Every article on pronatalism in the past few years has been these two Thiel-sponsored white nationalist dweebs and nobody else. Why the fuck does the Guardian fall for this shit too.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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I contacted the reporter via her website, to ask what motivated the story when the Guardian just wrote about them last year, and if the couple's PR rep (who I assume exists) had instigated it.
I don't really expect to hear back but it sure would be interesting to know.
It's worth noting in the Grauniad's defence that the piece which mentioned them (among others) last year wasn't a commissioned interview article, it was a column by Arwa Mahdawi. Columnists usually have a regular gig to write opinion pieces on some topic relevant to their interests and then submit them for publication -- in other words, they don't have an editor telling them to go and cover something, they write about what they feel like writing about even if it turns out to be at odds with the paper's editorial policy (e.g. Simon Jenkins, who is a Guardian columnist despite regularly expressing some highly un-Guardian-reader views). As Mahdawi is a columnist who regularly focuses on feminist issues and the United States this would be entirely within her field of interest.
Still doesn't mean these people deserve yet more coverage, though. I hope their kids get out of this toxic family having suffered as little harm as possible from a mother who apparently thinks that the only solution to "cheap, good-quality snowsuits bought from Russia" not fitting when you're pregnant is dressing like a tradwife and a father who really doesn't seem to like them and who does an abuse in front of a journalist which he thinks he can just explain away with pseudoscientific bullshit as "hey, that looked like abuse but it wasn't, it was SCIENCE".
I really really don't get how wearing a corset* while you're pregnant is somehow the most rational option
*Don't come @ me corset fans, I'm sure they are very comfortable, but while you're pregnant? Eight months pregnant?
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That's because there is no "movement" and the whole thing is a stunt to promote the ideas of the least thoughtful of all the unthoughtful people who nonetheless consider themselves intellectuals.
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The Collinses are atheists; they believe in science and data, studies and research. Their pronatalism is born from the hyper-rational effective altruism movement
This is just gonna be eugenics, isn’t it?
Malcolm describes their politics as “the new right – the iteration of conservative thought that Simone and I represent will come to dominate once Trump is gone.”
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
One of the reasons why I chose to have only have two children is because I couldn’t afford to give more kids a good life; the bigger home, the holidays, the large car and everything else they would need.
Yeah, what about giving them love or a warm relationship, or, you know, time?
And then they wonder why those generations have shitty relationships with their parents when they seriously believe that what they need is a big fucking car, as if that’s the variable that was missing in all of this.
Excuse me while I go and hug my daughter. I need to de-rationalize myself after reading this.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right?
I assume it is neoreaction. Not sure if you are a recent poster here, or were aware of sneerclub when it was on reddit but we talked about NRx there every now and then. (Not a fan).
I don't know if the Collins are NRx, what I do know is that neoreactionary podcasters love the Collins. (According to a quick google search). And bonus for David Gerard, Grimes has reached out to the Collins source is the grimezs long post on Grimes her links to all this shit
Well damn, I used to lurk on old sneer club, but I gotta admit I missed that particular rabbit hole so far.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
It reminds me of how terrible sports teams will frequently change their logo and uniforms. (e.g. Vanderbilt's University's gridiron football team). Obviously, their lack of success is a branding problem.
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They bought this house and the one next door for $575,000; they allow their neighbours to live in the second house rent free, in exchange for childcare.
Seems normal !
Wow, these people have not planned anything at all. They're going to homeschool all 7+ kids? And go into politics, a job that infamously has long, unsociable hours?
No, they're counting on not spending time with their children. Their worldview is all about populating, not educating.
In fact, if you pester any of these people how they would plan to educate all these millions of new children you'll quickly find out that either:
- That is actually not planned for at all (hand waving).
- They actually only want certain (White people of means) to be having lots of kids.
Or option 3: they subscribe to the mudsill theory, under which education will no longer be wasted on the lower orders of society, whose lot is to die in harness.
No need to plan things when you can use Rationalism, nominative determinism, and first principles to get over any troubles. Also the people who give them gifts are very rich.
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Malcolm and Simone Collins with their children – Octavian George, four, Torsten Savage, two, and Titan Invictus, one – at home in Pennsylvania.
bye
Guardian failed the “don't promote these specific cunts for 14 months challenge”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/20/pro-natalism-babies-global-population-genetics
Perhaps the NRx-curiosity is a natural consequence of the Guardian’s “gender-critical” editorial stance? Look at all the other TERFs jumping into bed with actual masks-off Nazis.
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they definitely missed out on naming two of the daughers ursa minor maior and ursa maior minor.
Their next kid will be named Ultima Thule, and they will claim very loudly that this is just because they are so big fans of astrology and that they never heard of the controversy regarding the name.
jfk
Ultima Thule was a Swedish white nationalist band back in the day.
Ow yeah I'm joking here. But it was really weird that they tried to name the asteroid Ultima Thule (and it is also odd that this controversy isn't on the wikipage).
@gerikson The name predates the white nationalist band by *several centuries*. Per wiki: "In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin "farthest Thule") acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world"."
I suspect they renamed the KBO Arrokoth precisely to avoid the unfortunate recent connotations of the name.
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"Dad, why is my sister's name Octavia George?"
"Because your mother loves the Roman Empire."
"Thanks Dad."
"No problem Industry Americus."
Looks like someone's behind the times; all the cool kids are into the Eastern Roman Empire this season. That's why my kids are named Constantine Cataphractus and Velociraptor Paleologus.
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"Malcolm had a turbulent childhood that he clearly doesn’t want to talk about. He comes from a wealthy family and grew up in Dallas, but was sent to a “troubled teen” residential facility when he was 11. The only reason he can give me for being sent there was that his parents were getting divorced and were locked in a bitter custody dispute, and the judge “thought I shouldn’t be with either parent”. After that, he lived at a private boarding school, with his fees and expenses covered by a family trust. “I have no beef with my parents. My childhood was hard, but my adulthood has been easy. Can I say a parent did a bad job if I’m happy with my life today? I don’t think so.” "
L to the O to the motherfucking L. These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they've found some magical answer to life being hard. Their poor children.
The combination of the mother being all "I got raised by hippies, which I hated so I am doing the opposite", "we are very rational", " our kids will obviously be like us, only better". Can't they put these pieces together?
Well, with that many children, at least one will write a book about how their childhood sucked.
Chapter 1, I am so cold When I think about my childhood, I think about freezing...
Chapter 12, Stop hitting me dad!
And so on.
After that, he lived at a private boarding school
expenses covered by a family trust
My childhood was hard
oh no trust fund baby had hard childhood
however, it's nowhere as hard as their children childhood is gonna be
These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they’ve found some magical answer to life being hard.
Big Kissinger energy
some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.
It is to me so weird how often this comes up. A big plot point in starship troopers (the book) was that due to not hitting kids (and a vague handwave at criminals but mostly kids) western democracies fell for example.
Now I wonder how the NRx with their pro corporal punishment stance (which iirc Scott liked) feel about hitting kids.
Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before) (Late edit: She said she was really unsettled by this interview on twitter Sorry to hear you stared into the abyss Jenny, and I didn't mean this as a personal attack towards you (not that you will read this but yeah))
E: a thing I was wondering about, with the pronatalist technofetishists, who say that both we will all die out by lack of births as old people starve, and who fetishize AGI and robot labour causing a post scarcity world, that seems contradictory, I wonder how the Rationalists deal with this contradiction.
Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before)
Apologies. First time poster, all that stuff.
The corporal punishment thing is a weirdly Anglophone obsession -- assaulting (sorry, "smacking") your kids has been a crime here since 1977 and the kids seem to be alright as well as having the bonus of being less likely to have grown up surrounded by violence and the threat of violence. In 7 years here I've seen exactly one person hit a child in public (looked a lot like a visiting grandma from elsewhere) and it came as a real shock. The more the Collins types (and, of course, fundie types) try to justify this as "normal" the less normal it appears to everyone else.
Starship troopers was written in 1959 so it predates the ban by a bit at least. (I assume there was already research on it being bad in the works then, as ST goes out of its way to decry the social sciences as fake research, but their moral system which is based on math (never explained in the book, which is prob good as it would be highly contradictory, as going to war to save a few POWs is seen as just, no matter the number of lives lost) is correct. It is a really weird book to read in 2020).
I've actually read Starship Troopers a long time ago and it's probably not too far out of line politically from other "silver age" SF. Heinlein had a weird career...
FWIW from memory Samuel R Delany (Black gay SF author) wrote somewhere that the realization that Johnny Rico was from the Philippines (he speaks Tagalog near the end) was very liberating for him personally as a form of inclusion. And Heinlein could probably truthfully state the only way he was "racist" was he was against the Bugs but for the entire human race.
The movies' lack of any PoC character whatsoever was probably Verhoven's way of playing with the Nazi imagery.
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I mean in this article they claim that girlfriend will be able to have seven kids, spaced a year and a half apart, and homeschool them, and still keep her career. They're obviously not too concerned about contradictory statements.
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the fascism is strong in those
the eugenicist language and narrative should've been at least strongly challenged
These people are full of shit popping off like they do after THREE kids. Big fucking deal, my parents had three, and my brother and I were accidents. And they let us have heat in the winter and they didn’t hit us. Three is still normal!
There are some more lovely sneers in r/longreads
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Everyone's least favourite rationalist couple
Ah these are the dudes with the unbelievably cringe Reddit dating history.
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