SovietMen

Welcome to this week’s roundup of interesting things from around the traps.

What to Ask Yourself Before you Start Caring

In my teens and early 20s I cared about a lot of stuff. I’d scroll the news, find something worthy of outrage, and turn to someone nearby to say “You see this?? Mitt Romney’s really done it now!”. The bus driver would then nod politely and gesture for me to take a seat. Frankly, it was a time of much tutting and reacting with not a lot to show for it…

…cutthroat realism might sound like you’re throwing your hands up and letting the world walk all over you – but in reality it does the opposite. Most people that care about everything do nothing. They get riled up and outraged about the new hot topic, before forgetting about it and ranting about the next. There’s no strategy to their action because they’re always having their attention pulled in every which way. They can’t focus on anything long enough for them to gain any sort of traction. It’s all just Facebook statuses and tense family dinners.

The Decline of Deviance: Where has all the weirdness gone?

This week’s roundup of interesting things from around the traps

People Listen to Public Health Authorities

In one sense, this is heartening: we are finally turning a corner on peanut allergy! In another, it’s alarming. People can be convinced to follow correct advice, but they’ll also gladly follow advice that’s unfounded and incorrect if it seems to have authority behind it. We know this is definitely true for nutrition, where people will follow advice even when it likely does nothing but waste money.

Related: Everything you know is wrong

My gripe is that governments and experts seem to go off half-cocked in around 80% of cases. The only advice that’s held up well over the last 50 years is to do some exercise and eat your veggies.

If you’re going to engage in any public health interventions that will change how millions of people live, you’d better be sure.

Can We Arrest Fox News Hosts for Disinformation? Here’s What the Law Actually Allows

Today in history, January 15: Australia’s London Bridge fell down

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report

The creators should avoid wrapping absurd stories under the guise of realism and using absurd artistic techniques as an excuse to fabricate overly bizarre plots that lack genuine value, Guangdianshijie said, as such practices could distort the public’s perception of Chinese entrepreneurs and harm the profile of the entrepreneurial community.

The guidelines said creators should tell the stories of Chinese entrepreneurs from both history and contemporary times, rather than being limited to themes of romantic entanglements and family disputes, noting that in particular, creators should avoid promoting marriage concepts that clinging to the powerful, wealthy individuals and families.

The guidelines pointed out that management of CEO romance micro dramas should be strengthened. Specific measures include reducing the quantity, improving the quality, and avoiding the use of terms like “domineering CEO” as appealing titles to attract viewers.

Are ‘domineered CEOs’ like their minataurs?

By the way, are your beloved women also watching those AI-generated short dramas now?

Rule of the Five Percent

Also new coffee poured, p-hacking ignored, a bird that soared, Crooks’ social media ignored and utilitarianism is a fraud. *Examines fingernails

The Nobel Prize goes to… war on Venezuela

The Nobel Committee has decided to make the case for Trump’s war on Venezuela, giving its “Peace Prize” to Maria Corina Machado, a US government-funded regime change activist who’s helped lead several failed coups, violent street riots that have left scores dead, and appears to have promised her country’s oil and mineral wealth to a consortium of MAGA aligned billionaires in exchange for financing her campaign of political arsonism.

Hailed by the Nobel Committee for supposedly attempting to achieve “a peaceful transition” in her country, Machado has personally appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a military invasion of Venezuela.

Trump Threatens “Hell to Pay” in Honduras If Presidential Election Results Change

374 bagpipers play AC/DC song together to break world record

An event in Australia saw an ensemble of 374 bagpipers playing “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)” by AC/DC and breaking a world record in the process.

The Great Melbourne Bagpipe Bash in Victoria gathered 374 players to perform the song at Federation Square, just a few blocks from where the music video for the Australian rock band’s original version was filmed in 1976.

Melbourne teen, 13, involved in alleged attempted carjacking has seven charges dropped because of his age

The Great Feminization

The most relevant differences are not about individuals but about groups. In my experience, individuals are unique and you come across outliers who defy stereotypes every day, but groups of men and women display consistent differences. Which makes sense, if you think about it statistically. A random woman might be taller than a random man, but a group of ten random women is very unlikely to have an average height greater than that of a group of ten men. The larger the group of people, the more likely it is to conform to statistical averages.

Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism or negative sentiment, if it absolutely must be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments. The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it. The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies….

The point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes, but it works only if peace is restored after the dispute is settled. Men therefore developed methods for reconciling with opponents and learning to live in peace with people they were fighting yesterday. Females, even in primate species, are slower to reconcile than males. That is because women’s conflicts were traditionally within the tribe over scarce resources, to be resolved not by open conflict but by covert competition with rivals, with no clear terminus…

The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tug at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic. 

Why aren’t we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?

What’s Worse?

I was chatting with my sister the other day, catching up, and she said something funny that resonated. “At least you’ve been through the worst, cancer. I said cancer wasn’t the worst thing, For me, divorce was far, far worse…

With Cancer, for me, there was an end, one way or another, and a path back to how I was before or somewhere better. I had hope, love, and support.

With Divorce, the damage is far wider and irreparable. There is zero way back. Learning to let go helps, but the path forward is rocky and uncertain. It’s a road you walk alone for the most part.

Hyper-Low American Church Aesthetics

Left Vs Right As Bickering Backseat Kids

And like bickering couples and backseat kids, stuck together in a society but eager to takedown their rival, left and right have been getting very good at figuring out what will bother the other side, especially the more numerous and powerful moderates on the other side. People often try to model left and right as having essential ideologies expressed in terms of what their policies try to achieve in the world. But it seems to me that they are better modeled as trying to achieve various random ally agendas, and trying more systematically to poke at whatever will most bother their rival, to induce from them what will seem to outsiders as unreasonable over-reactions.

Climatism as an oligarchic strategy to cement power and preempt rivals

Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August under the guise of a summertime Hamptons lunch. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.

When his hosts presented him with a detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel, Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. At one point, according to another source, Ackman angrily chastised Kirk for his disobedience…

Multiple sources including a Trump administration official have revealed to The Grayzone that Kirk personally visited Trump inside the White House to lobby him against attacking Iran. Trump “roared” at Kirk, one said, and shut down the conversation.

Don’t Be the Guy