eigenrobot Profile picture
Jun 16, 2023 23 tweets 9 min read Read on X
the need for political groups to denigrate or idealize the past is an interesting phenomenon that isnt discussed with sufficient care i think

this is a really dreadful example of bad behavior but its helpful in highlighting how dumb this can make people and in which ways
for example there were a lot of polio cases in the early 1950s yeah

if i had to guess the spike may have been related to the baby boom

but the most notable thing about polio in the era was that the vaccine was released *into the public domain* in 1955

this was miraculous
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i havent had much success in finding data regarding womens mental health in the 1950s

s*icide figures might be most reliable as an indicator but unlike homicides there are more plausible issues here

a further issue is that these are not age adjusted, which matters

call it even Image
what is interesting is that mens suicide rates were as usual higher, but possibly noticably higher in the 50s

its curious to me that the dumb political cartoon ignores what I somewhat suspect was the most widespread mental health issue in the 50s that no one talks abt, PTSD
I dont have any proof of this but it seems likely reasonable to expect it may have been a problem, arguments about social reception and appreciation of warriors like those discussed in Sebastian Junger's _Tribe_ notwithstanding

I also have an anecdote
my great uncle was a sniper in Europe. reputedly a capable one. later in life he was an exceptional golfer.

when he demobilized he lived in a house down the street from his parents and for years would wake up in the middle of the night to run to his mother, screaming, to be held
so anyway thats probably under-discussed as a source of quiet misery for men in the 50s
no easy data on antigay sentiment

its plausible it was historically high though

arrests by entrapment were routine at least in public venues in major cities (and perhaps it would have been relatively difficult to meet in other circumstances, idk)
archive.is/YlBFK
i dont know what life was actually like for gay men in the 1950s. obviously in a lot of ways "not great" but the closet was sometimes a polite mutual fiction

eg: my extended family was well aware that another of my great uncles was gay. they remained close his whole life
a related matter is that the country was at least in some ways relatively relaxed about transgender people

when Christine Jorgensen's reassignment surgery was announced in 1952 it was billed as a Miracle of Science and the Army said, yeah, ok, we'll change your name, no prob


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the notion that american women "werent allowed" to go to college in the 1950s is risible

my maternal grandmother, born in the _1920s_, was a college-educated medical laboratory technician

this was in no way novel. america has had womens colleges for nearly 200 years
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on the point regarding molestation i frankly have no idea how to obtain data on this matter and i honestly would prefer not to look
my point is not that everything in the 1950s america was good or bad, and i hope ive not tried to covey either absurd extreme

if i had to _guess_ id say it was one of the strangest times in american history
yes we had just conquered half the world and we were suddenly richer than any people in history had ever been

but wed only half made it through two decades of war and poverty and revolution--korea itself was 1950-1953!

there were soviet spies everywhere, and they had the Bomb
images like the one that OP defaced were ads, right. they were kitsch

but you can learn alot from kitsch as ive said before
there are two deadly mistakes you can make looking at images like these

the first is to imagine that they were representative rather than aspirational; that things ever really were so uncomplicated


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the second and in my opinion more corrosive error is to perceive the difference between the idealized images and an often rough reality, then go further to refuse not only the possibility of approaching the ideal; but further still denying its value, were it somehow attained
the denial of the possibility or value of things good and transcendent is a sickness of the spirit

im sorry (not sorry) to be a mystic about this but its the most efficient means of conveying the mentality involved in nihilist aesthetics
this is an intermittent occurrence in culture but it seems to me that its reached a kind of recent zenith

@Vert_Noel and @keyofgeo pointed me at this @SMBCComics strip after id complained in verse about a parallel trend in written english

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i guess the point of this thread is that i am once again asking you to eschew luciferian despair and the ensuing embrace of hell for fear that you might not attain some heaven Image
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More from @eigenrobot

Jul 4
i get it now, this is legit. reddit objects are objects recommended to _entry-level enthusiasts_ by topical subreddits because they work well to improve lives over baseline with a relatively low level of effort for a majority of cases

reddit objects are high ROI!

for example,
r/strength_training reddit object

yeah i know other forums came first but its quintessential

is it right everywhere? does everyone need to be doing squats all the time? does it ignore aesthetics?

who cares! way better than default gym behavior Image
another example. r/malefashionadvice reddit objects for casual and business dress

unfortunately yeah all are not what they used to be and yeah those jeans should be selvedge Image
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Read 8 tweets
Jul 4
nearly broke a tooth eating a frozen pizza tonight

wonder how that got baked in Image
ive probably had several hundred frozen pizzas in my life so odds are its safe and economical to continue eating red baron pizzas at $5 a pop
this is good

im gonna mail it back and let them know their part went missing. im sure theyll be happy to be able to replace it
Read 4 tweets
Jun 27
they hate how little it takes for us to be happy
the women all want to kill her

it's beautiful Image
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i think maybe the term of art for this is "pickme"? idk

shes minmaxxing and shamelessly trading off homosocial status for heterosexual appeal

my theory is that women who are mad about this arent wrong to be but the specific reason for their anger is that shes a gender traitor
Read 5 tweets
Jun 27
realistically there's no way to stop people from tacitly or explicitly allocating taxes and benefits on the basis of race and large portions of the country have interests in this happening or ideological commitments to doing so

this is just our life now
supreme court rulings arent gonna change anything, no one gives a shit about the law on principle and its easy to obfuscate discrimination to taste

any direct government enforcement will i expect inevitably be straightforwardly politically motivated
the norms to which new immigrants are assimilating and young natives inculcated are immensely ethnically charged without any public and common ideal of transcending race for an american identity, an identity which frankly doesnt even exist anymore
Read 9 tweets
Jun 10
as long as we're sending insane ideas to @JDVance

does the federal government have to enforce laws everywhere or can it announce it won't?

because one funny thing the administration could do would be to deprioritize the enforcement of most federal laws in sanctuary states
>“congrats, california, you're now libertarian af. no OSHA, no IRS audits, no EPA. enjoy.”

it’d be legally coherent and politically thermonuclear. which means someone will definitely try it. Image
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alternatively trump could target blue states by actually enforcing marijuana law which would be very funny too
Read 6 tweets
Jun 4
hmmm sure ok i'll bite

the rheinweisenlager don't seem that bad tbh

i havent looked at the wikipedia page and wont, just going to attach some commentary and notes on context
the rheinweisenlager were a bunch of concentration camps in the original sense where surrendered wehrmacht soldiers were held for several months in 1945

the camps were run by the US, apparently, and that's important
during the closing months of the war absolutely insane numbers of encircled and overwhelmed german soldiers surrendered . . . in the west

less so in the east, where they were more inclined to fight to the death against the red army
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Read 14 tweets

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