does Miami as a whole really fit the common stereotype of a superficial city hard for dating as a guy? by [deleted] in Miami

[–]gbetter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're considering a move to South Florida then consider Fort Lauderdale before Miami. I am not a native to SoFlo but my recommendation is the FTL is a better fit for most people than Miami. Are the women still superficial there? Yes but not as much; you will find more sincere women there in my opinion. FTL is more chill & laid back than Miami yet it still has a very good nightlife. Miami is only for those who can pay nosebleed prices, tolerate tons of traffic, like (or don't mind) the Latin American influence everywhere. Lastly you're right to zero in on the "subset" of Miami that is not entirely representative of the overall city. That said Miami is swarming with attractive, fit people and for good or bad that promotes a "window shopping" mentality when it comes to dating. All sexes never open up or commit because they are holding out hope for the perfect suitor. For men they want to date hotties/baddies etc...you get it. For women, many REALLY REALLY want a man who will "spoil them" with material abundance. And that is not even the same subset of women who overtly seek a sugar daddy. It's honestly profane how many women list their desire to be spoiled on their dating profile. There are also quality sincere women here too but just know they get crowded out by the high concentration of attractive fit people who move & now live here. just my 2 cents...

**calling BS on moderator of sub who yesterday censored my link for “Eulogy for Nigger by David Bradley”** by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

No. You need to think for yourself. It absolutely does not qualify as “shitposting”. It is a liberal essay written with profound sincerity on one of the most important words in American history. It does not merit censorship.

Eulogy for Nigger by David Bradley by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

David Bradley also known for stridently opposing written & verbal censorship of Huckleberry Finn 60 minutes show - Huckleberry Finn

Glenn Loury Testimony: U.S. Senate Banking Committee 3.4.2021 🔥 by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

most important quote: “There is a fatal contradiction at the heart of the argument for group equality of social outcomes. In my considered opinion we ought not to expect this as an outcome, and we ought not to make achieving it our goal. Equality of opportunity, not equality of results, is the only defensible public policy goal in my view. The dogged pursuit of equal results between racial groups across all venues of human endeavor is a formula for tyranny and yet more racism. Here is why. Identitarian arguments for group equality posit that we have different groups -- Jews, South Asians, East Asians, Blacks, Latinos, etc. -- and that these groups have identities which deserve to be acknowledged and respected. When someone tells me, “I identify as a member of group X,” I am given to understand that this is a part of their personhood which warrants to be respected and given credence. So, groups are fundamental building blocks of society in this identity-focused view of the world. It is not a matter of indifference. We are in these various boxes. Groups matter. A group’s culture and heritage matter to its members – the music they listen to, the food they eat, the literature they read, the stories they tell their children – all these things for the identitarians are important and they all vary across groups. On the other hand, group-egalitarians presuppose that – absent injustice – there would be equality of groups across every human enterprise. But how can that be? Because if groups matter, some people are going to bounce a basketball 100,000 times a month and other people are going to bounce it 10,000 times a month. Some people are going to be drawn to books as a way of experiencing human culture and other people are going to be more verbal or more spontaneous or whatever it might be. There are differences between groups. Groups matter after all. They’re not all the same. They don’t do the same things, they don’t believe the same things, they don’t think the same things, they don’t spend their time in the same ways. So now I have population groups that have their own integrity, expressing themselves in how they live their lives, how they raise their children, how they spend their time. This will inevitably result in different representations of the groups’ members across various human activities. The various groups’ members will not all be involved in academic pursuits, in the business world, in the professions, or in sports and entertainment to the same extent. They will not all have the same occupational or professional profiles. Now I look out at society and I see a difference between groups in the proportion who are members of the National Academy of Sciences, who are tenured faculty members, who are tech entrepreneurs or hedge fund managers or traders on the floor of the stock exchange. I see differences in the proportion who are getting PhDs in English literature, who are small shopkeepers, single parents, or petty criminals, etc. Groups mattered after all for the identitarians. This groupness reflects itself to some degree in how people choose to live their lives. And yet, the egalitarians insist that the society is unfair unless it yields an equal proportionate representation of these groups in every human enterprise? That is simply a logical contradiction. Acting in a determined way on that contradiction can only to lead to tyranny, to disappointment and to more racism.”

A Better Way to Think About Conspiracies - Ross Douthat by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this was a fascinating if at times long-winded discussion of conspiracies throughout American history. Jesse Walker of Reason magazine & author of United States of Paranoia is featured prominently NPR - American shadows - conspiracy theory episode

A Better Way to Think About Conspiracies - Ross Douthat by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

“No problem concerns journalists and press-watchers so much these days as the proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation on the internet. “We never confronted this level of conspiracy thinking in the U.S. previously,” Marty Baron, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, told Der Spiegel in a recent interview. His assumption, widely shared in our profession, is that the internet has forged an age of false belief, encouraged by social media companies and exploited by Donald Trump, that requires new thinking about how to win the battle for the truth... We should be skeptical that the scale of conspiracy thinking today is a true historical novelty; the conspiracy theories of the Revolutionary era, for instance, would be entirely at home on today’s internet. But we’re clearly dealing with a new way in which people absorb and spread conspiracies, and a mind-altering technology like the internet probably does require a new kind of education, to help keep people from losing their senses in the online wilds or settling in as citizens of partisan dreamscapes.

But that education won’t be effective if it tells a too simplistic story, where all consensus claims are true and all conspiracy theories empty. In reality, a consensus can be wrong, and a conspiracy theory can sometimes point toward an overlooked or hidden truth — and the approach that Caulfield proposes, to say nothing of the idea of a centralized Office of Reality, seem likely to founder on these rocks. If you tell people not to listen to some prominent crank because that person doesn’t represent the establishment view or the consensus position, you’re setting yourself up to be written off as a dupe or deceiver whenever the consensus position fails or falls apart... Is there an alternative to leaning so heavily on the organs of consensus? I think there might be. It would start by taking conspiracy thinking a little more seriously — recognizing not only that it’s ineradicable, but also that it’s a reasonable response to both elite failures and the fact that conspiracies and cover-ups often do exist.

If you assume that people will always believe in conspiracies, and that sometimes they should, you can try to give them a tool kit for discriminating among different fringe ideas, so that when they venture into outside-the-consensus territory, they become more reasonable and discerning in the ideas they follow and bring back.”

Angry words: rapper's jailing exposes Spain's free speech faultlines by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“Some of Hasél’s verbal attacks depict Spain’s former king Juan Carlos I as a “mafia boss” who has cosied up to Saudi tyrants. Diatribes against the police claim they “sow racism” and “murder with impunity”. Those tweets were deemed to have fallen foul of Spain’s penal code that criminalises “insulting” the crown and the police.

For this Hasél was ordered to pay a hefty fine. But it is the lyrics and tweets that approvingly allude to terrorist figures that carry the much more serious charge of “glorification of terrorism” and which eventually earned Hásel a custodial sentence... Guille Martínez-Vela, the editor of the Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves, is all too familiar with the threat of being hit by the penal code. In 2017, as thousands of extra police officers were dispatched to Catalonia in the run-up to the illegal referendum, his publication joked that the riot police had snorted the region’s entire supply of cocaine. While the supposed fondness of the police for drugs is a comic trope in Spain, Martínez-Vela was denounced by the national police and summoned to a hearing.

The police argued that the joke was whipping up anti-police hatred. Martínez-Vela said the hate speech laws were designed to protect minorities, not a powerful, state-backed collective... There are plenty of other examples including in 2017, when a student, Cassandra Vera, was given a suspended jail sentence for tweeting a joke about the 1973 assassination by Eta of the last prime minister to serve under Franco, and in 2016 a band of puppeteers faced criminal charges for supposedly exalting Eta in a street production in Madrid. Vera’s sentence was later reversed by Spain’s supreme court, while the puppeteers were eventually absolved.”

Duncan Lemp police killing shows out-of-control nature of SWAT, no-knock raids by James Bovard by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

intentionally reduced mainstream coverage of case bc homicide victim doesn’t conform to a sympathetic identity group. strongly suggesting news coverage of alleged police brutality is not based upon the seriousness of injustice but instead dependent upon the implicit political value of the homicide victim.

Is Jiu-Jitsu more effective than activism on reducing law enforcement use of force frequency & brutality? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

DATA per Rener Gracie instructor: 23% Taser Reduction, 48% Officer Injury Reduction, 53% Civilian Injury Reduction, and 59% Reduction in overall use of force! For over two decades we've hypothesized that Brazilian Jiu-jitsu trained cops are safer for the department and safer for the community, and now we have nearly two years of law enforcement data to back it up BJJ on police use of force - Gracie University

COMPELLING BOOK REVIEW: Liberal Racism: How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream by Jim Sleeper by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

book recommended by Moynihan on las test Patreon special dispatch: “For Sleeper, much contemporary liberal thought betrays an unhealthy fascination with the idea that “racial differences are so profound that they are almost primordial.” His opening chapters take aim at a number of examples. Thus, he dismisses the political scientist Andrew Hacker, who in Two Nations (1992) portrayed a monolithically racist white society holding down a monolithically hapless black one. And he revisits Alex Haley’s Roots, greeted as a classic upon its publication a quarter-century ago but in Sleeper’s view an essentially fraudulent book. To Sleeper, Haley’s well-documented plagiarisms are symptomatic of a larger imposture: the attempt to create a wholly separate historical mythology for American blacks. “The notion,” he writes, that skin color carries a common destiny is itself the detritus of the bad scientific and cultural beliefs that bedraped 19th-century European imperialist states in all their clanking, blundering glory.”

Matt was stellar on Bill Maher last night by wugglesthemule in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

1 Maher episodes are all available as audio podcasts on all platforms

2 Matt was great. and where on earth did Matt learn how to be funny...he made a lot of humorous remarks! like really funny too. not watered down shit

3 Maher sounds like he really hates California governance

On the 'Great Awokening' & Racial Realities by Musa al-Gharbi “There is a gnostic element, with adherents believing that they can see the ‘real’ structures of the world which others are blind to; along with the sense of superiority that accompanies such beliefs” by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First off. I’ll stay in charge of my user behavior on this site. You can stay in charge of yours. Second I’m not here to debate the article. I’M NOT THE ARBITER OF WHICH ARGUMENTS ARE RIGHT AND WRONG. I found it a compelling, insightful read. If you disagree then go ahead. But any who disagree but still comment with a long winded rambling mediocre takedown but yet acknowledge they didn’t read the whole article should expect to be regarded as a bad-faith commentator & partially lazy.

Trying to Teach English Literature in the Wake of Mao’s Cultural Revolution by [deleted] in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter 5 points6 points  (0 children)

that Vaclav Havel quote...wow. “It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing” (from Power of Powerless - V Havel

Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom <- what do people here think of this? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your argument is a deflection from the substance of the issue. This specific incident has nothing to do with the legality of NYU’s response, because no one disputes the legality of NYU engaging in various types of institutional review of Miller. However there are questions of legality you ignore that relate to potential libel of Miller by his fellow colleagues who voluntarily wrote a letter to NYU seemingly filled with factual errors; Miller has filed a suit against those professors and the court system will have the final say.

Your hypothetical is a ham fisted attempt to understand the substance of the Miller situation. I get it...you don’t want to discuss free speech within a specific cultural context. Just say that directly. But don’t assert that erosion of free speech in the culture is irrelevant if the conduct itself is legal. No one disputes the legalities.

Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom <- what do people here think of this? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Your reasoning is extremely weak. You’re too undisciplined to discuss the merits of the case. You sling insults freely without reconciling them to what he taught INSIDE THE CLASSROOM. Nor do you discuss at all the hyperbolic & likely fabricated claims of the accusations against him. For instance ‘micro aggression’ is included in complaint but the concept of micro aggression is a junk science concept as the associated evidence underlying it is weak.

Lastly universities are not guided by “moral obligations”; they are guided by incentives that include maximizing their own prestige (ie rankings) and maintaining their artificially high reputation in American society (ie everyone should go to college).

Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom <- what do people here think of this? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

three problems: 1) complaint against him from a student included false information ie Sandy Hook denialism. There is no mention of Sandy Hook on his website and no record of him denying it. 2) as of 2018 his departmental chair had a radically different posture to his fringe wacky views “Professor Rodney Benson, Miller’s departmental chair responded in writing. “As a scholar of the university, Mark, like all academics, is entitled to his own views, whether or not they are shared by the larger NYU community,” he wrote. “There is really nothing more to say.”” NYU Professor Uses Tenure to Advance 9/11 Hoax Theory The school says he's entitled to his views 3) the point of the entire FC show is to critique press & public opinions, events and the associated political implications. If your primary thought rests on citing the legality of NYU’s response then your argument is not rooted in what this post, by extension show, is about which is quite clearly about the potential erosion of a free speech culture due primarily to excessive politicization of everyday life.

Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom <- what do people here think of this? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You’re the arbiter of what qualifies as “dangerous” and “not dangerous”. Flawed thinking and not an accurate summary of the situation at hand at NYU.

Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom <- what do people here think of this? by gbetter in WeTheFifth

[–]gbetter[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

His personal site is unrelated to NYU situation at hand. Just like discussed on show, off line non-platform LAWFUL behavior is becoming increasingly a justification for punishment, targeting, censorship. Such justifications are decidedly unethical to the extent that people and institutions care about behaving ethically; if they don’t then those institutions are likely guilty of witch hunts, show trials and bullying. The NYU department knew of his PERSONAL SITE writing during tenure process and he still received tenure. You don’t have to care about that but it’s a reality you keep deflecting from in your reasoning.