I'll try out some colour schemes and ask for feedback. First option:

The banner background and buttons are #3c3c3c. (Colour is objective?)

It's grey.

To find the objectively best color — Congau

I think I've found it.

@S @Terrapin Station

Take your pointless dispute elsewhere, preferably not on this forum.

The options for customization are very limited, and it's only customizable in admin, not by regular members. I can't change the colour of the main content background, so we're stuck with white.

The options for customization are very limited, and it's only customizable in admin, not by regular members.

Sounds to me you had no obvious good choices and very little time to decide so you acted on impulse, which is unpredictable and resistant to analysis by nature. People have done a lot worse. I recall a movie, the plot of which involves a father who when with his family on a skiing holiday and faced with a sudden avalanche runs away without ensuring their safety. They all survive but then have to deal with his reaction. I'd rather be mythologized as a hero than face the prospect of being seen as a coward for the rest of my life. Having said all that, it's got to be an extremely unsettling thought that your reaction could have had even more negative consequences than it did. Give it some time to process. — Baden

That works for me! Appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah. Criticizing someone's grammar and "bad English" yet bad English is the world's most popular and UNIVERSALLY spoken and written language by anyone who isn't a grammar Nazi. I am far more annoyed by people that complain about "bad grammar" than those that complain about proper grammar.

You are being lazy. — Swan

No, your posts really are difficult to understand. For example, I can't make any any sense of this: "The problem for me is you pose some kind of solipsismic thing by saying that "gender" is determined by what thinks while no existing references ...". And your first post in this discussion, as someone has already pointed out, was mostly gibberish.

You're the one who is being lazy. Write better or your posts will be deleted.

How intense is the pressure to be traditionally masculine? If there is a lot of pressure, is it lessened if you're a foreigner or the opposite? Do Russians have stronger ribs?* I've grown very comfortable with the reflexive self-mocking of masculinity that gets you through in middle class liberal America (and EU europe?) and I think it would be jarring, for me, to be an environment that very straightforwardly celebrates traditional masculinity. But is the Russian premium on masculinity overemphasized over here? — csalisbury

I've thought about these questions but I'm not clear about the answers, and I don't trust my impressions. I've spent most of my time in a megacity so what does that really tell me about Russia in general? And I can't speak Russian, my social circle here is small, and I haven't really made any male friends independently of my wife. But I'll try to say something about it...

Yes, of course the Western impression is exaggerated, but it's definitely a thing. I can say with confidence that all the Russian men I know have deeper voices than me and that there's a premium on how much vodka a man can drink. Otherwise I'm not sure. Gender roles are pretty traditional. In saying that I'm not saying that women are expected to be housewives while men bring home the bacon, or anything like that. Maybe it's more superficial: the Russian women I know are forceful, supremely confident, totally independent, and successful, but at the same time they're very feminine and expect men to be traditionally masculine in some ways, to at least act dominant. She might make more money than him, but he's gotta pay the bill at the restaurant and fight off bears to protect her, that kind of thing (sounds like a weird restaurant, I know).

My wife and I kind of take it in turns to pay at restaurants, and when she pays, without thinking about it she surreptitiously gives me her credit card so it looks like I'm paying. So, it's deeply ingrained (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay) but at the same time superficial (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay).

By the way, in saying it's superficial I don't mean to denigrate it. How we behave in public, how we conduct ourselves, is important.

Modern feminism, the MeToo movement, and Western PC culture are widely mocked and derided by Russians, especially women. It's probably true that the state media deliberately encourage this ("next up, it's time to laugh at the Americans again"), but it's far from being a top-down thing. From the point of view of some of the Russian women I know--and bear in mind I'm over-simplifying things to the point of unfairness just to make the point--women who don't know how to handle lecherous men are idiotic or weak, and if a man goes too far, which is inevitable, you get over it and stop whining. What's important to them are the practical things: equal opportunity, reproductive rights, childcare, and easy divorce; they don't have time for victimhood. Being raped, unless it's particularly violent, is merely an annoyance. So there's a kind of female macho thing, and it has good and bad sides.

Maybe Russian women are under pressure to be feminine, but those I've spoken to don't seem to feel this as an unwelcome pressure. They're proud that Russian women "look after themselves", for example, meaning they spend a lot of effort, time, and money on how they look.

Anyway, as far as I can tell I've passed the masculinity test. I don't know if that's because I resemble a bear.

Or no? The most famous Russian-American I know died in strangely similar circumstances. I'm glad you fared better. Plus I imagine that's a pretty handy (and well-earned!) warstory in terms of the proving-you're-not-a-soft-westerner thing. — csalisbury

Ha, you're the third person to tell me about that unfortunate guy since my own brush with death.

Yeah my story is all right, but...it's weird. It doesn't feel good to think or talk about it, about the details of the incident, which I didn't really go into in the first post. Others around me, especially my wife, have already mythologized it. In this myth, I'm the hero trying to save her life (she was in the car). But I don't know if it was like that. I don't really know what I thought I was doing. It was certainly stupid, reckless, useless: I had already satisfied myself that the car couldn't really fall off the edge, and how could I imagine that I'd be able to stop an SUV from rolling down a slope? Was I doing it just because I thought it was the thing to do, even while knowing I'd fail? The most horrific thought of all, aside from the stuff about death and serious injury, is that I was making a show of being a real man, and yet failing, which makes me a pathetic fraud, acting inauthentically under the Russian pressure to be masculine. I risked my life for nothing, and that makes me feel guilty, because in doing so I risked causing pain and sadness to people who love me. In fact I did cause my wife pain because she was so worried for me.

So...normally I can turn my experiences into chirpy charming self-deprecating anecdotes, but this one still tastes bitter.

Fascinating stuff. Hopeful to hear more. — Noble Dust

Thanks ND.

Glad you made it safe and sound. — Wallows

Thank you for the kind words, pig boy.

In August, when the weather was still hot, I went to the MAKS air show. We didn't want to pay to get in to the airport like you're supposed to, so instead we found a spot by the river that runs alongside it. We sat there cooking shashlik and drinking beer, along with a few hundred other people who had the same idea. I didn't know until recently that the barbecue is an integral part of Russian life, probably even more than it is for Americans and Australians. (Shashlik originated in the Turkic cultures of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and found its way to Moscow in the 19th century)

We watched awesome Russian bombers and fighter jets tearing the sky apart. Sometimes I wanted to cover my ears but chose to suffer the incredible noise so as not to look like a soft Westerner. I met a man originally from Minsk, Belorussia, who had come down the river on a boat from Moscow that morning with his wife and children. He wanted to practice his English and drink whisky with me. He apologized for having Irish and not Scotch, but I didn't mind.

He asked if I was spying for the CIA. Two other people asked me the same thing that day. Although it was a joke, it was also an expression of patriotism. And my wife, who is no militarist or supporter of Putin, was full of patriotic pride in the technology, in the bravery of the pilots, and in the respect that these displays of military power engender in foreigners. The patriotism here is not always uncritical of those in power, but it's fundamental. Maybe it's a lot like American exceptionalist patriotism ("the greatest country on earth"), because there's an assumption that Russia should be the leader of the world or at least up there with the other great powers. To me this seems to be in tension with the widespread desire for better public services and infrastructure, but what do I know?

Also like America, patriotism here is not often associated with an ethnic nationalism. At least, this is not mainstream or traditional, and natsionalist in everyday speech pejoratively denotes far-right chauvinism. Rather, this patriotism is, I suppose, continuous with the inclusive (or imperial, however you look at it) patriotism of Soviet times. A trivial example: a few Russians I know, both men and women, young and old, have expressed pride in the fact that Russian women are particularly beautiful, and they put this down to the centuries-old mixture of ethnicities.

Incidentally, Moscow is more multi-ethnic than I'd expected, and they're cultures I was almost totally unfamiliar with. Tatars, Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and others. And (shhh) they all have more interesting food than the Russians.

When my condemnations of Putin or Stalin or the Tsars become too passionate, after too many vodkas with my wife's friends and family, someone will usually complain that I'm exaggerating. I appreciate that it's galling to see a foreigner trashing your history and I'm usually careful about complicated issues that I'm largely ignorant about (in my defence, I'm always criticizing rulers rather than peoples or nations), but there's a tendency for them to get defensive and say things like "yes it was bad, but other countries have done bad things too" and always "we won the war", which is sometimes an attempt to minimize the bad stuff.

There is a Russian guy I know who I try to avoid. I can't quite work out his politics. When he went to Spain he was most interested in visiting Franco's tomb to pay his respects, he argued with me in defence of Franco, and he's vehemently anti-communist and anti-socialist. So he might be some kind of a fascist, but then it must be hard to be a fascist in the country that prides itself on beating the Nazis. On the other hand there are fascists and extreme nationalists in Russia, so I guess they reconcile things somehow.

When I don't manage to avoid him, my wife, acting as interpreter, now chooses not to translate anything controversial between us. I resented this at first when I found out, but it's probably for the best.

See, that's how you do a happy ending. Try harder next time! — Baden

Thanks. You're really helping with my post-traumatic depression and shame, I must say. :wink:

Thanks :grin:

I really liked the Fukuyama, btw. Only about 1/3 of it has anything to do with the caricature that has been so often criticized. The other two thirds are those criticisms. It's really not the naive, triumphal book it's made out to be. I don't ultimately agree with him, I guess, but it's the most cogent political worldpicture I've groked (though I haven't groked many.) It's refreshingly direct, and it's insane that it was written in 92 (he predicts that there will be a wave of authoritarian movements and a backslide of democracy sometime in the next generation. He sees it as likely temporary, but he predicts it will be severe and will see new, unheard of authoritarian-hybrids. He also predicts that immigration will become one of the biggest issues for 'posthistorical states') — csalisbury

You've persuaded me to read it now. Like many, I've been ignorantly dismissing it for years.

having an impeachment inquiry is the only way to educate the public on whether or not to vote for him in 2020 — 3017amen

I see what you're saying, but it looks like a big mistake to me.

Yes, and we call that process an election, which will take place in just over 13 months. — aletheist

This is the most important point. I neither know nor care if Trump's actions are grounds for impeachment. What seems clear though is that there's a lot of ambiguity and disagreement about it. In those circumstances, pursuing impeachment is suicidal and likely to set back the liberal cause in the US for many years, as it will be seen as an establishment counter-revolution. So just from a tactical point of view, all anti-Trump efforts have to be about getting him voted out. Trouble is I'm not sure the Democrats are up to the challenge.

This historical background is really interesting: http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

I think it counts as an argument for option 3, and without, I think, requiring any special "invirtuation of the masses", in csal's words (unless the social changes that accompany the introduction of some kind of democratic socialism count as invirtuation).

Indeed. And can it be a coincidence that the idea, the tragedy of the commons, originated in the early 19th century, at the culmination of the enclosures? Generally it's a justification for either of Banno's first two solutions, primarily privatization.

That's not to say that it's never been a problem. It certainly is, in certain social circumstances.

Come on you two, you're embarrassing yourselves.

Apparently Fukuyama studied under Derrida at Yale. The guy who engineered modern neoconservatism, helped get us embroiled in Iraq - he was gonna be a cont-lit guy. Later, Derrida strikes him down in Spectres of Marx. this is weird. Kissinger era realism went though a continental bottleneck and got us post 911 us policy — csalisbury

Possible plot for a new Adam Curtis documentary?

I agree

Not much philosophy over the past few months, mainly research before and after my move to Moscow. These are the highlights:

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog & The Master and Margarita
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
John Medhurst, No Less than Mystic (that rare thing, a Leftist anti-Bolshevik history of the revolution)
Abraham Ascher, Russia: a Short History
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia
Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991
China Mieville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

And a little light economics:

Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to my Daughter
Joseph Choonara, Reader's Guide to Marx's Capital
Karl Marx, Capital (decades since I read it)

A small semantic point, but you should be using the term "sexual behaviour", not "sexual orientation". — Michael

I think the idea is more radical and interesting than that, namely that one intentionally takes on a different sexual orientation by sheer political will. It's radical and interesting because we're accustomed now to thinking that sexual orientation is not chosen, so self-consciously choosing a different one becomes a striking act of subversion. At least, that seems to be the idea.

There are some responses that seem quite hysterical here over the suggestion that women can exercise their right to withhold sex, calling it a "tantrum," "hate speech," — Artemis

Fair enough. Although I don't think their rude dismissiveness was a reaction to the idea that women choose to "withhold sex" from men, but to the arresting idea that feminists' avoidance of heterosexual relationships is in some way progressive.

yet she wasn't proposing it at all — TheWillowOfDarkness

I know. :confused:

Several responses are working under the idea OP is suggesting every woman be a political lesbian — TheWillowOfDarkness

You already said that, and I can't see much evidence of it, as I've already said.

Yet here we are, with half the thread acting like someone is proposing every woman desperate to have sex with men is meant to be a political lesbian. — TheWillowOfDarkness

None or very few of the responses assume that she's proposing that, as far as I can tell. I for one did notice that bit, and it doesn't make any difference.

Homework perhaps. But she might be back to discuss things and is just waiting to see the responses. In any case the topics are quite interesting.

Well put.

But you have to hear a song in its entirety before you can dance to it.

The novel existed in it's entirety prior to the first report of it. Melville reported upon something that existed in it's entirety while writing the novel as well. — creativesoul

I'm sure Melville talked about Moby Dick (the novel) before it was finished.

If that's a misunderstanding, then you haven't been clear enough.

What I'm doing here with the odd claim is attempting to drive an existential wedge between reports of things and what's being reported upon. — creativesoul

What does this mean? Do you mean you're arguing against idealism? Are you just saying that things and the reports thereof are different? What is the significance of saying that something exists "in its entirety" etc.? Why does it matter?

women withholding sex from men — StreetlightX

This all turns on the misconception that sex is something that men want and women tolerate. — unenlightened

Precisely. A rather Victorian attitude.

I have two problems with the OP's argument.

Heterosexual relationships, even in the modern-day, illustrate vast disparities in the gender roles between man and the woman. For example, in terms of housework, women are left with the most work to do in the relationship whereas men, even in more egalitarian households, continually tend to do less work than their wives. Women also bear the weight in the public sphere of taking time off of work to bear children, something interviewers do not take into consideration when interviewing men. In this post, I will argue that political lesbianism, or heterosexual women willingly choosing to end their sexual relations with men, is a viable option for feminism. The lack of sexual relations is used as a defiance to the patriarchy by making a choice that does not put men in positions of male superiority. Essentially, this view allows women to choose their sexual orientation based off of the political results they want as feminists. — Bridget Eagles

Considering that most women want to continue having heterosexual relationships, how does it help them for feminists to disavow such relationships? How can it achieve the desired political results? Is it a symbolic protest? It seems to me it would make feminism look utopian at best, ridiculous at worst, thus damaging the progress towards equality. Less obviously, for feminists to abandon heterosexual relationships weakens their claim to be fighting for equality within those relationships, because it looks like an admission that those relationships are inherently unequal.

Generally speaking it looks like a political attack on women, rather than on men. Of course, for feminists this is far from unprecedented.

This can be a viable form of feminism because it allows for the action of sex, which typically demonstrates men as aggressive and dominant and women to be subordinate and passive, to be removed from the sphere of heterosexual interactions. This, as a result, removes the disparity in the treatment of genders through sexual interaction. — Bridget Eagles

Not all sex between men and women is like that, but granting that a lot of it is, this still doesn't look like a good move. A feminist should if she wants, without rejecting feminism, desire to be dominated in the bedroom while at the same time fighting for a fair distribution of duties like housework and childcare. To take all differences between men and women as examples of patriarchy is to turn feminism into a caricature. Does equality really depend on a lack of disparity during sex? Do you really want to make feminism depend on that? If male dominance in sex is ineradicable (not to mention desired by and fulfilling and enriching for women), is feminism thereby rendered wrong?

his ceaseless topic spamming and discussion killing soapboxing? — DingoJones

This is why I deleted a lot of his posts.

Scary

Southwest Cilantro — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Sounds like my kind of place.

So you're wondering specifically what percentage of amateur philosophers have this gene?

Tastes great to me. I use it a lot. I call it cilantro these days, to avoid confusion with the seed.

There is some evidence that cilantrophobes can overcome their aversion with repeated exposure to the herb, especially if it is crushed rather than served whole

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-cilantro-taste-like-soap-to-some-people

There's something similar going on with milk.

Need we say more? — Banno

Gone.

The fact that we had hard categories in place organized the clutter a bit better. — Wallows

You've said this several times, and each time I've asked you what you meant, but you never explain. As Amity pointed out, we have categories here.

Yes, I meant to say that religious beliefs deserve special respect and tolerance over and above non-religious beliefs. — T Clark

Nope.

Not that anyone cares, but I'll be 30 next month — Jimmy

By the way, congratulations on being nearly thirty, and happy birthday in advance. Thirty is a good age. You stop being embarrassed about tripping over in the street, you suddenly become really good at sex, and you are still blissfully unaware of the horror that lies ahead.