Each to his own. I can enjoy movies but they kind of overstimulate me and leave me feeling flat afterwards. And I also feel that I've watched enough to get the major narratives. I generally don't feel I'm being edified if you know what I mean. However, I could also be missing out just due to my brain not being able to digest them properly or something. Who knows...

Considering the extreme statistical unlikelihood that asking someone out or having sex will land a well-meaning commonsensical person in trouble, this is a bit like telling people to emigrate to a country with no roads so they won't get knocked down. Better advice would be "look left and right before you step on the tarmac". I mean, consider the likely hundreds of millions of people having sex just today in Western countries, how many of them do you think are going to end up in prison?

I had thought you were using hyperbole as a rhetorical device to criticize PC in Western countries or some such, which could be a starting point for a sensible critique, but taking this literally it just fails at the first hurdle for anyone with even minimum social skills and understanding of the opposite sex.

Much I agree with but

what you describe as "a special connection between artist and world", is better described as the artist's understanding of the connection between the audience and the world. What a good artist knows, is how to present (give) the world to the audience. That is why true art is best known as an act of unconditional love. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here there's the possibility of a descent into a kind of degenerative recursiveness, the artist viewing their relationship with their subject matter through the eyes of their audience viewing the artist's relationship with their subject matter etc, a kind of hall of mirrors effect that distances the artist from the source of their art. I have had this problem with certain media, e.g. photography. In a way I know too much (in the abstract) about how a particular form of photographic art is successfully presented to an audience and that tends to cripple my photographic attempts at art. I don't tend to have such problems with writing.

In my mind, the solution is that for this type of "knowing" to work it should be purely intuitive and incidental rather than purposeful and deliberative. Not only then is the stain of self-consciousness avoided but that of manipulation. I can take a type of photo that works in the abstract and hate it because it feels overpurposed and inauthentic. I can also take a type of photo that is more original and hate it because it doesn't work in the abstract. But I think I prefer the latter sin, which reveals a deficiency rather than masks it.

Got it. Well, polymarket has flipped Dem again, so I guess the RFK bump has been fleeting.

Yes, there was just the right combination of mystery, joy, wonder, and menace in Wilder. Depp didn't have a hope. It's like trying to repaint the Mona Lisa. He didn't even look right. He ended up somewhere between Edward Scissor's Hands and the Addams family.

If you need your spouse to provide for you, it is your job to make sure that he voluntarily wants to keep doing that. — Tarskian

(My bolding). Back to sexism again.

Muslim men are willing to risk their lives and die for what they believe in. Western men are not. — Tarskian

(My bolding) But according to your own story, you advocate running away rather than risking anything. That's the whole point of this thread as you've described things.

It's starting to unravel into incoherency and self-contradiction anyhow.

I don't agree that a pure medium can provide coherency where none comes from the artist's connection with their subject matter. Incoherency in that respect to me must always be only apparent incoherency if it's to remain art. Otherwise,there's no way to distinguish random sounds from art. And there's no boundary between just noise and music. Art to me is what results from a special connection between artist and world that the listener, reader, viewer etc can access through a given medium. But the connection is the origin of the art not the medium.

Monkey-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come. — 180 Proof

Really?

What you advocate, on the other hand, creates a perverse incentive structure that will rather sooner than later destroy western society. It is exactly the most vulnerable people who will suffer the most from such societal collapse. — Tarskian

Generalising from @Benkei's earlier point: If social collapse happens, it will be due to laws not adequately protecting the economically weak but allowing for their exploitation by the rich. At a macro scale, this can relate to tax policy, or at a more micro scale, family law, where partners who sacrifice more in a relationship are never compensated or if parents are not legally obliged to financially support their children.

So, the situation is the opposite to how you present it. You appear to be financially self-sufficient but seem to feel that, to maintain social stability, people like you are the ones who should be protected more than the vulnerable, such as children who aren't being supported by their fathers, or mothers who can't afford child care so they can go out and work. You are not presenting any kind of a moral theory but a purely self-interested strategy.

The same decision that may be a non-issue in one jurisdiction will result in a lengthy prison sentence in another jurisdiction. That is why jurisdiction shopping is such an important tool. — Tarskian

What exactly are you afraid you will be imprisoned for? I've lived in Western countries and not only never heard of anyone going to prison for a dating misunderstanding, I've never heard anyone even talk about anyone they know having that issue. Maybe you should look at the statistics. Or just consider using common sense. Your "fears" seem overblown.

That is the number one reason why Islam is now gradually but surely taking over Europe. — Tarskian

Is all of this just a roundabout way of saying Islamic countries are better than Western countries?

... Like you can read the play versions of the stuff I posted, but the Dahl book cannot substitute for e.g. the brilliance of Gene Wilder. And 99.9% of visual entertainment is trash.

Does "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" count? — T Clark

Original 70s version only. Probably the only thing worth watching mentioned on this entire thread.

I hate the facebooky type meme posts and twitter links too, even in the lounge. Hard to escape all that tho'.

Hating the country where you live is dumb. — javi2541997

Can we leave the guy alone now? It seems like he was just trying to be honest.

Thailand is awfully motonormative from two perspectives. One is that cars don't stop for pedestrians even at pedestrian crossings and the other is that cities are built for cars. E.g. In order to get to work just across the road in Bangkok, I have to first walk half a mile to get to a bridge to cross the road (there is no other way). Other cities are similarly defaced to the point where you'll be strolling around and then find yourself out of pavement and nothing to do but a major track back or risk life and limb by walking on a road with car traffic at your back and motorbikes riding at you contraflow. Forget about little green men helping, they might as well be aliens pointing you to your death. In Thailand, cars freely turn left through red lights and pedestrian go signals. My point is you can take all your "horror" stories from London or Auckland or Moscow or wherever and chuck them under an oncoming truck. They do not compare to the motorised dystopia over here. That, yes, just seems to be taken for granted by the locals.

Just finished a biography of David Foster Wallace "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" by D.T. Max. Sad and compelling.

Being Irish, I'm definitely not happy with him representing one of our major news outlets as a purveyor of racist trash, but I'll listen to any attempt at an explanation in any case.

I didn't realize that the jpeg was from a different article or website. — Leontiskos

I'm guessing you weren't supposed to seeing as Lionino is still insisting he only posted something from a "mainstream journal".

The article linked is unobjectionable because it is from the Irish Independent. The headline jpeg is from a right wing news site funded by neofascists and the headline "The Great Replacement" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement is a racist conspiracy theory.

Lionino masked the racist jpeg with a link to a different article.

Edit: Cross-posted

OK, well, I can't say I quite get what you're at but if it's not the usual "blame women for men's woes" schtick we periodically get here, it's not a problem.

Hm, sounds like you're having a hissy fit because you were just warned for posting a racist conspiracy theory headline. Yes, you will be banned for more of that but you can go before if you like. If you think you're the paragon of seriousness we should emulate, I really don't know what to say given your posting history.

it is about the fact that they are using the picture of a female model while the cross-dresser in question is this person: — Lionino

I did see that. It's a cock up on one tweet. So what?

Of course mate, I am the one who is intellectually unserious LOL not the tens of people on this website paddling pseudoscience. Maybe focus on that. — Lionino

OK, name just five of these "tens of people" and I'll go deal with them.

I did not mention the gender of the "someone" getting paid cash and prizes — Tarskian

I think I can guess the gender of the Passport Bros' nemeses.

The solution is: no civil marriage, no cohabitation, no children, and preferably no sex (both in China and) in the West. That avoids serious legal problems for both men and women. That is why this lifestyle policy is clearly in everybody's best interest. — Tarskian

Until there are no people left in one generation.

:party:

Appreciate this. :pray: I've been planning to get back into Sartre.

If someone gets paid cash and prizes for blowing up the relationship, that is exactly what they are going to be doing. — Tarskian

Indeed, the thesis is:

based on the idea that women are evil and aim ...to torture men emotionally and take their money. — Baden

Your view is stupid and superficial. And keep a lid on the misogyny.

This all seems based on the idea that women are evil and aim to get pregnant so they can torture men emotionally and take their money. And men that don't leave their "Western" country are naive victims of a system rigged against them. And you're a hero because poor farmers want to give you their daughters. Or something. All very broish and immature so far.

You will just end up paying child support for children that you will barely see — Tarskian

Not if you don't screw up your relationship.

. I do not understand why anybody still takes that risk. — Tarskian

Maybe they have faith in their ability not to screw up their relationship.

That's cool. I don't know much about the theory of surrealism, but I dig some of the art. And I think I understand Dali's watches, but why the elephants have super-long legs is beyond me, frankly. :smile:

Yes, that's where I thought you were coming from. But given just the silly name for a start, the "Passport Bro"s don't sound like a movement any intelligent person would want to be associated with. I don't like living in Western countries either but it's because I find them generally stifling and over-expensive. The idea that I'm somehow legally safer in less developed more corrupt jurisdictions makes no sense to me except from the very narrow angle of "family law" you seem concerned with. That's why I'm saying just come out and deal with that instead of mixing it up with other stuff.

Looks like the libertarians won't be flocking to Trump considering how RFK shat on them for some as yet unrevealed promise from the Orangeutan. I doubt they'll go Dem either though.

Your concern is that some woman you committed yourself to will take your money or you will have to support any children you have rather than be able to shag some farmer's daughter in outer Mongolia and just move on to the next jurisdiction where you have more money than the locals when things get complicated, right?

Because that's a rather narrow view of "avoiding legal issues". You may find that an absence of strictly enforceable / codified law in farmers-daughter-rich hinterlands could lead to you getting arrested just for looking the wrong way at a bigwig or to having to fork out a massive bribe after being tempted into a compromising situation caused by your patronising complacency.

You'd be better off talking directly about your problem with "the West", i.e. family law, than coming at it from this odd self-defeating angle.

Life dwells in that open space between facts — frank

Nicely put. :smile:

It's all about avoiding court cases.

I simply don't want them. — Tarskian

But who cares what you want?

You haven't made any coherent argument that living in the "West" is a relative legal risk in general.

Good question... The facticity of something would be its features (set of facts) in context.

"Facticity' refers to the inherent features of entities in the world that are shared with others, such as objects, concepts, and experiences, shaping an individual's understanding and interactions within a public, shared world."

So, the facticity of a watch, from this perspective, is a combination of its material reality and what it represents socially and symbolically. One fact about it is it's a symbol for time. But the set of physical facts about it, that aspect of its "facticity" is not directly related to the concept of time. So in a way its facticity is less unified from a regular perspective than an artistic one that uses time metaphors to warp its physical characteristics.

Edit: So the surreal can be the more (psychologically) real and the "real" real relatively deficient.

As well as being representations of ideas, can't they also be a 'fiction' in that they are dynamic and depending on cultural elements and imagination? — Amity

Absolutely. :up:

As a passing thought, I like the reference to surrealism. The facticity of things at one level can obscure the fact of them at another. A clock or watch finds itself a symbol for the abstract concept of time, but materially it's a construction dependent on material and spatial contingencies and only arbitrarily related to its symbol. The fact of time is then both represented and obscured by its concrete symbolization. Art can bring these things together by deconstructing the concrete facticity in a way that frees the symbolic within. E.g. Dali's surrealist representations of clocks and watches as flowing and ubiquitous allow the symbolic to "leak through" the concrete, unifying both into a greater whole that's psychologically enriching.

Them doing something about / commenting on an issue you consider trivial (transgender rights) is not evidence that they do nothing about things almost everyone would consider important.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/

Your childish smear though is evidence of your lack of intellectual seriousness, something which, oddly, you don't realize you are putting on full display with posts like this. Maybe focus on that.

Absolutely. I think I've made clear before there are no morals to be found on any side. I can understand Americans having practical reasons to prefer one over the other though.

Just another slimy politician doing what’s best for himself. — praxis

Probably the worst thing about him is the fusion of antisemitism (e.g. his veiled suggestion that the Jews and Chinese got together to launch COVID), his staunch support for Israel's war on Gaza, and a central pillar of his platform being that he's anti-war. The hypocrisy / opportunism combo there is audacious even for an American politician.

It's a betting market, so it's sentiment based. I think Harris will still win but just barely.