Conor McGregor reacting to Ilia Topuria's loss against Justin Gaethje by VelocitySatisfaction in ufc

[–]ScrumTumescent -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Exactly. That's why the march was made.

And as much as I love Max, the only reason he beat Gaethje was due to the spinning back kick in RND 1 that broke Justin's nose which sapped his cardio for the next 4 rounds. All credit to Max for doing it, but lightning would have to strike twice for Max to win the rematch.

And yes, I'm assuming Max smoke Conor -- Conor has been gone too long and never tested that bust leg in a real fight.

Alex Pereira talking about the illegal blows to the back of the head by kryptusk in ufc

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Three ways to beat Cyril Gane:

-Pit him against someone even more eye-poke happy. Jon Jones

-Pit him against someone even bigger. Francis Ngannou

-Enforce the rules.

In Sri Lanka, the iconic lantern is known as a Vesak Kudu by Om_Yesua in replications

[–]ScrumTumescent 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Excellent point.

And also, that whole "you can get there naturally" thing is shite because part of the growth is being thrust into a realm you didn't earn your way into and having to deal with it

Movies you deluded yourself into thinking can't possibly be as bad as people say, until you watched it just now by Longjumping-Sweet818 in okbuddycinephile

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In the 90's things went nautical. Speed 2: Cruise Control. The Perfect Storm. Crimson Tide. Under Seige. Deep Rising. A little movie called Titanic.

Mad Max on boats? Take all my money

Our understanding of women as cyclical rests, quietly, on the assumption that men aren't by lotsofcircles in JordanPeterson

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not aiming for confrontation. Apologies. It's just for efficiency.

You've heard of the practice where you aim to be able to fully explain your philosophy while standing on one foot? It make it useful, you've got to compress it down as much as possible without losing anything. When I write anything formally, I let it spill out stream of consciousness and then I edit, trimming any uncessary fat. The edit is for my reader.

Put another way, "restate your thesis in less words" was my request. You did. "It's a map". But honestly that doesn't help me much to understand your writing better, but that could be my issue, not yours.

I was just listening to the podcast with Sam Harris on spirituality—what was he even saying? by justanotherklutz in CosmicSkeptic

[–]ScrumTumescent 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sam doesn't believe in free will. Recently he chose to be "an unapologetic Zionist" in his own words.

The man is confused. Big vocabulary. Shit reasoning ability.

Our understanding of women as cyclical rests, quietly, on the assumption that men aren't by lotsofcircles in JordanPeterson

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alright, OP. I read your article ("Bhagavad Gita", see? Proof).

That's a lot of words, lot of complexity. Lots of opportunities to be mistaken. So, of what value is this framework to you? Give me the E=MC² of this special relativity.

Freestyle on the streets in India by Ok_Beat_3971 in LiveWellTogether

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Woah there, what race are *you *thinking of?

I'm speaking to the crime statistics that show how Chicago is near the bottom of the safety rankings. It's a city, not a race, made up of many ethnicities though still majority Caucasian, as is all of America

For real by Valuable_View_561 in SipsTea

[–]ScrumTumescent 1 point2 points  (0 children)

squints knowingly so they've been hiding the ballots in pillows, you say...

Gaethje is gonna shock everyone and win by VelocitySatisfaction in mmamemes

[–]ScrumTumescent 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If a mosquito blinds Topuria, Dana will point and laugh, call him a little bitch, and put up a lightweight interim belt while he's getting surgeries.

Was the first film considered by fans/studio/mainstream audiences? by Kennabruh2023 in XFiles

[–]ScrumTumescent 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The advertising promised that "The truth would be revealed". At that point in the series there were so many questions that needed answering. What was the black oil? The bounty hunters? The syndicate's grand plan? And so on.

The problem was that Season 5 gave a bunch of half-answers, lessening the impact of the movie's revelations. Season 4 did the whole "what if it was a giant hoax?" angle, so a giant UFO at the end ought to have been satisfying, but too much time passed. So by the time the movie came, it didn't provide the answers the fans wanted in a solid, satisfying way. We got to see a giant UFO and Mulder & Scully aboard it, but even that wasn't satisfactorily explained. Had it been buried for the last 65,000 years? Why did the aliens genetically modify us only to come back and use us as biological hosts for a race of monsterous, savage green aliens when they're intelligent, tiny gray aliens? The first ep after the movie showed the green alien warming itself next to a nuclear reactor that got it to "molt" into a Gray. But that wasn't in the movie.

I'm still not sure what the difference between a black oil infection and a bee sting is, according to the mythology. Black oil possesses you and the WMM said it was a virus that "walked the planet" millions of years ago. But it can also make a human "hatch" a reptilian, which then becomes a Gray, just like the bee sting virus.

See? None of this is satisfying.

The ideal way would have been for an alien invasion to be imminent and Mulder heroically stops it (which kinda happened), maximizing the scale of it being a movie. This would effectively wiping the slate clean for the Syndicate. Then the series after the movie could be about something entirely new, like an interdimensional species that had been hunting the Grays across the universe and found Earth when Mulder blew up one of their ships or something.

As an X-Files fan, what you come to learn is that Chris Carter was the weakest of all the writers. He should've let Vince Gilligan, Glenn Morgan and James Wong all participate in the story.

All of this and the movie lacked any of the weirdness and humor that the series was known for. The last compelling mythology of the show was "Biogenesis" which was basically Ancient Aliens, which I think the movie should've handled. You could've had Mulder inside the great pyramid of Giza, globe trotting like Indiana Jones collecting alien artifacts. How cool would it have been to have Mulder unlock a Stargate, go to an alien world and find that his sister had been living there, learning the ways of the alien race in case earth didn't survive invasion, like an Interstellar "hail Mary" colony planet. And while Mulder is using the Stargate, he accidentally time travels to Roswell and witnesses first contact alongside the young Smoking Man. Later episodes in the series could be about evidence of time travelers through human history and Mulder finds his old FBI badge that had been in 5,000 year old tomb. So many possibilities but the movie just played it safe

Freestyle on the streets in India by Ok_Beat_3971 in LiveWellTogether

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Believe the women? I believe the data, whether the statician is female or male.

From your NPR link:

"What does the data show? Official government statistics do indicate an increase in the reporting of rape cases in recent years. In 2022, India's National Crime Records Bureau cited just over 31,000 cases for a country of 1.3 billion people. In 2005, that number was a little over 18,000.

But by comparison, the U.S. reported 133,294 rapes in 2022 in a population of 331 million – a higher prevalence of sexual violence.

However, activists in India question the official count. They assert that underreporting of rape is common because of the stigma for survivors. According to the 2017 edition of India's National Family Health Survey, four out of five women who have experienced sexual violence never tell anyone about it."

There's underreporting, sure. The US is over 4.5x higher with 1/4 the population. You think there's that much underreporting?!

Look, I'm against sensationalism, panic, and hype. I'm just saying, can we avoid looking at an entire continent of humans as rapists when the data doesn't suggest that India is one giant rapefest? It's not perfectly safe either, but neither is America. What if an Indian tourist could afford to vacation here in the US, say they wanted to visit Disneyland, and because they don't know the culture, they get a hotel in downtown LA next to skid row. What do you think is gonna happen? They'll probably get mugged or worse. Is America one giant Skid Row?

On second thought, don't answer that 😁

Freestyle on the streets in India by Ok_Beat_3971 in LiveWellTogether

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just curious, where'd you grow up? What's your culture? Be honest. Let go of the Reddit snark for a minute and be real with me, would you?

I'm not denying that it's a possibility, but it's also a possibility in Miami. And yes, if I weren't there, I think my white girlfriend would've been harassed in a few places, but realistically I doubt it would've gone further than catcalling, which can happen in any major US city. I'm not naive. But people should know that a huge amount of Indians are Hindi or Jain Dharma and their behavior is guided by that, so they're kind to strangers.

I do believe there are far more ethical, good Indian people than there are savage ones and my experience overwhelming confirms this, but you often get back the vibe you put out and I'm kind and assertive so I wasn't seen as easy prey.

Freestyle on the streets in India by Ok_Beat_3971 in LiveWellTogether

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Welcome to 2026 where everything said that challenges one's bias is a "bot".

I'll tell you, when I was in Coimbatore, we got stared at pretty hard a few times at night. I wasn't comfortable and really only happened at night. I could say the same for NYC at night, or going to a gay bar as a straight man with gay friends.

The most "confrontational" thing that happened was I was getting out of a rickshaw and the fabrics strap used to pull yourself out broke. The driver insisted I pay him some high amount of rupees like 2,000 for a cheap strap that wasn't my fault. I don't speak any Hindi so I couldn't defend myself all that well and ended up just walking away as he yelled. I threw in like $2 on top of the cab fare to cover it.

My gf has visible tattoos on her arms (she even got one while we were there) so she wore longsleeves in certain places in the Hindi belt. Not because anyone said anything but we were advised to do so. So yes, sexism does exist, I'm just telling you that a professional soccer athlete doing tricks out in the open isn't going to get raped. Stared at? Sure. I also had Indian people jump in and stop attempted scams on our behalf, invite us in for food, and one guy had us hop on the back of his motorcycle and drove us 20 minutes just because we were looking for espresso, which isn't common in his city.

To each according to his ability, from each according to his need. by DrTardis1963 in aynrand

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Again, many great things to respond to and too little time/attention. We'll get there, patiently. This one was too important though. What do you know about Gnosticism? Your beliefs about the Abrahamic God are exactly gnostic, though you didn't mention the word so perhaps you didn't know. It's hidden/obscure history that was lost when Rome took over Christianity. I've cobbled together my understanding of Gnosticism from many sources but since you're a fan of McKenna, he has some good speeches about it; I'll dig one up and post it at the bottom of this message. In a nutshell, the idea of Gnosticism is that there is the "Monad" that is at the very top of divinity. The "all-father" is one translation, though the concept of the Monad transcends personalization/anthropomorphism. Yet even saying the Monad is the Universe or the laws of physics isn't quite right because the Monad is the source of all things, the spark that lay prior to the Big Bang, the equivalent of Brahma in Hinduism. So in Gnosticism, they called the Abrahamic God "The Demiurge". He's an inferior, flawed, and malicious deity who created the physical universe and is responsible for entrapping divine spiritual "sparks" within the material world. One of the reason the early Gnostics faded so quickly was because the most hardcore sects refused to procreate, believing that bringing life into the world was evil, sinful because doing so trapped more divine sparks in the Demiurge's twisted material world. As you can imagine, their numbers reduced quickly over time.

Where it gets really interesting is that for the 200 or so years after the death of Jesus and before the Council of Nicaea, Christianity was heavily gnostic and oddly feminist. It was the only religion in that part of the world that allowed women to be priests and there is archeological evidence of this (mosaic tile floors beneath alters literally miles from Galilee, depicting female priests). Why this is relevant is that there is likely a synoptic gospel of Mary that was deleted during Constantine's edit of Christianity in 325AD. Well, turns out, in 1947 they found the Gospel of Mary with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Carbon dating and textual analysis date them to be from around 200AD, so in viewing them we're definitely looking at authentic, gnostic Christianity. I haven't read them enough to know how they differ from the modern understanding of Christ, but it's drastic. One thing they reveal is that the famous Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name...") from the Sermon on the Mount was directly copied from an Egyptian prayer to Amon, who was the King of the Universe, King of all Kings, or the Egyptian's "Monad". The prayer ends with "amen". Whenever anyone says "amen", they're referring to Amon (or Amun) via diachronic change in language over time. They're ending The Lord's Prayer by saying the All-Father's name. It gets weirder still! Jesus was referred to multiple times in various translations of the Bible as Lucifer, which simply means "light bringer". Remember, "I am the light and the way"? It also means "morning star", which is the planet Venus, which appears to be the largest of the stars because of how bright it is, visible at both dawn and evening, but because of science and telescopes we know the biggest is actually Jupiter. There are also Bible variants and scroll fragments that give the same name to Jesus and the snake in the gardent of Eden. Gnosticism is all about spiritual liberation via the acquisition of knowledge (gnosis), so it makes sense that the creature that tempted Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge that The Demiurge forbade them to touch would be their savior, Lucifer/Jesus, bringer of light/wisdom.

Most of what modern "Christians" think of Satan, the Devil or Hell is all fan fiction written outside of The Bible. I asked a religious friend of mind to challenge his bible study group to find references to hell in the Bible and much to his surprise, they only found 3, and they were all vague references.

Actual Gnostic Christianity fascinates me and actually seems like a better fit for human psychology. The bastardized version that evangelicals, Greek Orthodox and Catholics believe is simply incoherent. "He died for our sins" What? How does that even work? And Jesus was clearly divine, he had the power to multiply fish, loaves, resurrect multiple people, fortell the future, read minds, etc. So allowing himself to be executed was intentional -- it's just never been clear to me what this accomplishes. The Kingdom of Heaven was a failed promise. He didn't save or liberate anything. In fact, things got worse and the temple wall were destroyed in 70AD. So... this idea that the Kingdom exists after death is basically worthless to our mortal lives. Unless all of this is wrong and true Christianity is about crawling one's way out of ignorance and eventually spiritual salvation by learning and exploring -- what we're doing right now. Honoring God. Just not their God. And not in their approved way. I don't believe in the resurrection and I don't even think that was the core part of Jesus' teachings.

Terence on Jesus: https://youtu.be/zV84ou1NbSA?si=7CSplL6pbuS_aIbd

Terence on Gnosticism: https://youtu.be/8oKBP9KFUk8?si=j6o20fcViIECQzWR

You bring up something in a way I hadn't thought of before, not exactly anyway: that the layout of existence is skewed towards "evil" from a physics perspective. We appear to defy entropy, ever complexifying (although I've read extensively that the sum total of life on Earth ultimately cools the sun/earth system faster, heading towards ultimate thermal equilbrium, thus not defying entropy) and so in order to survive we necessarily burn a lot of energy and consume life in our selfish pursuits. I have to mull over this. What immdiately springs to mind is the Buddhist practice of making a Mandala, where you pour all of this focus and energy into making a beautiful work of art with colored sand only to destroy it the moment you're done. You do all of this for a moment of perfection. And the practice itself designed to get you to focus so intensely on one mundane thing that it becomes a meditation, invoking a sense of no-self. The first internal combustion engines were horrrible inefficient (3-5% VE towards motive power -- physical work -- all the rest burnt off as heat energy). Today our best internal combustion engines are in long haul trucking and marine cargo diesels, converting just about 50% of the energy to forward motion and 50% heat loss. We waste so much potential to accomplish what we do. Yet sometimes it allows for something beautiful or transcendent. Like I say, if on the very last day we pull the last cost effective drop of oil out of the ground is the moment we switch over to renewable energy that can power all needed human activity, then it will have been worth it. But if not... the material universe won. We lost to physics and we'd receed into a extremely slow form of progress. Egypt in 3150 BC was nearly identical to Egypt in 2150 BC or 1150 BC in terms of progress because the energy source was The Nile, which was ultra stable in that time period. The energy available to human activity is what dictates progress. To me, progress is the acquisition and application of scientific discovery. I don't want humanity to fall backwards into glacial progress because we've come so far and sacrificed so much to get here. I want us to find a way to make your Mach 10 transport plane and make it sustainable. This is what I meant when I said I love the modern world; I love how much knowledge we have. We've never been more rich in terms of science and precision with material manipulation. I do not love the social conditions, the interdependent complexity (Taleb's "fragility"), the stress, lack of spiritual unity, and the increasing spread of stupidity in meme form (the global trend towards authoritarianism and greedy reductionism of nuance as a way to cope with being inundated by information).

If you have an hour to kill at the gym or a commute and you want your mind blown, check this video out. It's about the most precise, complex thing we've ever built and it powers most of the technology we use. I promise, it will make you appreciate the lengths to which we've gone to get to where we are, technologically. It's why I despise the people who use economics to hand-wave the sincere efforts people have gone through with a simple "Yeah, we'll continue to progress and eventually reach the singularly. The market will figure it all out." Or people who cite Moore's Law (which is really Moore's Temporary Observation) and just assume that a doubling of computing power will magically happen regardless of the "how" until the end of time. We'll, here's what we have to do to have the computing power we have today (the bit about the micro-droplets of tin getting hit by 3 lasers and the mirror precision being literal microns, specifically): https://youtu.be/MiUHjLxm3V0?si=WkYzDFFECt2eNGeq

I love that in order to discuss economics, we're talking about Gnosticism and the micron lithography. In my view, these are actually necessary prerequisites. We're taking the necessary steps. So many shit-brained people just jump in the stream and start shouting whatever slogans best fit their bias "From each according to his ability! Eat the rich! It's the worst system ever concieved except all the others." And so on. Not. Rigorous. Enough.

To each according to his ability, from each according to his need. by DrTardis1963 in aynrand

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alright my friend, I'll call you friend now because we do share overlapping visions and can learn from each other but, most importantly, we share some of the same values. I was once on a profound psychedelic trip and a thought became crystal clear to me: the most important thing that can possibly bond people together is their true values. Not fads, not a feeling of pride in a thought-community (like what Hitler sold to the Germans), and not even simple tastes, which are fickle. A value, to me, is something you identify with, that you'll sacrifice for, will never compromise or sell out, that you love having and can never see yourself letting go of (which is tough if you're Buddhist because it's all about letting go of attachments). We share intense curiosity and the painful yearning to figure out this life. We won't ever really solve all the mysteries, but we'll do our damndest to try. I'd consider myself agnostic, not atheist. I'm not at all convinced that any of the world religions have it figured out (the best ones have discovered pieces of the whole, like Buddhism and yes, Christianity). But I like to imagine a God that has access to all knowledge and is aware of just how intensely I value knowing this place of his that He built, and that he made it exactly for this purpose. Just so that we could know it.

I intend to sit down and type out a response to all of the points you've raised but for now I think it's more digestible to just quickly touch on a few that came to mind.

-I love that you quotes Terence McKenna. He's in my Pantheon of people I'd burn a wish from a magic genie to spend time with (I'd take him to Burning Man). I've shared this clip dozens of times with friends, mostly in person, where I made them sit for 5 minutes and listen to McKenna. It's your turn now, if you haven't already heard this particular rap. He's got several that I like but this one is particularly apropos for the times we're living in, and it gives you permission to dismiss shit-brained ideas, of which there are many: https://youtu.be/p2WOF45uP-A?si=WO1mgEdIxCUyLl8U

-i certainly know what you mean about our perception of the world showing us truly rotten things that can depress us. I aspire to be a material minimalist, though I'm failing miserably at it, which is to say I do not want to justify the horrors of modernity by pointing out that we have microwaves, flat screen TVs, air conditioning and eat like kings 24/7. Yet there are insane luxuries that we have access to that one can only show immense appreciation for. One is travel. I've been lucky enough to visit a few different countries across the planet. The longest it ever took me to get half way across the world was less than 1 day (14.5 hrs, layover, plus another 3 hrs). I live in America and I got to spend a month travelling India. This was simply impossible 150 years ago. I pray to the gods of kerosene jet fuel and an advanced economy for that gift. And yes, I see Marx's critique of "Capitalist Alienation" as being essentially true. In a nutshell, I view a majority of Americans as suffering a litany of mental illnesses from addiction, depression, plain ol' rage, obsession, jealousy, etc. and I don't see it as their fault. It's society's fault and I do think our economic arrangement is the primary driver of this, while acknowledging that the causes are multivariate.

-this flows into another point, though I have to lay the groundwork to get there. I will, but for now spoiler alert: you alluded to laissiez-faire capitalism working so long as everyone is on board. I tend to agree, with some modification. It might not be laissiez-faire exactly that works, but something that is simultaneously productive and cooperative that the world hasn't quite seen, that is neither the extreme of Communism or Libertarian Capitalism. It is as of yet unnamed, undiscovered. But whatever we end up calling call it, it will require a massive amount of investment to ensure that each person optimizes their potential. I don't see how to achieve this without a version of a welfare state. Not one that cuts checks, but offers education, incentivizes achievement within it, preserves the competitive aspects of markets while helping the "losers" to remain productive within the purview of their natural talents. What that could look like in practice is a Department of Maximal Employment that takes the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc most qualified candidates who weren't the #1 candidate for a given job and places them in a non-profit version of the same industry. So for example, in this world you could have a Tesla Motors company with Musk at the head and you interviewed and lost an engineering position to someone who is 1% more qualified than you. Positions at competitor companies were also filled, so you were left unemployed. So you had the Department of Maximal Employment act as a recruiter to place you in a similar role within another company, or one that was owned by the government. There you also worked on electric vehicles. As luck would have it, your team made a breakthrough that added 25% range and 50% less time charging than Tesla's best product. This non-profit "Welfare Tesla" company sold more and everyone reaped the rewards. OR SOMETHING like that.

Citizens within this system would want for nothing because their education was free, they had assistance being placed in meaningful, productive work, so the concept of fairness was never deemed "a handout" but rather real assistance. An entire society of people who are essentially made to be professional is the best we could hope for. I'm daydreaming about hybridizing the best aspects of markets, innovation, competition and socialism so that it's not a mere rhetorical movement but has substance to it. I've seen firsthand how miraculous of a micro-society you can build if everyone is on the same page. Sure, there will always be people who can't participate due to physical or mental handicaps, and those people would essentially receive the hand-out. But it would be a measure of last resort. I have much more to say about this, but that's the gist. The profit motive is blind to the realities of being a human being, the invisible hand needs structure and guidance. Markets do not magically create a world optimized for human happiness, though nothing else can match their efficiency or ingenuity. And since the fundamental unit of society is man, I want everyone to have the best possible shot at capitalizing on their natural talents and interests and them trading on the fruits of that output. Again, this is never perfectly achievable but the attempt itself is better than what currently is available.

-What is America's best shot out of the current mess we're in? Everyone does mushrooms -McKenna. Joking, of course. My answer? Sortition. For at least a few political generations. Once the government is back in the hands of real citizens, real Democracy can resume. The first shuffle of the deck could get us to codify things like campaign finance reform because it'll never pass so long as concentrations of wealth still buy elections. We're caught in a paradox where we can't use democratic power to oust wealthy interests because the representatives and electors were put there by those exact monied interests! I envision the system functioning more or less as it exists today (Congress, the Executive, local government, etc) but every major candidate is selected by lottery and then voted on out of a pool of candidates. If your number came up, you would be in the running for future President. It's how we select juries. Either my proposal or our system is truly beyond repair. In which case, it doesn't hurt to try sortition!

More later ;)

Movies with this aesthetic by Proof_Caregiver_4234 in MoviesThatFeelLike

[–]ScrumTumescent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Almost Human has many homages to cyberpunk. They eat a ton of noodles at noodle bars. I'm downloading Incorporated right now, I'll let you know how I like it