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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • If you did it in the olde fashioneded way with a manual hammer, manually stoking the forge with a bellows, etc., then sure. But AFAIK modern blacksmithing is pretty similar to modern carpentry or welding or any other hobby where the machines do most of the work. It’s still a somewhat active hobby, compared to doing something with a computer. But, I don’t think a modern blacksmith is going to get huge arms from doing it.




  • A lot of these hobbies are wealth-adjacent.

    Playing an instrument: a good instrument isn’t cheap, and music lessons can be pretty expensive.

    Woodworking requires a lot of fairly expensive tools, and a space to do it. You can’t really have woodworking as a hobby if you live in a small studio apartment. You basically need a house, either one with a basement, a shed or a garage.

    Gardening: requires a garden, something you’re unlikely to have unless you have your own house.

    Photography: I don’t know anybody who is into photography who hasn’t sunk a lot of money into the hobby. There’s the cameras, the lenses, and even the software these days.

    Astronomy: see above.

    Hiking: not expensive on its own, but in North America it means being able to drive to a wilderness spot outside the city, so you pretty much require your own car.

    Archery and blacksmithing: again, requires a specialized space

    Now, I know that there are cheap options for a lot of these. A musician could be someone drumming on an upside-down pail. Someone who only has access to a hotplate could still experiment with food. Woodworking could be just whittling sticks found in the park. Gardening could just be tending to a small houseplant. But, are these the version of the hobbies the women are picturing when they’re imagining a potential mate doing the activity? Probably not.

    Meanwhile, a lot of the stuff at the bottom of the list are very cheap hobbies. Like being influenced by the “Manosphere” just requires access to social media, same with porn and “arguing online”.

    Honestly, it looks to me like if you sorted the list by “dollars per hour someone invested in that hobby is likely to spend” you’d get many of the same things at the top and many of the same ones at the bottom. Some of the few exceptions are writing and reading, which can be pretty cheap hobbies, but are still apparently very attractive.


  • Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. Basically online misogyny. People who blame women for everything, or think that there’s such a thing as an “alpha” man, or who use the word “cuck”. Basically incels, supposed “men’s rights activists”, date rapists and date rapists in training, etc.




  • It’s probably too rare. Like, woodworking is somewhat rare, but to do that you just need a basement or a shed or a garage or something. Blacksmithing actually requires a forge, so I’m assuming that far fewer people actually do it.

    With it being so rare, I bet that the women who don’t have any experience with a man who’s into blacksmithing don’t think to mention it, or haven’t really thought of it. And the ones who do have experience have had a mixed experience. Blacksmithing is loud and dirty so I bet the charm wears off quickly.



  • merctoGreentextAnon doubts WW2 Germany
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    2 days ago

    The Nazis based a lot of their racial laws on what was being done in the US, especially the south. Sure, the Allies included a diverse set of nations, but those nations were often incredibly racist too.



  • merctoGreentextAnon doubts WW2 Germany
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    2 days ago

    IMO the biggest deal here was the Royal Navy. The UK started the war still clinging on to an empire that included almost half the world. They protected that empire with the biggest navy in the world. That meant that once Germany went to war with Britain by invading Poland, Germany couldn’t ship in anything via the Atlantic or via the Mediterranean. When they were allies with the Russians, that at least meant that they had access to everything Russia had in abundance, but when they did the ol’ red beard thing, they were boxed in on 4 sides. Meanwhile, their enemies late in the war had become manufacturing powerhouses with access to vast amounts of natural resources.

    The whole story of U-Boats in WWII is really a story of how outmatched the German navy was. Rather than going toe-to-toe with the Royal Navy, the Germans had to snipe some of the constant shipments of goods flowing into the UK from around the globe. Even at the peak of their military power, they had ceded control of the seas to the British. Their only real naval force were stealth craft that could ambush and then run away. Since the British and then the Allies controlled the seas, it allowed them to invade by sea, first Sicily and then D-Day in France.

    So, without the Royal Navy, Germany would have had access to goods from around the world, and wouldn’t have been vulnerable to an invasion by sea in the later stages of the war.

    As for Russia, the bigger deal about getting within a few km of Moscow was that at the same time they were also getting very close to Baku. If they’d managed to control the Azerbaijani oil fields, it would have cut off oil supply to the USSR while gaining a huge oil supply for themselves.

    What the Germans did in WWII was very impressive, especially considering that 15 years before the start of WWII the German economy was in such a state of collapse that inflation was running at 3 million percent per month. Prices for regular goods doubled every 2 days. Kids were playing with stacks of bills because those stacks were effectively worthless. Germany went from being the losers of WWI paying massive reparations that destroyed their economy, to being a force able to conquer virtually an entire continent. Unfortunately, that continent lacked critical natural resources and so eventually they lost because they couldn’t keep up with the manufacturing powers of their enemies.





  • But is putting Robert Kennedy Jr. in charge of HHS the right way to fix them?

    Hahahahaha, no.

    I’m not sure the premise is even sound, that the CDC, FDA and NIH have “long needed drastic reform”. But, if that were true, you’d want an expert in leadership and management to address the problem, not a fucking nutjob. To reform those agencies, you’d need someone who the bureaucracies would trust has the same goals they do. Sure, there would always be people who would not want any reform, but you would also have allies who agree something needs to change, and who would support the necessary changes. Nobody at those agencies is going to listen to a fucking nutjob. Instead, they’d do everything possible to sabotage everything he was trying.

    “Back in 2017, RFK Jr. talked with then-President Trump about setting up a vaccine safety review commission”

    The fucking nutjob is an antivaxxer. That would be like putting a flat-earther in charge of NASA.

    The whole premise is stupid. An opinion piece in a rabidly libertarian rag declares that these agencies need reform, citing other opinion pieces articles from this same rabidly libertarian rag.

    These agencies may need some tweaks, but Reason magazine isn’t a reputable source for what changes are needed, and RFK junior is definitely not the person who should be in charge of anything. If he tries, at best he’ll merely fail. At worst he’ll do serious damage to these important agencies that will take years to undo.


  • merctoScience Memes@mander.xyz[Thread] Mental Math
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    5 days ago

    Ronaldo’s ego is incredible, and he’s almost always looking out for himself in everything he does. But, you can’t deny that he’s one of the best ever players. And his charisma means he’s a great choice for something like this where he has to perform and interact with all the “scientists”. Someone like Messi could do the same kinds of moves, but he wouldn’t be able to chat with the presenters and “scientists” between events in a natural way. (P.S. I love that they got someone named Ronald to be the ordinary guy who couldn’t do anything useful, that was just funny.)

    I also think Ronaldo genuinely cares about all the biomechanics and all that, as long as it’s something that applies to him, and that he could use to make himself better. A lot of other players just play on instinct and don’t want to have to think about it.


  • merctoScience Memes@mander.xyz[Thread] Mental Math
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    5 days ago

    Hearing is definitely part of it, but I imagine it’s only hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. After that it’s going to be far too quiet to hear until it gets close, and he’s obviously reacting long before that. Maybe hearing helps him adjust in the last tenth of a second, but he’s not hearing the ball’s entire flight.

    As for the body mechanics of a pitch or a kick, it is amazing. Like, a proper powerful punch involves leg muscles, hip muscles, waist muscles, chest muscles, and only then do you start to get to the arms. For most of us, the best way to realize how coordinated everything has to be is to try to do something with your wrong arm/leg. Everything that flows naturally on your strong side is just completely wrong on your weak side.