’ll just let go, cease striving, and you’ll laugh at the way it was once so important for you to argue against white people about nonsense.
You have bad taste.
Accept it and get on with your life.
Not a mortal sin unless you take up a career in architecture or city planning.
I suppose there were all those disparate Greek-speaking empires.
Still, it is somewhat surprising to me since the Turks had such a large empire, you would think they would cultivate groups with a cultural affinity to them to act as surrogates in some of the more far-flung places. I suppose that is not really how politics worked back then, though.
A pity the medieval and ancient record is not better, since I’ll bet there was a lot of great stories of intrigue and cruelty that were forgotten. Some of the Roman stuff is pretty good, but, at the same time, a lot of it feels like slander.
That’s quite interesting. If I understand correctly, the Imperial Household Law of 1947 (somewhat under US influence) changed the line of succession to limit the scope of succession to legitimate male offspring, in order to limit the size of the Imperial Family. But I suppose the Emperor no longer has any powers, so it is somewhat moot.
Given the outmarriage, it’s surprising what a high rate of mortality they suffered:
Probably better to have a somewhat larger group if you are a monarchist, but of course, it is possible to go too large, like the Saudis.
They did actually which is what made them relatively successful. If they had made enemies out of everyone, they would not have lasted so long – they were able to make them fairly good offers. And they knew how to make use of alliances, often siding with one European power against another to the take advantage it conferred – I mean, it was the Brits that ultimately made Napoleon’s army pack up and go home after trashing his navy at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon was kicking Turkish and Arab butt all over North Africa and the Levant.
But they were an imperial enterprise so if you got out of line – you got curb-stomped. The Ottomans had contacts with the Mughals and would marry with them. They even sent military engineers all the way to Indonesia to help them with constructing canons to ward off the Dutch invasions.
Yeah, almost everything from that time has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Peace.
One of the coolest European cities I’ve seen was Quito about 10 years ago – it was all sooty and grimy, dark and gothic, and looked like a set for Dracula.
I was expecting European cities to be even cooler, as they’re the originals, and was disappointed to find them clean and disneyfied.
Prague like 12 years ago was also sublimely grimy and atmosphere, but had been completely ruined by my last visit a few years ago after its been cleaned.
People don’t realize that a huge element in beauty and atmosphere is imperfection, the effects of age and time, a space for nature and disorder to reign.
When man tries to fully control his environment, to sanitize it, it becomes dull, ugly, stultifying. We need nature, disorder, God. That’s why old cities are do great – they collaborate with nature.
Zen has a bit if this sensibility of imperfection.
Historical living breathing walking museums that Western “Yuropeans” hold so dear give rise to gayness, and hence leftism takes root.
Likewise, Anglosphere suburbia give rise to atomization and obesity. Obesity gives rise to ugliness and dumbness, and a dumbed down fat population that’s atomized? Perfect leftism multiplication opportunity.
High rise apartment tower complexes that Russia, including Ukraine, swaths of Eastern Europe, and most of non-Japan East Asia builds give rise to traditional values, beauty of both architecture and people, and basedness.
Therefore, to combat leftism in Western Europe, we need to rebuild the environment of the stuck up globalist Paris bobos (or Kensington in London) like this:
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/d1/11/c2/ostankino-tv-tower.jpg
Housing > Suburbia
http://marketurbanism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/suburbia.png
The point is how you deal with the desire.
bada bing bada boom
You’re an old-timer* iffen, correct? Is lust gone with age?
Peace.
*I mean that in a good way:
“No youth will honor his elders but that Allah will appoint someone to honor him in his old age.” – reported in Tirmidhi
Herr Karlin says:
Oh my. Don’t tell Martyanov (or whatever his name is)
Let’s make this simpler.
It’s not so much that we need to build certain things as that we need to get rid of some things.
The evil deity afflicting American agriculture, housing, cities, and life in general is made up of three heads:
1) Subsidies, especially for cars, the oil industry, and high-calorie crops like corn
2) Taxes, especially property taxes
3) A fiat currency
The end result of these things put together is endless war, the devastation of the world’s most glorious farmland*, and the continued suckiness of our cities and suburbs.
Oh, and this is also why our rail transportation sucks. I am from Pennsylvania. We had the Pennsylvania Railroad, once an industry-leading company. All gone now. We used to have passenger service between Harrisburg, Reading, Allentown, and Philadelphia/New York. These are all places no less dense than parts of Europe. No passenger service anymore. It’s asinine. We made rail unprofitable through government action.
Americans are a people, or were a people, capable of governing themselves and running a federalist economy. That’s what we did back in Europe, particularly under the English common law. We don’t need a top down servile state. We become the way we are now. But I live among the “common people” of the heartland. Most of them, including the few working blacks left, are thoroughly capable of making a future America that resembles the good self-governance of our pre-FDR life.
Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh were wonderful places to live for real people of a hard-working and religiously stable life. Pittsburgh and towns like Shamokin, now that was a place where the powerful locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad hauled heavy ore trains past sooty, happy, happening little towns marked by the domes of Orthodox churches and the Catholic parishes of various peoples. And, yes, the men wore ties and the working class women were beautiful and strong.
http://www.silogic.com/trains/P&LE/P&LE%20Postcards%20by%20Howard%20Fogg/P&LE%20Postcard%20by%20Howard%20Fogg%20-%20Lowellville%20Works,%20Sharon%20Steel%20Corp,%20Youngstown,%20OH.jpg
You’re projecting a lot on what I believe. My point is simply this, and indeed utu echoed this – antiquity did not universally, nor even usually, treat considerations of the temporal and transient nature of existence as a reason not to strive. I mentioned Confucius and Marcus Aurelius to just notate two very different traditions, both which contradict your hypothesis.
Even the idea that the ancients did not consider the importance of “future goals” is rather silly. The Romans were obviously engaged in massive public works: road construction, canals, aqueducts, etc. They did not build them out of some metaphysical desire, they built them with blood and treasure because they thought it’d be beneficial for their governance or population. They were very serious about it.
The same applies to the China, the terrace farms didn’t just magically appear; it was a serious project conducted over many generations. The temporal nature of life for ancients often meant just accepting that you wouldn’t see the fruits of your labor, and passing it on to the next generation to continue. Same goes for the great wall, shudao or the many canal projects(some which involved blasting rock with gunpowder). They sacrificed to build them, in order to benefit the population/governance.
The churches and cathedrals from the 1940’s and older that dot the landscape all over the US (especially in my area of the Midwest) – to me – are consistently the most beautiful things the people of this land have ever built. Hands down.
Peace.
If time is discrete then by definition timelessness must separate the shortest discrete units of time. What is this timelessness? Eternity or non-existence? Either way there could be no possibility of connecting quantums of time. Without such connections the laws of nature and thus nature itself wouldn’t exist.
Therefore time, or space-time, must be continuous.
Fair enough.
What I’m trying to get across, and not succeeding very well, is that traditional effort had a different goal than modern effort, and consequently a different level of intensity.
If you read Cicero, you will find a very eloquent defense of the ideal of otium.
Traditional society did not strive to transform the human condition. They tried to solve local problems in a limited fashion.
One might build the Agora, but the real point of life was to discuss philosophy in it. They would try and alleviate poverty, but only when it got really bad, and did not imagine it could be completely eliminated, or that it would even be really worthwhile to do so.
The ancients knew nothing lasts, but still built beautiful cities, of course. But they knew the problem of human life cannot be solved by building things.
Crudely put, we moderns believe the problem of human life can be solved by building things. We have a goal, and we work very hard to realize it.
We moderns seek utopia by building up the world. They sought release from the world. We seek utopia in some distant future, and sacrifice our present for it – they pursued intrinsically satisfying activity, and did not cling to the world.
Confucius and Marcus Aurelius did not share the modern belief that we can transform the human condition by building things, but they did support limited action to deal with local ills when they got too intense.
But most of their concerns centered on philosophy and leisure activity. Confucius had immense concern with music, literature, beauty, and morality.
Within this fundamental divide between modernity and tradition, there existed gradations. Some ancients emphasized effort more, like Confucius and the Stoics, but none of them had the modern attitude towards effort.
In my view, China was not creative because she never truly shifted to the modern view that building things can transform humanity. She still hasn’t, fully.
The West was creative because it came to believe earthly utopia was possible, right around the corner, and could be achieved by building things – the wiser Chinese smiled at such delusions.
Creativity rests on delusion – not perceiving the nature of the world. Effort as a way of life also rests on delusion. Hamlet understood that action rests on delusion.
That is why the Buddha emphasized dispelling illusions as the path to freedom, and bliss. Modern people are imprisoned in a fantasy, so they work heavily.
It must be asked – which society was happier?
Liberate yourself, Daniel 🙂
Very nice, I’m sure those old towns were quite appealing and attractive.
I’ve driven through many fine old towns in Pennsylvania, and I can easily imagine a very appealing kind of traditional life going on in them. I used to fantasize about what but was like. And some areas of countryside also have a nice old look, with stone walls and hedges, and old oaks with spreading branches, and old barns.
Of course it’s all gone now, isn’t it. Apparently utopia is in the future, the result of building more things.
Is lust gone with age?
Absolutely not!
But it only burns for a few minutes (seconds) now as opposed to what it was earlier.
Nice – thanks for the insights. Much appreciated! I think one reason a man attains wisdom with age is particularly that his mind is less occupied with sexual desire and he can think more clearly.
Peace.
Dr. E. Michael Jones discusses his book The Slaughter of Cities
I think it was Aeschylus who was that one of the greatest boons of growing old is no longer being bothered by the demon of sexual desire. It’s such a pest.
It’s funny how all old cultures understood true happiness to be a release from desire and a turn towards eternal things instead of fulfillment of desire.
Americans actually try and increase their libido through medications and vitamins, and worry when their libido goes down! Ten years ago around I was living with a roommate who was a health freak – another grotesque American pathology – who was horrified when I told him I was quite happy that I had very low level of sexual desire the past few months, so I could think more clearly. He immediately set to work designing a vitamin cocktail for me – I was like, dude, this is a great gift!
Anatoly’s Bucolic Thread actually became about bucolic themes, lol.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/t-magazine/seoul-hanok-slow-living.html?imp_id=904979329&action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage
Americans actually try
There you go again. How about you blame those frogs who set the whole thing in motion.
I think one reason a man attains wisdom
This is an aspiration, not a lock.
I am sorry, iffen, there are many fine Americans, but America really is at the forefront of all these trends, of everything that’s wrong with the world.
I wish it were otherwise. But we must face facts. This is the epicenter.
Yeah baby, we’re number one.
https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.WedSxqAAFX-Sm8l3ecgOeQHaFj&pid=Api
Give blood guys
Well, it’s not ALL gone. Thank goodness. Every fall I wash sweet potatoes in a Pennsylvania bank barn that has been standing since the 1800s. Rural areas in America do retain some more traditional things.
Pennsylvania settlers built their barns and homes to LAST and a large number of them still do.
What? How are the French to blame?
Don’t know about Pennsylvania, but I know that generally the railroads did not make money on passengers, but on cargo. They were actually mandated by the government to take passengers.
Regional railroads like the B & M used to make part of their money doing daily milk runs, but after refrigerated cars became perfected, it became cheaper to make milk in the Midwest and ship it over longer distances.
Railroads were very regulated, a lot of that made them weaker than they would have been otherwise, but still I don’t think regional rails could compete with trucks. Rail can be pretty expensive. In some areas, Amtrak tickets are subsidized hundreds of dollars per ticket. It is also quite a bit more money than taking the bus, in more populated areas.
British raised taxes on the colonies in North America to pay for the debt incurred fighting the French in the French-Indian Wars.
At least that’s what I remember from US History. But maybe iffen meant something else…
Peace.
Open thread right?
Some patriotic music from the good guys:
The sovok version, noting the changes in some of the words:
Other:
The latest from the censored one:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-media-on-mccain-and-russophobia-john-mccains-flawed-foreign-policy-advocacy/5652410
https://www.eurasiareview.com/31082018-new-york-times-crock-on-mccain-and-russia-oped/
Meshes well with Buchanan’s take:
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/are-the-interventionists-now-leaderless/
The rules vary a little between countries, but in the Russian tradition, before becoming a priest, a man has to choose whether to marry or to become a monk. In the former case, he’ll become a parish priest, and in the latter, he’ll go to a monastery. Sometimes a senior monk-priest will be sent to work in a parish, but this is rare, and married parish priests are the rule.
The above was meant as a reply to RadicalCenter.
I found the long summary on the first page decidedly bugmannish. The argument, such as it is, is that profitability of Facebook is reason for optimism. I’m quite open to being convinced that we are not doomed, but this doesn’t even get an E for effort.
Perhaps you could point me to some of the better argued posts?
On the other hand, while I agree with the neoreactionaries that “democracy” really is broken, I’d like to see more detail on proposed governance structures, as well as more real life experiments. In particular, I’m not so convinced that corporations actually do such a good job of serving their customers, least of all when they form a monopoly, which a government does by definition. Even if the right of exit exists in principle, it can be very impractical even for hyper-individualistic Anglo-Saxons. So incentives have to be designed very carefully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_the_Man_and_of_the_Citizen_of_1789
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=delacroix+liberty&id=1678363BDAC93229C385E7E30CE0D7BE465388AE&view=detailv2&rtpu=%2fsearch%3fq%3ddelacroix+liberty&FORM=IEQNAI
Should not the English Levellers and the Regicide of Charles I count?
I should add that the most dubious claim on greyenlightenment was that the “War on terror” has been a success. The only criterion under which it seems to be a success is by artificially creating demand
for military spending. One suspects that these greyenlightenment blokes are Keynesian hypocrites.
The Levellers should get an honorable mention, but the Jacobins actually “won.”
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t the UK still place sovereignty with Parliament rather than with “the people” – individuals?
He’s definitely more on the neocon side, but its still interesting reading a contrary position, for example, his optimism in terms of useless jobs:
https://greyenlightenment.com/bullshit-jobs-part-2/
I don’t really subscribe to his views at all(I’m highly pessimistic and also believe that Telsa is built on bullshit and lies, which are catching up), I think he attempts to be optimistic in spite of evidence, a very Voltarian Pangloss who takes everything and wants to indicate that its all for the best. Its still interesting, though. He posts here, and if he wishes to defend himself, he can do so.
As to “what works” from a NRX perspective, as opposed to the critique of “what is” which dominates the vast majority of dialogue these days:
1) Secure power.
The general idea is that secure power can lead to dysfunction or greatness, but insecure power is guaranteed to be dysfunctional since it will spend much of its energy fighting itself. The perspective here is that the citizens of a patchwork are its employees, and in order to keep its employees when the right of exit is strong, it will have to take care of them.
2) Real life examples
I think Singapore is often seen as an example of a NRX state, but it also demonstrates weaknesses that have to be addressed. It seems to exist as a healthy, well-run semi-despotic state and under Lee Kuan Yew, quite inspiring. His sons, on the other hand, do not seem to have carried the legacy quite as well but notably its still quite well run. Clearly an actual implementation of NRX needs to deal with bureaucratic creep better, something which Moldbug addresses as an universal problem.
3) Right of exit
Land expected atomization to continue, and therefore believed that use of exit could only increase further, especially with patchwork states that welcomed entry and exit.
https://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/06/atomization/
In practice, I find that this is echoed in history, such as in Quebec when onerous measures were implemented to preserve French nationalism and ultimately led to the Quiet Revolution. Its not, in fact, necessary to exit to be in total; but any onerous “tyranny” can’t really survive exit of its best and brightest and in the NRX patchwork world, capitalistic rivalry is expected to vanquish failures.
https://www.medicaldaily.com/everyone-little-bisexual-even-if-they-claim-otherwise-study-finds-423096 According to this everybody is bisexual? so that conversion therapy is actually theoretically workable?
What’s the appeal of games like Fortnite, if anyone here plays them? I can see some joy in playing it in a full team, but the solo playstyle seems so random and skill-independent that I might as well be playing a slot machine.
Some rural areas retain some charm, especially on the East Coast and South. And thank God for that.
When the collapse comes, and decentralization follows, I can imagine these regions forming a patchwork quilt of vibrant regional cultures.
Maybe, if we’re lucky enough and our karma is good, we Americans will be worthy of our own glorious Middle Ages?
In the meantime, enjoy the fall in PA. I’m looking forward to many trips to the Hudson Valley this fall.
It sounds like you have weird taste, although I cannot find a picture of what you are talking about. When I search for muraveyninki all I find is recipes for funnel cake.
No idea.
I don’t play anywhere near as much video games as I use to but when I do lately I’ve mainly been playing just Don’t Starve, Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and roguelikes (NetHack/Slash’EM, TOME, ADOM).
Here are some examples, see if the pics load:
Moscow:
https://d2v9y0dukr6mq2.cloudfront.net/video/thumbnail/5PNlDRM/aerial-view-of-moscow-cityscape-with-apartment-blocks-and-car-traffic-on-leninsky-avenue-russia_brtejz7xe_thumbnail-full01.png
Kiev:
https://edge.media.datahc.com/HI322826580.jpg
Seoul:
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D06YEW/large-modern-blocks-of-residential-flats-apartments-in-the-suburbs-D06YEW.jpg
Shanghai:
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7681/17116265547_d85bece711_b.jpg
Your tastes match mine. Slow accumulation of advantages is fun.
Rimworld is awesome.
“How do I keep my new prisoners fed? Oh, look! Corpses of a former friend of hers. Let’s put them in the same room and see what happens when she gets hungry enough.”
Have to admit that’s pretty awful.
Please tell me that you’re only pretending to like this for post-ironic posturing reasons. I refuse to believe such soulless people can exist.
While his statements about decrepit commie blocks having more “soul” is utter BS – and likely is a poor attempt at baiting/trolling – there’s a lot to be said for just renovating the current structures. They can look quite well:
https://i.imgur.com/W2dUBEh.jpg
The white tall ones are newly done in contrast with the olders ones in the back right and the one to the immediate left.
Here’s another example of a building undergoing renovation:
https://i.imgur.com/DIReWzx.jpg
It should be stated that a big argument in favor in commie blocs are often the neighborhoods themselves, rather than the buildings per se.
These neighborhoods are often well-designed, at least where I live, and have everything on walkable distance with plenty of greenery in the inner yards with lots of playgrounds and sporting amenities. There is also generally a much better sense of community, in my experience, which is why I plan to live there even after graduation and despite being able to afford better stuff in a few years.
Unfortunately, instead of making large renovation plans of existing commie bloc areas in Warsaw, the neoliberal city council prefer to appease the Big Build lobbies by ripping down these commie blocs and replacing them with soulless globalist structures. Pic below is Warsaw this summer, taken just a few days ago.
https://i.imgur.com/MunclE5.jpg
Give it 5-10 years and most of the downtown will be completely replaced. There are still some neighbourhoods safe, particularly where the working class live, but they are on death watch, too. If this goes on I might just leave for Gdansk or someplace more historical, or even Moscow for a few years. The “old” downtown of Warsaw is a fake structure cosplaying as an ancient city, anyway.
So, I do have a soft spot for the argument of having commie blocs, but it’s a shame he took a good argument and ran so poorly with it.
Russia to stop ferrying American astronauts to space.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-cuts-us-access-iss-pledges-stop-ferrying-american-astronauts-2019-1098937
Heh I try not to be excessively evil in Rimworld, yet one cannot let meat go to waste, I like to feed the raider corpses to dogs and hogs.
I forget the details, but I believe there is some company that is owed a few Soyuz rides under contract. They will most likely sell them to NASA.
The previous NASA deals were very profitable to Russia.
Spacex Dragon will supposedly be ready in January for manned flight. I’d guess a few months later, but who knows? Boeing Starliner is currently mid-2019, but that seems more tentative.
Wow… no.
Separate from the decrepitude level, you seem to like the high density equivalents of the suburbia Mitleser posted a photo of… which to me is hideous. No character. I’m not sure which is worse.
For a city I’d take this:
https://academichelp.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/prague.jpg
Although I’d rather live someplace more like this:
https://www.roughguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/120013306-crop-1680×1050.jpg
I have heard that, that the layout of the commie blocks was decent despite the buildings being fugly.
Those buildings are still just so brutalist though. Quite ugly architecture and just so repetitive.
All these sheer gleaming glass buildings, if you build too many of them, end up being like a new brutalism though. A couple of them look quite nice, but if you build everything like that it ends up having the same soulless plain uniform sameness everywhere.
And there is the same secret underlying the sheer glass look as was under the original raw concrete brutalism. The architects can try to talk up the philosophy of the aesthetic style as much as they want, it is covering the fact that these things are designed and built to be basically as cheap as possible, that’s why they are so plain and uniform.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dlziw_6UYAAqsrP.jpg
The photo of Prague -yes beautiful, but not a very practical or contemporarily replicable example.
If we are talking about construction of new housing nowadays. The new developments are usually allowing high population density, while also being easy and cheap to construct, and so importantly, profitable for the construction company.
There’s a reason new housing blocks, are usually repetitions of the same rectangle tower – it’s cheaper for the construction companies to reuse the same design, than to buy different designs.
It’s also more profitable for them to place the buildings closer together, and to try to maximize their density.
People of good taste, will be angry about this. But if we look at it more objectively – from the perspective of the free market: it is an expression of public’s preferences.
If people especially prioritized unique (rather than repetitive) towers, then they would express this in their buying choices, and pay extra for it – and construction companies would try to match this demand.
But average people don’t appear to care so much about having any unique exterior design of buildings, at least to extent of paying substantially extra for it.
E.g. Kind of repetitive new projects – and yet with all positive comments written under them on YouTube:
Well new projects can spend more, if they want to build residential housing projects to replicate fake French villages:
Which is precisely way taste must be dictated by people like us.
It doesn’t have to be particularly expensive either.
Reinforced concrete for instance is fine if it mirrors the forms of classical stone building and gets an attractive surface treatment. Using stainless steel rebar and advanced forms of concrete it also lasts practically forever.
One could duplicate Hausman’s Paris with modern building materials and technology and build an affordable, attractive, and highly dense urban center.
Aside from aesthetics, seems like the basic key to attractive urbanism is simply to build on a human scale and waste no space. Build right out to the street and have no space between the buildings. 3-6 stories in this style still create plenty of density, though certainly in CBDs there is a place for skyscraper construction.
Manhattan is a place where skyscrapers are done well because space between buildings is typically not wasted, unlike in more “modern” cities such as in Asia.
I’m afraid the most effective program is “be rich”. The longest life expectancy country in the world? Monaco, by far. The longest living person? Jeanne Calment, a rich businessman’s wife – who also had good genes and luck, and didn’t do anything special to live longer. If you care about the aging of your face, be black (otherwise, use Botox.)
But if average buyers don’t care, why stop them?
Architecture was generally a lot more stylish in 19th century, than today. Yet housing situation for vast majority of people, was vastly worse in 19th century, compared to today.
Having unique buildings is an important topic for architecture fans and connoisseurs. But for most people, it’s less relevant how apartment buildings’ exteriors look, and more important that apartments inside are modern, hygienic and with enough space and light (as well as access to local amenities, public transport options, etc).
To increase living standards, one of the main ways is to have an increase in supply of new housing, that can hopefully be afforded by more average income people.
More repetitive and unexciting buildings, are cheaper. Therefore, I will be devil’s advocate, and say that repetition and high density can be a positive thing, (at least in a competitive market), if it can make accessible new housing to a larger segment of the public (other things equal).
In Baku they had tried to copy various facades of 19th century Paris, around the place in kind of random, incompetent ways (with air conditioning units still attached to some facades).
But considering Baku’s popularity now with tourists – I guess it’s a success.
Speaking as someone who is rich and comes from a rich family, most of this is down to the fact that the same habits that make you rich are conducive to health and longevity. No one in my family has ever had cancer, diabetes, or coronary heart disease. Other two grandfathers with specific health issues (alcohlism, Lou Gherig’s disease) everyone is long lived.
Botox isn’t bad (Vladimir Putin is a user), but no substitute for a good skincare routine. Wash your face morning and night, use a toner, apply serums (especially hyaluronic acid), and moisturize. I’m approaching middle age and still have no wrinkles whatsoever.
The same reason we should stop people from spelling their kids’ names wrong. It’s a public good. And no one should have the right to be wrong.
We’re also much wealthier today. Housing in the 19th century was also better for many people than housing in the 17th century was for similar reasons.
Repetitive is fine if attractive and functional. Hausman’s Paris for instance is repetitive by design, yet very attractive and one of the world’s most desirable urban areas.
Attractive urbanism does not need to be expensive. Efficient use of space for instance is more economical than the current pattern of large amounts of mandatory parking and leaving lots of land around buildings unbuilt.
I gave Hausman’s Paris as an example because it’s well known and well done. Ideally every city should develop its own style and brand, but proceeding from Lindy-tested first principles such as the ones I noted in my previous post. The Old Town of Stockholm for instance is nothing like Hausman’s Paris, but widely recognized as one of the best examples of traditional urbanism in the whole world.
Well it’s no Prague but those buildings are not terrible by modern highrise standards. There is some styling and decoration on them. Definitely a lot better than plain raw concrete rectangles.
As for construction companies, I can assure you if we are good at our jobs we make money no matter how much the project costs, in fact we make more money on more expensive projects. It’s the real estate developers and/or owners who have to pay for it.
As for the people, there seem to be plenty like me who would rather keep Prague the way it is. They don’t allow any skyscrapers at all and even the new buildings have to be top notch to get approved, and you can’t tear down any of the old ones.
Even in Chicago we have gorgeous buildings from 50-100 years ago, they just don’t get built like that anymore, the attention to detail and the craftsmanship of the brickwork, the plaster work on the interiors, we don’t even have artisans who can do that anymore, it’s a lost skill. We’ve gotten richer as societies but it’s a shallow wealth. We have more stuff, but it is generally crappier and more tasteless stuff.
I can understand where cost savings is the issue at least why they do plain design. But even for artistic buildings the art style preference of the modern striver set has gone off the damn rails. Just look at the Obama presidential library he wants to build.
Or this. WTF kind of house is this?
http://neworleans.modernhometours.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/neworleans.jpg
Since this is an open thread you will all be happy to know my collar bone is healing well.
I stopped wearing a sling on Tuesday, barely more than a week after the accident.
Good news as I fly to India on Tuesday and do not want to appear as a gimp when there.
The night of the injury was truly disastrous. Perhaps a story for another time.
With a government committee of architects? It will add barrier to increasing housing supply, as less buildings approved. It also introduces additional possibility for bribery. End result will be likely to increase prices
Housing market – as most markets – can improve by increasing numbers of suppliers, ease of entry for them into the market, competition between them, and reducing unnecessary regulation for buyers and sellers.
Yes yes – but the style quite separate from the actual housing situation. And, ultimately (if we try to think objectively, which is in terms of having the largest number of people in some reasonable accomodation), a little secondary.
Sure, I don’t dislike Paris – but I can find many people who think Paris is beautiful.
So it becomes more interesting and rarified, for people who can admire the beauty of Tolyatti (I’m not on this spiritual level, but I’ve seriously read online strange people claiming it is the most beautiful city).
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/zdorovs/16627846/234791/234791_original.jpg
Constructors try to save money already – so we kind of know, what cost efficiency, while trying to still match revealed preferences of customers, is.
Most constructors, are saving money by standardized and high density buildings.
In America, interestingly, consumers have slightly different preferences, and you can see people are happy to live much further from cities, in exchange for larger space.
Just to show that it is actually still possible to build nice looking buildings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumarkt_%28Dresden%29
Built in 2005.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Dresden-Neumarkt-pano.jpg
And this thing, positively gothic, began in 1981 and projected to finish in 2050 in Thailand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_of_Truth
https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2143/2052076447_1b82f84b69_b.jpg
Also Thailand, 1997-2070 projected
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Rong_Khun
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Wat_Rong_Khun_-_Chiang_Rai.jpg
And for fun, here are some buildings in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world and built by freakin Yemenis, probably getting blown up by Saudi Arabia right now, but still putting most of our modern architects to shame.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Sana%2C_Yemen_%284324243257%29.jpg
Cost of labour was low, and number of craftsmen high.
Look at hand ornamentation, on 19th century wood houses. Now imagine how much it would cost today to go to a high-wage country like Switzerland, and hire the artisans to decorate this kind of house? Imagine building a city like this? (And yet in 19th century, cost of craftsmen was not even very remarked about).
http://www.magazindomov.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Ekaterinburg_wood-17.jpg
Prague is a preservation zone, as it has a lot of historically important architecture.
But for somewhere like Los Angeles? I don’t think there is much important historically architecture to preserve.
At least I think skyscrapers will start getting better soon, because it is possible now to make them thinner than before.
I guess you fall off a bicycle?
My brother broke that bone falling off a bicycle. I think he was complaining because you turn onto it when you are sleeping.
You are right it would be impossible to pay people to hand carve that stuff now, but you also don’t have to carve it by hand anymore. You can get that stuff prefabbed made out of PVC, shipped, and just nail it on. $10 per linear foot for fleur-d-lis scroll trim.
https://www.elitetrimworks.com/Victorian-Trims/
You just need someone with the taste and who takes the time to be designing/building your house. And you have to be willing to pay for it, obviously, but if you’re living there long term, it would probably only be a few grand invested.
It’s never going to be exactly the same as any of those unique hand carved projects, but you could do something similar.
LA – no it has no such architecture, but that is the point they are not building any either. They’ll never have historically significant architecture if they never build significant architecture. Which is the root of my complaints about contemporary architecture. It’s kinda crap.
You do what you got to do to solve housing problem.
How Singapore Fixed Its Housing Problem
https://youtu.be/2cjPgNBNeLU?t=1
Although I probably overstated that. There is some nice architecture in LA that will be historical at some point or already is by now.
Good stuff – have a safe and successful trip and back.
Peace.
Don’t forget to tell us about India when you get back.
Dmitry, since you seem to prefer an utilitarian approach, perhaps think of it this way:
Short-term it may be easier to house people but long-term (nearly) no one will care about these ugly buildings.
However if we build beautiful buildings there might be in short-term be potentially more difficulties but long-term people will appreciate the architecture for generations.
You want creativity and variety? Then empower, enrich and unleash your gypsies.
A wealthy gypsy village in Romania, no two mansions look the same:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tB46su_WjV8
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/11/article-2655054-1EAA4ED600000578-293_634x402.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BGYFB7/houses-of-the-rich-gypsies-from-buzescu-village-south-of-romania-BGYFB7.jpg
https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2014/3/11/2014311151639166465_8.jpg
https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DSC_4161.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/24/article-2106131-11E166A5000005DC-190_634x353.jpg
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2677063.main_image.jpg?strip=all
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/d1/4f/a2/d14fa2edeac02fee46d7f999f1f4a0b4–lutz-palace.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/04/26/10/338B647E00000578-3559115-image-a-57_1461664350636.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/weirdomatic/RzdZOgdeGTI/AAAAAAAAAEY/2LDUhDx-JPg/s800/buzescu4.JPG
http://www.stari.ro/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/palate_de_tigani_%20Buzescu_Teleorman_www.stari.ro_3.JPG
https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2014/3/11/2014311151638884738_8.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a5/42/65/a54265ab3adb16d469808804c1b05b34.jpg
https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2014/3/11/2014311151638712922_8.jpg
https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DSC_00991.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/58/af/dd/58afdd52efd7fab28b82bd37b3e6a458.jpg
http://adevarul.ro/assets/adevarul.ro/MRImage/2010/03/09/50a888387c42d5a6636fa189/646×404.jpg
You are right, clearly the solution is to grant more power to the Romani Mafia. It is nice to see that Indians manage to replicate the social conditions of their urheimat.
appear as a gimp
Code 1984 Sub-section 2018 violation, 1st warning.
I am not sure what the exact mechanism should be. I do know that in early modern Brussels no one could put up a building without first showing its facade to the council. My hometown, a gorgeous Gilded Age suburb full of beautiful robber baron mansions, has a similar rule. All new construction there is “New Traditional” and looks fantastic.
And as it is, even Houston requires you to get a permit to build. Ensuring that buildings have acceptable aesthetics and conform to proper urbanist principles does not seem terribly challenging.
See my previous suggestion about reinforced concrete.
Put up a reinforced concrete building with all opening as arches.
Spray texture and color onto it.
Make the roof “green” (a lawn, and usable).
Problem solved.
Tolyatti is on the right track, but still not as pretty as I’d want it to be.
I propose that the “rectangular” apartment blocks to be slightly taller (say, 30 stories each), not as wide (instead of being 300 m long, each block should be around 80 m long at most). The “square” ones should be taller, aiming for 50 stories. And of course, on the ground level facing the streets, it should be all retail and restaurants. There can also be some retail inside the complexes if you plan to service only the residents of the blocks (which is a big enough market already)
One thing that Asia does better than Europe is there’s far more retail, and the entire world should follow the Chinese model in urbanism, which is more or less what I just described 21st century Chinese, South Korean, and I believe Vietnamese urban planning.
21st century Russian and even post-Maidanist Ukrainian urban planning is probably as close as you can get to what I’m talking about outside of Asia.
I suggest you try to make small talk with the natives by using the conversational cues of Indians on this forum:
1.) Hindu genocide – be careful how you tailor this one to your audience of the moment. Maybe, you should drop feelers first, by making it an interrogative. If they ask, “Is it time?” Answer, “The time is not quite yet”, and get the hell out of there!
2.) If you see any Sikhs, ask what weapons they favor. Then berate them on their poor choices and if they don’t tithe on machine guns.
3.) Tell them that, despite all the evidence, you know that the Proto-Indo-European homeland is really the Ganges, and it was really the ancient Indians who conquered Europe.
4.) Please update us on the toilet situation, by asking around.
BTW, make sure you don’t eat any hamburgers.
Thorfinnsson is right, wrongism should not be tolerated.
Oh, I don’t know… some aspects of Chinese cities are rather nice. For instance, they remind one a little about what cities in the West were like before the blacks moved in.
The Bulgarian Аgency of Еmployment just released data about the foreigners employed at our seaside resorts during the summer – out of 6500 total foreigners employed, 5500 were Ukrainians, LOL.
From now on I will have to plan my vacations more carefully. I would never want to tip a fucking Ukrainian, or have my food cooked by one.
I know one of them. Sweet, hard-working girl from Lugansk (her family lives in the separatist area). If memory serves, her employer, a hotel chain, actively searched Ukraine for cheap labor, so you have a hand in this yourself.
Sounds like a Russian.
By the way the labor at the seaside generally ain’t cheap, the salaries are decent there.
Still, it was funny to me how overrepresented Ukrainians are (out of the rest 1000, there were 151 guys from Kyrgyztan for whatever reason, 107 from Russia, 97 from Macedonia and 675 from Moldova). Obviously some of them are only Ukrainian by citizenship, there are Russians and also some Bulgarians, though the latter usually look for long term opportunities to move here – I helped several such Bulgarians settling here myself.
They are pretty cute with their Russian accents.
The oppression of the sizable Bulgarian minority in Ukraine is a big reason for my burning hatred of that “country” – I seriously considered going to Donbass as a volunteer at one point.
They are forcefully conscripted in the Ukrainian army to fight Russians, there was this local community leader thrown into a trash bin by local ukro-untermensch for answering the question “Who does Crimea belong to?” with “It belongs to the people in Crimea”, etc.
Did you know that thin skyscrapers seriously sway in the wind? The floor under your feet is rocking, the furniture is creaking, the scenery beyond the windows goes back and forth, back and forth. If you are susceptible to sea sickness you will get it.
But the good thing about thin skyscrapers is a great ratio of window offices to the overall floor space.
To make a point about how horrible American suburbs are, they always show the birds eye view. Because down on the human level they look fine.
But it looks awesome on the inside.
https://payload78.cargocollective.com/1/3/113045/3878815/31%20012_800.jpg
It’s actually healthy!
The Thai and Yemeni buildings reminded me of this beauty being built in the New York’s Hudson Valley.
https://cdn.cosm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Entheon-Front-large-1024×731.jpg
Being born to a rich family?
Hillarious stat I found on twitter. One of these crappy, third-world countries applying for US diversity visa is not like the others:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl_FXIuUwAMreQ3.jpg
sizable Bulgarian minority in Ukraine
That’s what’s so interesting about this blog, you learn something new every day. I looked it up in Wiki and was surprised to discover that there have been 3 Bulgarian prime ministers and one Moldovan PM who were “Ukrainians”.
In terms of population, Tolyatti is of course a major city.
But economically, it is a monocity, with only a single industry. As a result, economic situation of Tolyatti has a joke since the 1990s, and you have, apparently, real fossilation of 1960s and 1970s architecture.
To compare to China – you need to compare to an economically booming city like Ekaterinburg.
And here, new construction can be on the same scale as in China.
For example, new academic district of Ekaterinburg.
There were no people living here in 2007. By 2026, they expect to build enough modern, middle class housing for 325,000 people
http://pravdaurfo.ru/sites/default/files/akadem_0.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/rJZ5e1G.jpg?1
https://cs.pikabu.ru/images/big_size_comm/2013-07_4/13742293134941.jpg
Sure. How many fat rich people do you see these days? How about entire families of fat people?
Amassing (or even keeping) wealth usually requires good genes. The same is true of longevity. So simply a lack of deleterious mutations might be the root cause of both.
So far reportedly successful, apart from the parking.
Buyers didn’t want to buy underground parking, so there are now too many onstreet cars parked on the sidewalks. (I wonder how the Chinese would solve this – making overground parking illegal).
Beautiful. Keep up the good work!
This, is what’s needed to keep neoliberalism.txt in check. It can’t fester in these environments.
You appear to be a troll. But there’s still a chance, however slim, that you are simply that dumb.
Health and wealth are quite similar. They require intelligence and discipline. Aside from the good genes you get from rich parents (usually), you grow up in a social environment where good habits are promoted rigorously (relatively speaking) and get introduced to other successful people. I was shocked when I discovered how proles actually live.
Though one major difference is most people start out with good health. Starting out with wealth is less common.
There’s some luck involved in that there’s a very large amount of very bad information out there about both topics. Many intelligent people succumb to bad propaganda and thus fail to acquire health or wealth.
Vegetarianism and chronic cardio come to mind for health.
Doomerism for wealth. A lot of fools on this site (generally not in Karlin’s blog fortunately) have very, very bad ideas about money and are poor because of it. Don’t buy stocks because The Jews. “Invest” in gold, silver, crypto, etc…
I’d say the biggest flaw most people, including intelligent people with high incomes, is spending up to the limit of their incomes or at least close to it. Not too different from the failure most people have in controlling their diets.
I’m not a fan of this, at all. But crazy building – it’s nothing special about Romania.
You can see crazier buildings in Kazan.
There are a lot of people who find this architecture beautiful. Not the old buildings in Tolyatti. But the new academic district of Ekaterinburg is popular.
Obviously this car parking situation is a joke. They also promised a new high speed tramway to the center, which is not delivered.
But the area has clean air and lots of parks.
2 million rubles, for a small 1-bedroom apartment.
The only way to produce modern and new accommodation, in prices affordable for ordinary people – is this kind of mass construction.
Not really. Lower cost of this new construction, has a lot to do with the free market and competition for housing sales.
The colorful, crowded, flamboyant, heterogeneous gypsy taste in architecture, art, decorations, clothing, jewelry etc makes one wonder whether it was the gypsies who were behind the Baroque Movement. There is nothing intrinsically European about the Baroque sensibility. It is an anomaly.
Bohemian gypsy tents:
http://kohsamui.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/bohemian-gypsy-den.jpg
Gypsy caravans:
http://cabinobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ofeature.jpg
https://cdn6.dissolve.com/p/D1024_93_180/D1024_93_180_1200.jpg
Gypsy wedding dress:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/58/02/2b58023e21eb857e3569e840fcd93f9c.jpg
http://alumtalks.org/wp-content/uploads/American-gypsy-wedding-dresses-1.jpg
Gypsy Decor:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Nyi4Vy2F4Ks/UPDZ4JRvurI/AAAAAAAAZL4/D-QIxCup04E/s640/79938962107715150_mWEkBLzm_c.jpg
http://www.dowsiowa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/gypsy-decoration-girls-bedrooms-design-2-gypsy-home-decor.jpg
http://www.whitehouse51.com/pic/3.bp.blogspot.com/-SpTpNyfU-Fg/VGzdg6fRe-I/AAAAAAAA1yE/NTzfxXLIaPE/s1600/11a9e6cda53f03a60b0231e724615872.jpg
Gypsy jewelry:
http://www.gypsyhandmade.com/wp-content/themes/gypsy_theme/images/home-muze.jpg
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0591/2653/products/product-image-59211189_large.jpg?v=1492113216
https://cdnimages.opentip.com/full/AQDH/AQDH-DF10910.jpg
When you see crazy black tramps wandering around muttering to themselves under their breaths, I imagine that ‘the gypsies were behind the Baroque movement’ is the sort of thing they are saying.
Did Gypsies have any taste in architecture? How would we know if they never built anything. More recently some Gypsy barons are building mansions in Rumania and other Balkan countries from money that Gypsy immigrants ‘earn’ in the West. But historically they ‘invested’ money in clothing, jewelry and cars. No different than the inner city Blacks in the US.
Thanks, interesting observations.
I join the people who say AquariusAnon has really bad taste.
The buildings he admires are called muraveiniki (“antheaps”) – massive, gray concrete monoliths on flat, gray plains criss-crossed with asphalt and more concrete on the far outskirts of Moscow. The metro doesn’t tend to stretch this far, so commuting to the city requires lengthy bus or car trips on Moscow’s overly congested roads, which are that way thanks in large part to failures of city planning (the city only has one major center, whereas Singapore – a much better planned city – has five).
While I am not a fan of khrushchevki either, they do have their charms. At least they’re better than muraveiniki, anyway. Although they’re bottom tier housing stock, the districts that contain them do tend to have a certain verdant vibrancy to them. They are walkable, they have plenty of greenery, and ecosystems of shops, schools, and other services have long evolved around them.
Here is the view from one of them in winter and summer:
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/moscow-snow.jpg
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/moscow-summer.jpg
Not entirely dreary, even if entirely incomparable to the historic center.
You can buy a new one room apartment in some new districts, for the same price as a Toyota Camry.
So could laugh about these anthills, and the cattle who buy in them.
But it’s a success story from the view of living standards. A lot of buyers are happy and excited with their new apartments.
For example, academic district about 6 kilometers from the Ekaterinburg center. Perhaps you would kill yourself from boredom, if you lived there. But, it’s a peaceful area, and the new apartments are sold from the price of a Toyota Camry.
People of New York, will buy Italian fridges that cost more than these entire apartments. Actually people buy an oven from some French manufacturers, that cost more than a new 3 bedroom apartment here. .
If average salaries in Russia were those of America or Germany – then producing this housing would be inappropriate, but neither would it occur like this.
This housing is matching what customers can afford, and is an example of allocative efficiency, and is produced and sold at prices which is reflecting a competitive market. Trade-offs of the projects, confirms quite well to typical priorities of the consumers (to extent developer will succeed in selling his apartments).
It depends on your time-preference, and all very disputable and will vary across cultures and people.
For example, you might have metaphysical views, that make it sensible to spend your money sooner than later. For example, disbelief in continuity of personal identity across time, or belief that personal identity at least changes across time, will induce to you spending your money as soon as you can (so you can enjoy it, before you become a different person).
Or you may have a particularly minimax strategy in risk aversion in relation to your money. If you spend your money before the end of the month, you avoid the worse case scenario that you die with any of your money unspent. (Such view also suggests that it is a good idea to borrow money and have loans as well).
There are also ethical and aesthetic views. Aesthetically, a person may prefer the image of a man spending everything they have (for me, this seems more aesthetically attractive). But another person, may derive some “moral” enjoyment from punishing themselves and living like the Spartans, and use their savings as a excuse for this.
And there are issues of which country you live in, and what is the possibility of inflation there. (There’s a reason Argentines like to spend their money at the beginning of each month).
Or if it is in Los Angeles (cool architecture), it’s mostly often hidden from public eyes e.g. behind some high hedges in Bel Air where there are not even continuous sidewalks.
LA has some disadvantages (certainly for tourists) of having almost everything cool in the private sphere, and placed in car-distances from each other.
You’re ascribing far too much rationality to this. Most people are simply undisciplined broke losers.
Now if it’s a choice between saving 25% of your income versus 75%, then this time preference calculation is perhaps valid. But if you can’t handle a $400 “emergency” without resort to credit (which is the case with a majority of Americans), you’re simply an idiot.
Country specific issues are of course valid. We Americans are spoiled here in that we have the world’s best financial markets.
What do you Russians invest in?
I have been driven around in a late model, early 2000’s. Volga when Feripaska was trying to revive the brand. Feripaska worked closely with Rover in the UK.. He tried to buy it when it went under but had no cash. He took over a lot of engineers and managers. When they went to the former Austin plant in Nizhny Novgorod where the Volgas were made, the older ones recognisized some of the paperwork used. Anyway, the final models used a lot of British parts such as the Rover 2.0 l diesel engine. Rather like Rover, the final product was quite decent but too little too late.
My ride was with government officials. Getting a Volga with a driver meant yoor career had made notable progress.
Lol, my next “investments” – is probably going to buy an Xbox One X.
I try to spend money each month, but generally my free time away from work-computer – excluding procrastination – is limited, so money naturally saves in the bank, and can only spend during holidays.
I don’t qualify for residency yet – so buying car/property will not be for this moment. Btw, what cars do you like?
The zPoles on the Sony production line in Bridgend, where my son spent time last summer, live to work. They volunteer for the tough shifts and they do all the overtime that they can get. They live four men or more to a house. They are already mareied, in their 20’s. They are here to pile up the money and then go back to their wives. The relative cost of housing is enormous in the UK. UK money in Poland buys a palace.
Perhaps you can become a landlord in the future given how moribund your country’s stock market is.
I drive a Holden Commodore HSV. Known as the Chevrolet SS in America. Large sedan designed to be similar to the E39 M5 with a 400+ horsepower V-8 engine. Wonderful automobile and Australia’s greatest ever achievement.
I am currently looking to acquire a Honda S2000 as a dedicated track car.
Also have a 2004 Ford Explorer (very solid SUV, currently in use by my intern) and 2010 Ford F-250 (gasoline as I hate the smell of diesel).
I am generally not very fond of cars from this century.
I find most things built after 1949 to be disappointing. And shoddy construction/maintenance doesn’t help.
Now, to be fair, some mid-sized towns can be quite clean and orderly.
But overall, I think it is indicative of something that the areas I have been to with (pseudo-)European architecture are popular and expensive areas used for things like shopping and tourism.
Very gypsy-like.
Well you like Honda so your taste is not 100% bad
I’m not going to drive a car, or to get into problems with traffic police, until I get a residency in 3 years.
But my cliche dreams for the future – something like a type R (not a very original taste so far).
And well, you’ll need to beat this down sindrom patient for his flowchart at 2:00
https://youtu.be/xulcJqSaK-k?t=1m59s
I checked the wiki, they even missed one – Sergei Stanishev, he was prime minister and is currently the president of PES (the EU socialist party). His mother is an Ukrainian jew.
I don’t qualify for residency yet – so buying car/property will not be for this moment.
So you are definitively abandoning the mother country?
The German riots were the work of Putin:
http://observer.com/2018/08/is-vladimir-putin-behind-right-wing-riots-in-chemnitz-germany/
It’s getting overly Stalinist, where any problems are blamed on wreckers in the service of fascist foreign intelligence services.
I get it. Poles are basically Tajiks.
She is, yes. And studied tourism at university, so she isn’t some peon.
I don’t know about the Bulgarian minority, but I’m convinced that a big part of why Maidanite Ukraine hasn’t crumbled yet is that ethnic Russians and Russian speakers aren’t truly discriminated against. This is why you can have Russian-speaking ethnic Russians in the Azov Battalion bragging about killing Russians, and this is why you can have Russian-speaking ethnic Russians — I have met such people myself — say that they wouldn’t dream of ever setting foot in Russia. If you consider that a good few Ukrainians are part or fully ethnic Russian and that all major city centers outside of Lviv are basically monolingually Russian, this makes sense. You can’t really pursue an ethnochauvinist path in such circumstances.
I suppose this invites the question of what Ukrainian nationalism is. My sense is that its heart is geography and a sense of shared suffering (in the present and over the centuries); at its worst, it’s also racism and revanchism, but this is true of most any nationalism.
Lol. You are responding to a post with numerous examples of gypsy taste in architecture.
Your obsession with race has made an idiot in denial out of you.
I think Antoun Saadeh and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party were the ones to take geographical nationalism to its fullest extent.
I broke a rib Sunday which has delayed my graduation from cardiac rehab back to full scale gym. I was cheating and running. Good luck with the recovery period.
Hubris always gets you. I told my son that I hadn’t felt better for decades then went outside and fell backwards onto a lawn mower. I have cancelled my planned trip to Russia. Good luck with India. Trust no one. Get it in writing, yours and still don’t trust anyone. Lawyers won’t help to recover losses. It’s India.
My Great Grandfather and his brothers made their fortunes in Chicago building double curved staircases, every piece on each side was unique. Originally for Sears Roebuck then for the local wealthy. They made enough to come home.
I had a look around a development in Lyubertsky. Tiny flats for such a harsh commute into Moscow. It was 15 minutes by congested bus to the electric train station on a line with unexceptional connections to the metro.
Maria Butina has a defense fund: MariaButinaFund.com maybe you should contact her attorney Robart Driscoll https://www.mcglinchey.com/robert-driscoll/ for an interview.