By your own account, you don't know anything about it. So how would you know what I know about it?

Either you are ignorant or you are not. Which is it?

. So what is the truth of it? I have no idea — Book273

So why don't you shut up about it?

You're welcome. What I wrote here is influenced by her.

Yes. The US can be a tough place.

I would not blame their brains. I would point to the societal forces feeding them this kind of morality. It is the story of our age. — Tobias

Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan has written about this:
https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/13510/the-right-to-sex-how-amia-srinivasan-wrote-the-most-divisive-book-of-2021

I would look to a sociological explanation. Sexuality, like many other walks of life have become gamified, framed as competition and considered markers of success. The current anxiety around sexuality is not very different from the anxiety around having the best education, the highest grades, the best most earning job etc. The law of competition is a man made law, not a given — Tobias

Yes, but that's pretty much how Houellebecq phrases it. He would agree with all that.

It would only work when there is some objective criterion for attraction and only on the assumption everyone wants the same thing screw around as much as possible. — Tobias

Isn't this precisely the problem? Incels totally internalize the gaming pressure AND the rules saying which kinda girl/boy is popular and hence likeable by all, and which type of girls/boys is NOT popular hence NOT likeable by all. There's such a thing as a 'canon of beauty', everywhere, but they sacralized it. They carved it into the bloody stone that their brain is made of.

The theme is rather current. We have turned sexuality into a means of oppression and the vice of this oppression gives rise to violence. Even J.J. Martin argue that Game of Thrones was built around this theme. — Tobias

I agree and want to congratulate @EugeneW for bringing it up. The incels do tend to turn their sexual frustration into violence. Now, sexual violence is nothing new, but to murder women out of sexual frustration is NOT something we've seen in the past. It is new, historically, a deeply troubling development. It's a new level of perversion.

Another 'theory' is that of Michel Houellebecq in his Elementary Particles: sexual liberation during the 60's and 70's led to high sexual competition between males, and between females, with the most attractive people screwing all their content and less attractive folks living in eternel sexual misery. Freedom leads to inequality between the haves and the haves not, now applied to sex as well.

The tittle of Houellebecq's first book is also about that: Extension of the Competitive Domain ie an extension of competition from the sphere of production and consumption (under capitalism) into the sphere of reproduction. Like an extension of capitalism to sex.

This theory works well. It explains the nostalgia for some idealised past when young folks were only trying to find a mate for life, and when therefore, while the attractive ones would be taken by similarly attractive persons of the other sex, the less attractive ones could also mate with less attractive persons of the other sex...

Now, in a competitive sex scenario, even the less attractive people have their eyes set on the most attractive people of the other sex, and there lies the problem. The sex game is open (or so they've been led to think) so they want to compete. Note that the incels are obsessed with the most popular girls. They've given a name to them, Karies? They can't let go of them, while in their idealized past, wise unattractive boys would think something more practical eg: "I can't fuck a princess, 'cause they are for the princes, so I'll fuck my less attractive neighbour instead. I'd rather get a paycheck than wait to win the lottery."

If we all want to win the lottery, we'll all end up unhappy and frustrated.

12.0 = 12

That's the value for male firearm suicide per year. There's another 7 guys killing themselves by suffocation, and another 2 by poisoning. Total 21 per 100,000.

Yes. This view is in contrast with Freud's, who frequently spoke of how repressed sexual energy can be turned into socially acceptable creativity and hard work through 'sublimation'. Reich says: "it can also be turned into hatred". He posited that as an explanation for the rise of fascism in the 1920s. I read the book a long time ago and was left unconvinced that Reich had 'nailed' it.

Finding a convincing explanation for the historical rise of fascism is an important task, still unfinished I think.

If my math is correct, about 20 suicides per 100,000 males translates into 1 in 5000 males committing suicide per year, as of 2018.

Wilhelm Reich says the same. Restricted sexuality gives birth to worlds of terror. — EugeneW

Yes, that's the thesis of The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Interesting note.

Russia's state TV has been hit by a stream of high-profile resignations.

Some of the posters here should send their CV to RT and co, assuming they aren't working for Moscow already.... If you must help murderers spread their lies, you might as well get paid for it.

That is the saddest thing about some suicides.
Some know the effect it will have on others left behind. And don't care.
Making them the reason for their unhappiness, their death. — Amity

Yes, suicide is often used to hurt others too. Sometimes, it is not just self-violence; rather it is meant to scar others permanently. And it does. The suicide of a loved one is not something one can forget.

those governments will therefore soon want the conflict to be resolved one way or another.

The party that can most easily end the conflict is NATO, — boethius

Nope, it's Russia. NATO can do shit. And honestly, governments of food importing countries have very little political leverage because they are poor, aid-dependent countries. They are not going to pressure Russia to stop the war.

What will happen -- in the hypothesis of a long war affecting global food trade -- is the opposite, likely: food or hunger will be used as a weapon. How is that done? The Russians will try to famish people in Ukraine, for one. For two, use food aid as a diplomatic tool. So Russia may buy some political support by sending free food to some countries, while the EU and US do the same with other countries, in a clientelist fashion.

only that their people are gong to be able to eat. — boethius

If the Ukrainians cannot harvest their wheat, international cereal prices will go through the roof, unsettling governments the world over.

Even if true about the cannon fodder, which is certainly difficult for us to know, is this leverage Ukraine has on Russia, or leverage Russia has on Ukraine and the entire world? — boethius

As always, the same info can mean many different thing to different people. For Ukraine, it means that their goal ought to be to perdure and keep Kyiv in particular for another 6 weeks or so. Pressure will ease after that and might even inverse, with Ukrainians able to take back territory. But 6 weeks is a long time, so they need to pace themselves.

For the Russians it means they need to come to a decisive victory no later than end of April, otherwise they will emerge as losers. Time is not on their side.

For the rest of the world, I think one important take-away point is that it is too early to write off the Ukrainian wheat harvest.

One can laugh of everything in my culture, dying kids included. So I take no offense whatsoever and understand your point, that self-aggression was so to speak the traditional way to treat such cases until now: 'nobody loves me, good bye cruel world'.

An ex girlfriend of mine pumped a bullet in her head, making it clear she was doing it because I wouldn't come back to her. That still hurts, decades later. I'm crying writing this down now...

So suicide used to be the way. But now some of those incels are killing others too, prior to suicide. So by that metric, the problem is getting worse.

Why don't y'all just cut straight to the chase?
Commit suicide. — Amity

You know, folks do do that... Rates of youth suicide and attempted youth suicide in Western societies are quite high.

Russian prosecutors on Tuesday called for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to serve 13 years in prison on new fraud charges.

Navalny, President Putin’s most vocal domestic critic, was jailed last year after surviving a poison attack he blames on the Kremlin.

He now faces embezzlement and contempt of court charges and has been put on trial at the prison colony outside Moscow where he is already serving a 2.5 year sentence.

“I request that Navalny be sentenced to a term of 13 years and a subsequent two years of probation,” the prosecutor, Nadezhda Tikhonova, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

The prosecutor asked for Navalny to be sent to a “strict regime” penal colony, which would place him in much harsher conditions with cellmates who are repeat offenders.

The prosecutor also called for him to pay a fine of 1.2m rubles ($£8,685.).

“You can’t put everyone in prison. Even if you ask for 113 years, you won’t scare me or others like me,” Navalny said in court.

Heterosexuality is so passé. If you don't find a female to be intimate with, find a male....

For what it's worth, the Ukrainian side estimates that the Russians will have exhausted their stock of cannon fodder by end April - early May.

With any luck, Ukraine can save part of their wheat harvest, that should take place in June I think. If the conflict last longer, the harvest will be compromised, with significant repercussions on food prices and possibly famines in a number of food-importing countries.

I think this is sound advice, well argued too, but I will refer to our resident specialist in surrendering @Isaac for an expert opinion...


Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells Russian soldiers to 'surrender'
MIKE SNIDER | USA TODAY | 52 minutes ago

"I know that you want to survive," Zelenskyy said during an address Tuesday. "We hear your conversations in the intercepts, we hear what you really think about this senseless war, about this disgrace and about your state."

That is why Russian soldiers should consider surrendering, he said. "If you surrender to our forces, we will treat you the way people are supposed to be treated. As people, decently. In a way you were not treated in your army. And in a way your army does not treat ours," Zelenskyy said.

You have a point. It's not fair that ethnic Russians are killed only in Donbass. So someone had to start bombing ethnic Russians in Odesa, Mariupol etc. Aren't you glad Putin is making things more even and fair now?

Russian's are legitimately aggrieved by the neo-Nazi's killing Russians in Dombass. — boethius

So the Russians decided to kill ethnic Russians in other parts of Ukraine, outside of Donbass.... Makes things more even, right?

So, in the situation in Ukraine, just so happens that neo-Nazi's is a legitimate grievance. — boethius

Says who, and to whom? There's no grievance without an aggrieved party.

Although the bully analogy is useful for the intended purpose... — boethius

It is also useful for the non-intended purpose of showing how immoral you guys are.

As we pass into oblivion we whisper into the darkness: "we did the best we could..." — frank

As @Cuthbert implied -- very philosophically -- about nuclear annihilation: it's not that bad; there is always the possibility that we will fail better next time.

The Black Carnival



I dive upside down, attracted by ecstasy
A green swirl illuminates the sirens
The reflection of torches in turquoise vomit
The most beautiful trip is the carnival
The most beautiful trip is the carnival
Oh, the carni...
The carni...

Yes, endorphins have gone up
Drawing a bow in the night
From the color of opiates
Under the vault, I faint
I'm pulling my head out of our
Games, in which I see myself dead
I am alone with the gold of the water
Under the surface of the dawn
I leave the comings and goings of souls
On the other side of the diving board
In the distance the reflection of the din
From a carnival
From a carnival becoming black

The black carnival
The black carnival
The black carnival
The black carnival

The celestial circle drawn by screams
My glasses fray the spectrum of fountains
Eyes glued to the sky all faces shine
The most beautiful trip is the carnival
The most beautiful trip is the carnival
Oh, the carni...
The carni...

Yes, endorphins have gone up
On the other side of the diving board
The color of opiates
Of a carnival
Of a carnival becoming black
The black carnival

In the distance, I see the black carnival

After the bully had abused @Isaac, our friend looked back at the bully with dovish eyes while arranging his trousers, and said: "Thank you! Now I understand what I was doing wrong."

She asked for it, evidently. The bully is entirely predictable by others, like a machine would be, and has zero responsibility for his own acts. So if he raped her, it must be that she pushed him to it. Ergo she asked for it...

Imagine you have bully on your block, do people on that block moderate their behaviour to avoid getting punched by him? Of course they do. So conversely it must follow that if you actually want him to punch someone, you'd know pretty much exactly what to do to get that to happen. — Isaac

And when a woman gets raped by that bully, it must follow that she did exactly what one needs to do to get raped, right?

Hence NATO has this leverage vis-a-vis Ukrainian neutrality because it has nuclear weapons. — boethius

I like your reasonning. Indeed, we need to make use of our strengths. Once Moscow is levelled off into a glow-at-night parking lot, Putin will be more likely to let the poor folks in Mariupol leave the city, right?

NATO and EU represent more nukes, more conventional military power (both direct and indirect by supplying Ukraine), and more economic power than China. Therefore, they have more leverage than China in the situation. — boethius

Are you advocating that NATO nukes Moscow to save Mariupol? I'm not against it, but it could be a bit odd, logically speaking, to kill millions of civilians here in order to save thousands of civilians there.

You don't really pay attention, do you?

Keep licking Vlad's balls, for all I care.

NATO has far more nuclear weapons than China — boethius

I don't know where you read that nukes gives you leverage to free civilians from a mad man, but it is not true. Nobody is going to threaten nuclear war if the civilians of Mariupol are not allowed to leave the bombed city... Just watch if you don't believe me.

Your total lack of clue would be amusing if you weren't perorating about bombed and dead people.

Just to refer one who before the invasion was launched, wrote about his intentions: "Just disrupting the rosy media-friendly picture of the poor underdog Ukrainians being set upon by nasty thugish Russia." — ssu

That aged well...

Isn't it obvious? There's no side he is willing to take. — ssu

Indeed, he keeps making reference to scifi movies. He supports Ian Solo maybe?

There are multiple ways a leader could defend their nation. Arming everyone and fighting to the last man in defiance of any offer from your aggressor is not the only one. — Isaac

If you are in the business of nitpicking countries at war, sure.

. I support strategies that I think will be best for ordinary people. I don't follow 'leaders', I don't pick sides as if picking out which suit to wear, I don't require a social media movement to validate my assessment. — Isaac

How does this work in practice? Let us imagine that Le Pen, funded by Putin, wins the French presidential elections in May and decides to invade the UK, with some unclear results to show after two weeks of war apart from a lot of civilians bombed in a few costal cities. French troops are closing in on London but inefficiencies, low morale and the spirited defense of brave UK forces are holding their advance. The French are calling in Islamist mercenaries from North Africa to help. But France is also placed under heavy economic sanctions that will certainly weaken it more and more as time passes. Now, at which point in this scenario do you advise your government to negotiate? And do you mind if the French keep a few cities along the coast which they have managed at great cost to liberate from UK nazism? Curious minds want to know.

I choose the side of those who'd rather avoid all the bloodshed and horror of war than act out their Star Wars fantasies with a population of innocent civilians. — Isaac

Do they have a name? A leader? A phone number perhaps?

Which REAL, identifiable side do you support?

Both are the aggressed. You chose one. — Isaac

I do think that the legitimate leadership of the Ukrainian people deserves support right now. If you want to support someone else, by all means do so! But your protestations that you don't understand my stance cannot be sincere. You ought to understand that I naturally and normally support the right, and in fact the duty, of legitimate leaders of an attacked nation to defend the nation and themselves. There is nothing hard to understand there, and nothing even remotely polemical.

You don't understand because you don't want to. IOW you are pretending. Manufacturing dissent.