Every day, we are exposed to various forms of media. People are attempting to manipulate us, influence us, and encourage us to perform certain actions (usually spend money). Without media literacy, you are doomed to a life of being bamboozled, tricked, and fooled all day.

Have you ever been falsely accused? Misrepresented? Besmirched? you know how painfully frustrating it can be. Well, one man has faced this, and I don't think his name will ever be cleared.

Come Dine With Me

Come Dine With Me is a British show which has four contestants serving dinner at their home. The best host(ess) wins prize money. Most of the entertainment comes from seeing the homes of different people, and the ways they attempt to entertain others. Commentary is provided by Dave Lamb, who can be quite hilarious at times.

The show has been a success and it has since been sold to other countries, and spin-offs have been produced, including Celebrity Come Dine With Me and Couples Come Dine With Me. Today, we'll be looking at a 2016 episode which has been commonly used as an example of being a sore loser.

The guests

This episode takes place in East Oxfordshire. These are the contestants:

>Charlotte Hughes - She's the youngest contestant. Very bubbly, optimistic, and down-to-earth.

>Adam Mastroani - He is an American student who is nerdy.

>Jane Smith - She's a policewoman. She admits she likes offending and shocking.

>Peter Marsh - Peter is a salesman, quite portly, and someone who cares about class

For the remainder of the article, I'll be referring to this video which contains the full episode.

Out come the knives - Evening 1

In many ways, women are oppressed in society. They have to face sexism in the workplace, they are dominated in the home, and many religions posit women as lesser beings. Despite this, men are also mistreated in many ways. Most notably, men are subjected to body standards, and they are harshly judged for not conforming.

Let's take weight for instance. It is far more socially acceptable to insult a man's weight than the opposite is. I believe this is why Jane, on the first night, starts off by insulting Peter quite harshly. She says the only thing he is good at is a pie-eating contest. Note that this comes after he shows some vulnerability by making a joke about his own weight. This moment occurs at 8:20

For the most part, Peter takes it in stride, then she flat-out calls him fat while patting his corpulent belly. This is shocking because she is fat as well. Nevertheless, Peter does not retaliate.

Out come the knives - Evening 2

The second evening is at Adam's house. The meal is pretty terrible, but Peter lets slip that he would like to be Prime Minister. Jane immediately shuts him down, letting him know that his dream is foolish. Is his dream realistic? Probably not. But there's no need to be a huge butthole when someone shares their dreams at a dinner table. At this point, it is evident that Jane doesn't think much of Peter. Once again, Peter takes it in stride, but he's annoyed.

Out come the knives - Evening 3

The third evening, we see Peter strike back. This is the point where I also get highly annoyed. They are talking about their lookalikes, and Peter says Jane looks like Victoria Beckham. This occurs at 33:00 Obviously an insult, and everyone immediately jumps to Jane's defence! To recap, at this point Jane has said:

>you can only win a pie eating contest

>you're fat

>your dreams are shit

And he dares make one snarky comment and suddenly he's a rude c*nt?! People are way too sensitive to women getting insulted, without realizing men don't like it either when we're called fat.

Out come the knives - Evening 4

Things hit a climax on our final evening and this is where the iconic meme moments come from. Everyone is sitting at a table for dinner at Pete's house. They begin talking about their impression of each other, and everyone is polite until we come to Jane. She just lets it rip on him, tearing apart his entire personality. This moment occurs at 45:00She says:

>your confidence is undeserved

>calls him pompous

He retorts by calling her a fat troll, and low and behold this is the point where people say it's gone too far! She was allowed to sit in this man's home and insult him to his face non-stop, but god forbid he calls a woman fat! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. All the other guests are so sympathetic to Jane, who is not receiving anything she hasn't dished first.

At the end of the meal its time to pick a winner. Peter comes last, and in the commentary, the guests say that the sour mood ruined the evening. So good job Jane for fricking up this man's evening. Peter finally pops his top and tells Jane she "has all the grace of a reversing dump truck without any tires on". Charlotte also gets insulted and quite honestly she deserves it because she never comments on the cruelty Peter faces yet jumps to defend fat Jane.

Since the show Peter and his husband have spoken to the Mirror and stated that "What's shown is not all that happens and people will believe what they're shown." I believe you Peter, I really do. The Mirror adds:

>He'd had "hundreds" of people contact him on Twitter which is why he has now locked his account and doesn't want to "fuel the fire" by commenting further.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/come-dine-mes-peter-marsh-7120097

To conclude, this double standard is what makes women in the workplace problematic. If ever conflict should arise, all a woman has to do is cry or feel sad and she's won. Any retort on your part will be magnified because you're attacking an innocent girl. There is no woman alive who has never pulled the "I'm just a girl" card, from CEOs to cashiers trying to get out of a speeding ticket. No woman is innocent.

Next time we will discuss the morality of JiDion. The woman posted here is named Sava Schultz. She has a black boyfriend.

If there's one thing we all share in common, it's that we need food to live. Food is our sustenance and without it, we perish. Some of us eat too little and become skinny. Others eat too much and become fat. Regardless, at the end of the day, we're all eating.

Children, especially young infants, cannot obtain their own food. Hence, it is the job of the parents to ensure that the child receives the sustence they require. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case and there are some parents who abandon their responsibility. Today I'll briefly discuss two cases of parents who let their children starve to death. My writing won't be all too animated, and you'll find out why in the conclusion.

The Deadly Vacation

Who doesn't like a good vacation? It's a chance to get away from the stresses of life, see new places, and maybe even enjoy a holiday fling. But what if the stressor is your own child? Suddenly, a vacation becomes a dark deed.

Kristel Candelario wanted to go on vacation. But her pesky 16 month old child Jailyn would take the fun out of it. So, she decided to leave the child in the crib while she jetted off to Detroit and Puerto Rico for ten days. While Kristel was on the beach, Jailyn defacated all over herself and ate the waste as her only source of sustenance. Of course, this turned the situation deadly and the child perished. After the ten day long holiday, Kristel returned home to a poop-covered dead child. She changed the child's clothing before calling 911, claiming to have found the child not breathing.

Of course, upon investigation, it was found that she had abandoned her baby who starved to death. Upon receiving her life sentence, the judge described Kristel's actions as the ultimate act of betrayal. Do you agree? What do you think was going on in Kristel's mind?

The Dirty Home

Seth Welch and Tatiana Fusari had a child named Mary Welch. They did not treat the child very well. CPS found traces of THC in the child, suggesting that the parents were blazing around the infant which is no laughing matter.

Mary was heavily malnourished but the parents refused to seek medical assistance, citing religious reasons. They say God dwells in a cleanly home. Their house must have been the domain of Satan because it was found to have roaches and vermin and mould. For unknown reasons, the parents witheld food from the baby. The likely cause is that they were too wrapped up in their drug-fueled life.

Eventually, Mary succumbed to malnourishment, and the pair were charged with negligent homicide and were sentenced to life. Prior to sentencing, when Seth was told he was facing a life sentence, he made the soyjack face.

This is no laughing matter however.

Conclusion

I can't sleep. I've stopped taking benzos and I feel sick. My head is pounding, I feel like puking and I am constantly moody and agitated. I feel like I need benzos like an infant needs breastmilk. I started playing Red Dead Redemption today. Very cool, but also very slow-paced. I like Bonny McFarlane and walking around the ranch. I think it captures the "Western" aesthetic better than its successor.

Evening all.

I don't know how I feel about inhabiting this place. But I do know I can use it to draft.

Shiri's Slippers

Long time readers will know of my grudge with Scott Alexander, high priest of the SFBA Rationalist Cult. Previously it was suggested that we begin a bombing run of their spaces but I called a 'hold.' Honestly there's no time like the present.

Ultimately my problem with these people is that the demand the status of seriousness without being willing to do the work to be serious. In forums like /r/theschism or themotte, the topics of the day have been, bizarrely, subtracted out of the conversation.

The most important political conversation happening today is about the Supreme Court ruling on the immunity which a President enjoys.

You won't see this talked about.

See I used to think that Scott Alexander's "You Are Still Calling Wolf" was the most damaging piece Scott ever wrote. For his own reputation. For the political damage it did to the brains of his followers.

Scott Alexander doesn't think of himself as a cult leader of course, even though his followers do, and have regular struggle sessions about this fact. See this hilarious exchange in which a twitter thread praises Scott Alexander for not being a prophet.

Now I can't assume everyone has familiarity with the spiritual mechanisms Scott Alexander has engaged with. To recap: Scott Alexander self-consciously wrote Unsong to imitate schizophrenic individuals attempting to write a holy text. Scott Alexander copied the prophet motion without, apparently, understanding what it meant that he did this for his followers.

Then his followers didn't do this either.

The other very very funny recurrence at work here is the SFBA Rationalist Cult's founder, whose work included a number of overtly spiritual calls, led to an early incident in the cult history where they linked hands and sang "We are not a cult." To this day SFBA Rationalist Cultists, when they gather, engage in praise of the founder under an ambiguous amount of irony. And as you all know at this point: in a post-ironic world, all expression is genuine. (I'm referring here to the Valentine's Day musical that some postrats put on as a dating show.)

So these people all have this habitual denial of their spiritual connection. They Think They're Atheists, and atheists can't be in a cult. And if it is a cult, they think it's a benign one, a harmless one, if they're pressed. But secretly, they believe they are an elevated specimen of human thinker, and this was accomplished with Shiri's Slippers.

I thought they were a harmless cult when I first encountered them. The most devastating review of the founder's work was always: what's novel in it isn't good, and what's good in it isn't novel. The SFBA Rationalist Cult literally bricked a bunch of minds in the 2010s and we're only still figuring this out.

Because the consequences of Scott Alexander's foray into politics were that he was one of the foremost beacons of fascism denialism. These people all had a grudge against the academy. They think they're better than schooling. But then they create their own forms and fall down dead wrong.

It turns out that the fools at the academy are better equipped.

There's this crackpot tinge of resentment against the fools at the academy for rejecting their founder's bad writing as bad writing. This is one of the things that make them less a harmless cult and more a destructive torment nexus of incompetence. It's not a coincidence that these people developed idiot confidence and SBF is now under arrest for Big Fraud. They're all frauds. They can't even function as a cult because of their bizarre denial complex around their cultishness.

The consequentialist argument against the utility of the SFBA Rationalist Cult goes something like:

The consequences of Scott Alexander's writing is an island of people separated from mainstream intellectual politics. They're really alone out there.

Fascism

At this point I think it's more important than ever to drag Scott Alexander's flock kicking and screaming into accepting that they were wrong about the fascism. That doesn't mean that I need them to immediately endorse the use of the term 'fascism.'

If there's one thing that I wish they understood, it's that whatever it is that Trumpism represented, the people who were warning of the danger Trump faced were not overreacting. The wolf was real. This incompetence and waste of energy in our politics is an authoritarian bound now by legal processes. They seemed to think that Trump could never succeed at instituting a fascistic purge, and that therefore the people who were warning of Trump's desire to implement a fascist purge were overreacting.

Whether or not the wolf can succeed is somewhat independent of whether or not the wolf exists.

But the real bad wrong turn that Scott Alexander took was writing "Shiri's Scissors."

Shiri's Scissors

Scott postulated a class of controversial statement that caused irrational behavior in people, dividing them from one another. And I was confused by this at first because I was at this point understanding that these people coin phrases as if by instinct. What Scott Alexander was pointing to with "Shiri's Scissors" was the mere word

CONTROVERSIAL.

This is what made Shiri's Scissors an unnecessary concept and bad writing. Controversial topics have always existed.

And I tried to take this up with someone in Scott Alexander's circle and they resisted my notion that it was a pointless concept.

Only now do I understand that there's an alchemical process at work in Shiri's Scissors: it allows people to view controversy as enabling irrational behavior and therefore discarding them.

Instead of controversy being an invitation to dispute, a marker around discourse's present topics of conversation, Shiri's Scissor allowed these cultists to subtract themselves from discourse.

Controversial topics have always existed. Concepts which justified disregarding people who reacted to controversial topics have not.

With Shiri's Scissors

Scott Alexander Cut The Cord

TETHERING

His Cult

To Political Reality

Whether or not you want to use the term fascist, the gathering of physical forces armed with actual weapons to assault the Capitol on 1/6 was an act of war which is exactly the kind of thing the leftists have been warning about. But Scott Alexander and his flock aren't tuned into the Supreme Court hearing today on the most important subject of most thinking minds.

They put Shiri's Slippers on and just walked away. Right off of the map (IN POLITICS THE TERRITORY IS THE MAP IS THE TERRITORY) into a domain of their own making, still bitter at the fact that other people dared find their intellectual contribution bad.

See Shiri's Scissors/Slippers, as a concept, create a reality in which there's just these bizarre artifacts in discourse which are incomprehensible. It makes discourse not just unnecessary but impossible because it contains within it the assumption of the unreasonable (AND THEREFORE, TO THESE BRICKED CULTISTS, INCOMPREHENSIBLE) nature of those with which they interacted with politically.

Postscripts

Cult Takes on Christian Nationalism

An interesting sampling of the topics du jour of these spaces. Both TheMotte and TheSchism platformed this curious bit of "rationality" around the decrease in Christian Nationalism by raw percent. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is motivated reasoning: these people want to believe that fears of a Christian theocracy are overstated. TheMotte, and TheSchism.

It's not within their capacity to understand that a threatened minority might resort to fascism, the fascism might drive people away from the church, and that Christian Nationalism can still be a very real threat. These are the people who have said nothing about the Trump Supreme Court case.

Cult Takes on Lab Leak Origins for Coronavirus

Now I will admit that I'm more willing to believe that COVID came from zoonosis than I was before engaging this material. But I want to share some reading I've done in Blood Money, a book about Chinese mindsets and tactics in dealing with the US as an adversary.

Roughly, the Wuhan lab was built with the help of French scientists. Then the Chinese government kicked the French scientists out.

It was always a possible black site.

Scott Alexander's coverage of his cult's perfect thinking about perfect thinking about viruses is one of the worst things Scott Alexander wrote, but not the most damaging.

As mentioned earlier, the DEFUSE grant was rejected. Further, the grant said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for finding the viruses, and the University of North Carolina would do all the gain-of-function research. This was a reasonable division of labor, since UNC was actually good at gain-of-function research, and WIV mostly wasn't. They had done a few very simple gain-of-function projects before, but weren't really set up for this particular proposal and were happy to leave it for their American colleagues.

Even if WIV did try to create COVID, they couldn't have. As Yuri said, COVID looks like BANAL-52 plus a furin cleavage site. But WIV didn't have BANAL-52. It wasn't discovered until after the COVID pandemic started, when scientists scoured the area for potential COVID relatives. WIV had a more distant COVID relative, RATG-13. But you can't create COVID from RATG-13; they're too different. You would need BANAL-52, or some as-yet-undiscovered extremely close relative. WIV had neither.

Are we sure they had neither? Yes. Remember, WIV's whole job was looking for new coronaviruses. They published lists of which ones they had found pretty regularly. They published their last list in mid-2019, just a few months before the pandemic. Although lab leak proponents claimed these lists showed weird discrepancies, this was just their inability to keep names consistent, and all the lists showed basically the same viruses (plus a few extra on the later ones, as they kept discovering more). The lists didn't include BANAL-52 or any other suitable COVID relatives - only RATG-13, which isn't close enough to work.

Could they have been keeping their discovery of BANAL-52 secret? No. Pre-pandemic, there was nothing interesting about it; our understanding of virology wasn't good enough to point this out as a potential pandemic candidate. WIV did its gain-of-function research openly and proudly (before the pandemic, gain-of-function wasn't as unpopular as it is now) so it's not like they wanted to keep it secret because they might gain-of-function it later. Their lists very clearly showed they had no virus they could create COVID from, and they had no reason to hide it if they did.

If there's one thing I want you to understand, it's this:

These people have almost no ability to understand deception.

The notion that China lies about the purposes of the lab just doesn't enter the picture.

Are you sure the Chinese would not use US science to create a virus that then escaped?

And then lie about it?

We're not going to know the truth. China may never reveal what it knows. But these people are not very good at finding the truth because they're not very good at understanding lies.

And these are the people who believe that AI can be 'aligned.'

They fundamentally don't understand humans. They don't understand deception.

They refuse to see the wolf of the present political era. They have deliberately chosen to walk away from mainstream politics with their Magic Stupid Slippers.

This is what a truly dangerous cult looks like. Most dangerous cults self-destruct. The bad ones are those that get big enough to confuse a large enough number of people.

POV: You're Scott Alexander and you're tired at people yelling at you about the fascism your side missed.

There's also a pattern I want to discourage, where one side will come up with some new trivial finding, or re-dredge up and re-package something that everyone already everyone else had already considered, then release it as THE SMOKING GUN! Then they release another SMOKING GUN!, and another, and after five or six SMOKING GUNS, they say their opponents are stubborn and refuse to yield to evidence, since they've obstinately ignored every single SMOKING GUN! without changing their probability even a little bit.

I've saved the chaser. This is how Scott chose to close his coverage.

But fifth, if the coronavirus' story is a comedy, all of this - Rootclaim, the debate, the $100K - is a tragedy. Saar got $100 million, decided to devote a big part of his life to improving human reasoning, and came up with a really elegant system. He was so confident in his system, and in the power of open discussion, that he risked his money and reputation on an accept-all-comers debate offer . Then some rando who nobody had ever heard of accepted the challenge, turned out to be some kind of weird debate savant, and won, turning what should have been Rootclaim's moment of triumph into a bitter defeat. Totally new kind of human suffering, worthy of Shakespeare.

I look forward to the movie, especially seeing who plays the dashing young blogger who helped the participants meet.

POV: You're the high priest of a cult of reason, worshiping a false god of perfect information, perfectly understood. These people don't just believe that salvation is possible through brainthinking alone, they believe that they have achieved salvation and are enlightened by their own intelligence.

Even as they stand in proud ignorance of contemporary politics.

Greetings Dramatards!

It's been stage 6 Loadshedding this fricking week, so I've been very unproductive at work, cuz we've had between 4-6 fricking hours of no power each day. I literally sometimes just sit at the office like a baboon waiting for the power to come on. Our glorious Free State communist leaders were very wise when they used up all our Power Station coal reserves so that they could party uninterrupted during Easter Weekend, now we have to make up for the short fall with a much higher than average power-cutting cuz we used up our Province's allotted coal rations, I'm literally not joking. Luckily, our Capybara overlord coded a much superior site than Preddit, and the Create Post feature saves all your shit before posting, so i can take forever to vomit out wordsoup, and search articles. Typing on my phone is a pain in my butt.

Today I wanna talk about the infamous Clicks Racist Shampoo ad of 2020. Clicks is a Pharmacy chain in South Africa, and filled a niche pretty quickly after public healthcare pharmacies went to the gutter pretty quick once the ANC had their tendrils all over it. Clicks is a pretty good store chain and I get all my glue for sniffing from them. Back in September 2020, the draconian Lockdowns were slowly lifting, after thoroughly destroying the South African economy, and obliterating industry sectors like Restaurant business, in spite of proof that COVID was not even remotely as deadly as advertised, especially against south africans, compared to geriatric 99 year old crippled Italian geezers.

https://gdc.unicef.org/resource/coronavirus-africa-five-reasons-why-covid-19-has-been-less-deadly-elsewhere

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53998374

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-in-africa-why-is-the-death-rate-so-low-12236347

It's a story for another Longpost, but so many people were surprised at the fact that South Africans were effectively almost immune compared to their European peers, especially against places like Italy where ambulances had to ferry mountains of bodybags from Rome to cremate en masse - during the 1st 2 months of COVID's explosive spread across the globe. Meanwhile south africans in shanty towns were were licking doorknobs and parting in Shabeen clubs and ignoring State lockdown warnings left and right, and ...... not dying like flies? Why Styven Why

I'll tell you the open secret, basically the healthcare and sanitary conditions of places like Europe are so high that people live much longer lives that they would have, had they been born in places like South Africa were the environment is much more harsh, we are practically near zero good public healthcare, and basically drink raw unfiltered swage like REAL MEN. Basically the wheat had already been seperated from the chaff, and natural selection had already run its course. So when COVID came, most people whom were like 60+ old were those whom had the most robust immune systems on a national scale. Meanwhile places like Italy, with one of the highest elderly populations on Earth, and with a fragile population that has basically been kept alive solely through obescene healthcare, fell over like sandcastles the moment a more deadly than average virus ravaged their ranks. In summary: Euros weak 👎 , Africa Stronk! 💪

Anyways uhm, so in August 2020, the last of many of the harshest lockdowns were being lifted after 6 months, and it became apparent that the very poor South Africa would desperately need to reactive all of its economic sectors so as not to completely collapse. Many businesses were desperate, even big chains like CLicks, so had started to shit out heaploads of funky quirky ads to lock in lots of peeps as quickly as possible to recuperate their customer base to pre-COVOD levels. So they hired wingnuts to create ads.

And oh boiii, did we get an explosive front row seat to national drama when a galaxy brain intern thought it a good idea to create an ad featuring Black woman's hair as being the before Image of those weight loss Verimark swindler crap, and Hwite woman as the after perfected image result!

https://www.wdkx.com/world-news-protests-in-south-africa-over-racists-shampoo-advertisement/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54102625

Very soon many black South African moral busybodies, including the ever infamous EFF and Julias Malema, were protesting & trashing Clicks' shops nationwide. The lockdown had been long, and peeps had energy they needed to expend. The biggest r-sluration was that the stupidity involved here was that Black protestors were destroying Clicks shops, but that the ad wasn't actually MADE by clicks! It was another private company from overseas who created the shampoo, Clicks only housed the brand in their shop lmoa. A bunch of shops got destroyed or firebombed

https://www.unilever.co.za/news/press-releases/2020/tresemme-south-africa-apology-on-recent-images-published-on-clicks-website/

Of course the TRESemme shampoo company apologized like cucks and pulled the specific brand of offending shampoo, and was we'll make it up to you guys, we'll donate 10k p*ssy pads, plz buy our junk

A bunch of libtards were crying crocodile tears about how terrible this intention DEGRADATION OF BLACK WOMAN's dignity

Our old friend Juju Malema would insert himself into the controversy and add fuel to the fire before Clicks corporate heads could even respond, and started shouting about how this systemic racism wouldn't stand by validating destroying Clicks' shops, again ins spite of the fricking fact that Clicks were NOT responsible for making the ad.

No matter how much non r-slur journolasts tried to set the record straight, black peeps were and nothing could contain their indignity! The protestors demanded the Clicks chain shut down their shops for at least 5 days so that they would lose revenue. The other 90% of Clicks stores not being trashed ignored them because they were pharmacies for people who needed medecine. Watch the video - the stupidity is astonishing.

Some U-tube indignity by the r-slurred commenters of the above video.

@Allende

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea, who you might remember from my coverage of his lolcow wife, has run into a bit of a diplomatic scandal.

This ajussi thinks he has magical powers lmao.

Failures leading up to...

He went on a world tour that should have been a welcome escape from domestic politics given his low approval rating. But apparently his psychic powers aren't as good as he thinks. He failed to forsee everything going wrong that possibly could. First he went to London but missed Queen Elizabeth's funeral, blaming traffic for being late. Then it was on to the UN General Assembly, a place where all world leaders love to do a photo op and look dignified. He announced that he was going to have summit meetings with the Japanese PM and President Biden to b-word about Korea's grievances.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/BOOK_OF_CONDOLENCE_(52367854142).jpg/640px-BOOK_OF_CONDOLENCE_(52367854142).jpg

Signing the book of condolences after he failed to attend the funeral.

The Koreans want compensation for s*x slaves taken by the Japanese during WW2. The Japanese argue that they already paid massive amounts of reparations in exchange for the Koreans dropping all claims against them in 1965. Given that Korea never suffered the kind of devastation that China and the Philippines did, it really was a relatively sweet deal tbqh. So this is not a conversation that the Japanese wanted to have. They came out publicly saying that they had been talking about a possible summit but hadn't agreed to anything yet. In the end, Yoon managed to get a brief 30 minute meeting with the Japanese PM and no indication that the Korean demands are being taken seriously.

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