Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
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  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Daily

Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics. Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs. If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com

  1. 10h ago

    Why Do 10/10 Top VTubers Look Like Children?

    This episode examines popular VTuber avatar designs and how they influence audience engagement. The conversation covers community reactions to recent viral moments, perceptions of age representation in virtual content, and comparisons with trends in other regions. The discussion also reviews data on viewer sentiment, patterns in top-performing models, and broader questions about norms for online personas as technology evolves. Emphasis is placed on protecting real-world audiences while understanding market-driven preferences. Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be talking about an interesting case that has had some virality within our community, which is TechTone found out to his horror that one of the VTubers he was crushing on was not a minor. What? Speaker 3:I swear, man, she said she was 13. Speaker 21:What the I feel like I just saw something illegal. I told the Internet Iron Mouse had a kid, and they’re 19, and Iron Mouse is 40? Speaker 20:Imagine how visibly shaken Iron Mouse is now. I was visibly shaken. Normies finding out VTubers are adult women, Malcolm Collins:And we need to talk about this because it’s a very there’s a this is deeper. And so I had an AI do an analysis on the top 10 VTubers to find out by looking at their models, plausibly, what what percent of them were not minors? And it said one of the 10. Simone Collins:Wait. Which one of the 10 doesn’t look like a minor? We’ll get to that. Okay. Malcolm Collins:We’ll get to that. We’ll look at them up. Scroll around Simone Collins:and find it. I need to see. Speaker 4:We ended up, looking up this individual, I do not agree with the AI and neither does Simone. We think she looks high school. May maybe plausibly barely legal. Malcolm Collins:And we’ll be going through the mage. But this is this is an interesting phenomenon because this isn’t necessarily that these women are choosing this. If you look at Yukiyaru, who we had on our stream recently Mhmm. She discussed the phenomenon where when she first went on, she planned to do Lutubing. She had a model with big jiggly boobs. She was like, okay. I’ll go out there. I’ll get all these guys. Simone Collins:Because she figured that was what people wanted, which is understandable. Malcolm Collins:As time went on, she moved to smaller and smaller breasts and both less sexualized and more overtly a minor model. Yes. and as she made that transition, her audience got bigger. Now she probably would have moved in the other direction had she not seen this. We probably wouldn’t see this many VTubers be doing this if this wasn’t what the audience apparently wanted. So the question becomes, why does the audience want this when there are not that many PDA files or maybe there are? Simone Collins:Allegedly. Another question Malcolm Collins:we’ll get to. Simone Collins:I don’t Malcolm Collins:know. And the second question, the question is, well, first, let’s just focus on the tech tone thing because I’ve I’ve I’ve found this whole thing interesting, and it’s worth talking about. Simone Collins:Right? Like, mid thirties? Malcolm Collins:So what he found out is he found out an old clip for her where she admitted to having a daughter who was at least 10 years old. And her own exactly 10 at that clip, and the clip was nine years ago. So it means that now she has a 19 year old daughter, which he took to mean she’s at least in her forties, which I would agree with. She’s probably at least in her forties. Simone Collins:Fair enough. And he’s 32 years old. Yeah. Okay. Malcolm Collins:Well and and he was scandalized by this. I mean, his clip, he he acted scandalized. I I will note here that I suspect that his scandalization was meant as a joke. Sure. Didn’t think through the meta of this. I don’t think that he actually really he’s not an idiot. He didn’t actually think that she was, a 10 year old, like, Simone Collins:a model. It’s just weird when there’s a disconnect between the public face and the voice behind it. That’s all. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 18:So the tech tone thing, it’s just a gag. We don’t really think that he thought that. it’s just funny the way this is playing out, and congratulations to him on the kid he has on the way. Malcolm Collins:And so I don’t I don’t really I I wanna be very clear here. I am not No. No. No. Tectonic the predator or something like that. I I’m I’m saying he did a bit, but I think the bit uncovers something much deeper, which is this inversion of the trope of, you know, the guy comes to your house from date line. He’s like, sit down. Sit down. Like and they’re like, I swear, I thought she was older. And here it’s like, I I I swear. I thought it was a 10 year old. I had no idea that was a 40 year old woman with children. And the Internet has been mostly sane about this. So I decided to do a sentiment analysis. So in case people are wondering, like, okay. I know this has been going viral. What percent of people? 55%, 45 to 55% are saying this is a complete nothing burger. Why are you caring about this? 25 to 35% are actively mad at the people who are doing any who are angry about this. Right? Like so a big chunk of the flashback has been, like, why are you shaming a woman for having children? Simone Collins:Oh. Right? Okay. Malcolm Collins:And only 20 to 30% actually treat this as any sort of a scandal. And first, I wanna note, I find this to be an incredibly healthy response from the wider community. I think it’s an incredibly good response to see from the wider community. And the the reason I say that is because the v tubing community in The United States grew out of the idol worship community in Japan and South Korea. And those communities in regards to stars having children or getting old is brutal and abusive, frankly. It’s it’s a really disgusting, community. It it promotes antinatalism in these countries because these stars aren’t allowed to have kids because everybody treats them like they’re married to them. Simone Collins:Right. Malcolm Collins:I know you’re gonna go into later in this piece where the same thing happened with a bunch of old ladies and a younger man, and then they they did freak out because he ended up sleeping with one of them. So we’ll talk about that. But, we we imported this from Japan, but we didn’t import the toxicity as much. Right? You know? And and and when this is flared up, we’ve pushed back, which I appreciate. But one of the things that we did import from Japan was the useful figures because this was a part of this culture in Japan as well when they were fictionalized. Yeah. So, I decided to go over top 10, just so we can talk through, this this wider phenomenon of the incredibly young looking VTuber model topping the charts. So top one here, you actually know this one because she’s in a titans shark princess song. This is Oh my god. Oh. Simone Collins:The the the reason why our daughter identifies as a shark princess. Yeah. Malcolm Collins:Because she saw a music video with Garugaru in it, and she said, that’s me. Simone Collins:Yeah. This is the video about me. Malcolm Collins:No. This is the video about me. It’s a very cute video. But, anyway, she she looks like a child. You you’d agree with that. Right? Like, Simone Collins:And I yes. I think, you know, kinda confirmed when a, you know, four year old girl thinks that it’s about her. So, yeah, if a four year old girl sees your video and is like, that’s me, I think something might be going on there. Malcolm Collins:Then we have Hoshima Marine, a a young face. I I looked up her big eyes, very young looking. Okay. Definitely not past 18. Hoshima Sushi, sushi or something. I I can’t pronounce any of these. Again, young face here. Usadako Pekaro was the next one. Kobo Canaro, she Kuma, Fubikino, Mori Callaloop, Sakura Miko, and then Unico, Corom. and and the smallest of these is at 2,280,000. and then you could add additional ones in there, like the one we’re talking about today, Iron Mouse, very clearly childlike. Fillion, quite big. I don’t know if you’ve seen Fillion, but very, very childlike in the way that both she presents acts and it it it’s shown on screen . In fact, of the ones that, like, I watch, the only ones that look, there’s some that look like teenagers, okay, that are popular in our community. Like, I’d say, Keirsha and Smuggalana. Mhmm. And the only one I know who actively presents as an adult is ChaCha. And that’s because ChaCha often talks about how many kids she’s had, and it’s it’s hard to not see her. So she takes on, like, the mommy role. Simone Collins:She’s like, 40. Any of the really busty ones are just obviously adults. Malcolm Collins:So of these, the ones that came off as clearly, like, child child Yeah. Would be Goro and Kobo. Okay. Then young teen to high school, you have Susi, Pekuro, Fubiko, Miko, and Koron. Okay. Young face, sexier body is Marine. And then close to adult is Callie. So let’s look at Callie because you said you wanted to see the one that Yeah. K. That’s Mori Callilope. Simone Collins:K. Malcolm Collins:Let’s see what she looks like to see if I agree with the AI. Because the AI actually looked up images of them. Simone Collins:Oh. Yeah. Malcolm Collins:She’s she’s plausibly I mean, I’d say barely legal. But Simone Collins:Yeah. I’m Malcolm Collins:No. This is a high schooler. Simone Collins:This is a high schooler. This is not an adult. She’s not of drinking age. Yeah. She’s adorable. But that’s the problem. She’s adorable. Maybe they saw any images of her with larger chesticles and therefore assumed that she was an adult. But all the other ones show her with a modest chest. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to make it. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I’m looking at something. Let’s see. It’s cdeco pickerel. Wait. What is this one? I’m just spot checking thi

    Why Do 10/10 Top VTubers Look Like Children?

  2. 1d ago

    Why Actors Were Social Outcasts Until Recently

    For most of Western history, acting was a low-status profession often linked with vagrancy, moral suspicion, and limited respectability. This episode traces how that reputation formed—from Restoration England and Victorian theater culture through early Hollywood—and why the public association between performers and social stigma lasted far longer than most people realize. Drawing on historical research and primary accounts, the discussion covers when women first appeared on the English stage, how limited career options shaped public judgment, the slow professionalization of theater after the Civil War, and the modern shift that turned entertainers into trusted public voices. Key turning points include late-night television’s studio-era promotion machine and the legitimizing effect of a former actor reaching the highest political office. The conversation closes with a practical takeaway: how to choose role models and sources of life advice more carefully. Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about another part of history that has been hidden from people, which is that until very, very recently, actors and actresses were seen as the same kind of a thing as smex workers. Simone Collins:Yeah. Yes. It shows up a lot in my regency era romances. Malcolm Collins:It comes up a lot? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They don’t they’re like, how could you be with an actor? No. Simone Collins:Well, they yeah. They’re basically roughly the same thing. Like, you you kind of understand, you know, if she’s an actress. That’s Malcolm Collins:what she does. And what I will be going into in this particular episode is the reasons why this connection was made, but also tracking that the reasons why people originally well, let’s put it this way. The reason why one of the big reasons why is because actors were, one, literally selling their bodies, which they do to an even greater extent today. They often appear on stage naked on Yeah. Major movies Simone Collins:and Kissing people for pay. For pay. Yes. Romantically interested in. Malcolm Collins:And in addition to that, it was well understood that most of them would sleep with theater directors and stuff like that for their roles, which, you know, going till today is still something they do. but look at the Harvey Weinstein case. and you also see this was males as well. Matthew Lawrence described being sent to a hotel room where an Oscar winning director in a robe asked him to dress for Polaroids and applied compliance would get him a major role. He declared Male or female? Lost his agency. This is Matthew Lawrence, a male actor. Simone Collins:And and the director. I’m asking if the director Male director. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, sure, I guess. Mhmm. Malcolm Collins:So, yeah, this is this happens on both sides of the fence in in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood selling their bodies. They are still sleeping with directors for roles. And so the question is, if they’re acting like prostitutes, why did we as a society start respecting them? Why did we as a society start taking political and life advice from what is essentially high pay prostitutes? Simone Collins:Yeah. Because I guess now it’s it’s there’s a there’s the actor to influencer lifestyle product purveyor pipeline. Yeah. Or the assumption is, ah, yes. We must we must listen to them and buy what they buy for they know better than we do, which is so funny. Because I guess, yeah, even with going all the way back to, Greek plays, all the men played women. And then same with Shakespearean plays. There weren’t female actresses. The men played women. So, yeah, when did women start acting in the first place? When were women allowed to start acting in the first place? I don’t know how this was with Kabuki in Japan. I admittedly don’t know if that was Malcolm Collins:That is one of the things that we will be talking about. Simone Collins:Oh, good. I want to know. Oh. Malcolm Collins:So just some this was a hard episode to put together because, again, there was so much academic research on this. Simone Collins:No kidding. Malcolm Collins:Very well studied phenomenon. Yeah. In one piece titled actresses and prostitutes in Victorian London, I I’ll quote a bit from the abstract here. The popular association between actresses and prostitutes and belief in actresses inappropriate sexual conduct endured through the nineteenth century. In The United States, religious fundamentalism accounts for much of the prejudice, but in Great Britain, where puritanical influence was not as influential on the theater, other factors helped to preserve the derogatory view of actresses. In certain times and places, actresses did have links with the women the oldest of all women’s professions. male actors were not high status either until the nineteenth century. They were often viewed as little better than vagrants or circus people. The first actor united in Britain was Henry Irving in 1895. In The United States, the census and contemporary accounts show a rapidly growing but still socially ambiguous profession, after the civil war. By 1912, there were tens of thousands of people working in theater and popular entertainment, but they were still seen very poorly. In fact, even though we had famous actors and actresses before the period, they were not really normalized until the nineteen eighties as something that should be respected. The eighties? That late? No. No. Because you had before that actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe and Katherine Hepburn. Your beloved Hold on. Let’s take a step back here. Okay. What did people actually think of characters like Marilyn Monroe But Audrey Hepburn. We’ll Please. We’ll focus on one that you said because I think that she’s a great example that this came to your head. People thought of Marilyn Monroe as basically a famous prostitute. She was known for sleeping with married men. She was known for showing her body, showing her legs, the whole great scene thing. She was known as a glorified prostitute. In fact, I think people would have seen only a thin line between her work and what was going on in Playboy was in the same period. Simone Collins:She was monogamously married twice or three times twice. Malcolm Collins:Was the one who hooked up with Kennedy. Right? Yes. But Simone, mister happy birthday. Simone Collins:Well, that was after the second marriage, I think. It she was single again then. But it Malcolm Collins:He was married. Simone Collins:Yes. He was married. Yeah. That was bad. That was bad. But, I mean, like, famous people do things like that. Malcolm Collins:Yes. But it doesn’t get scandalized to the extent that she did. Everyone was like, of course, she did it. She’s an actress. Simone Collins:Look. There were many other actresses at that time that did not have that same kind of reputation. But, yes, I I I I see your point broadly. I’m just kind of shocked that you would say not until the eighties was it considered. I mean but even then, it had sorted Malcolm Collins:And I’d point out to you. Even if you look at Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, we actually don’t have the same sort of phenomenon of even major famous actors that you still respect today like them going on other TV shows and giving life or political advice. They just didn’t do it. Simone Collins:Yeah. Audrey Hepburn engaged in charity work, but in a way similar to how you’d expect a royal to engage in charity work where she, yeah, doesn’t seem to engage in a whole lot of, like, political opining, which is not what you see these days. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Point made. Alright. Let’s get into it. Simone Collins:Alright. Malcolm Collins:So so you know I’m not putting a conservative slant on this. The piece that I ended up using as the main piece we’ll be reading from was from Jezebel Oh. Where they interviewed a bunch of historians and anthropologists from this period. Long before the advent of recording technology, theaters were assumed to be basically brussels, it and was taken for granted that the women working in them were sexually available. Quote, there is a very long history of a kind of literal quid pro quo, but also simply women subject to harassment or attacks and abuse of other actors, directors, managers, or wealthy audience members. Looking back on earlier centuries, Kirsten Pullen, head of the theater department in the University of Illinois, then author of Actresses and On Stage and in Society, told Jezebel. Women first appeared on stage in England in around the sixteen sixties. Theater had been banned by the Puritan government in 1647 and restarted under the restoration, the glittery, brawdy reign of Charles the second. Shortly after he was put on the stone, he decreed that women could work on the stage. Among his many mistresses was a beautiful and talented actress, Nell Gwyn, who supposedly was raised in a brothel. So you asked why did women why did women, get in in in theater? The answer is that England had a moral Puritan government, and then, of course, came in Charles the second, who did convert to Catholicism on his deathbed. And the first thing he wants to do is hook up one of his mistresses who wanted to be in acting with a job, and that’s how it got started. One of the women he was sleeping with on the side thought it’d be fun to act in front of people, so he decided to make it public. This is why Simone Collins:for okay. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. He made it legal. Simone Collins:That was what year? Like, around Malcolm Collins:That was 06/06 sometime after 1647, so maybe, like, 1650. Simone Collins:Okay. Yeah. Because I’m I’m trying to, like, piece together in my mind when I know that small plays became okay. I know that, for example, Marie Antoinette and her social set would have private stage plays, like, among their friends. Like, you’d put o

    Why Actors Were Social Outcasts Until Recently

  3. 2d ago

    Dating Is New & Was Considered Worse than Wh****g

    Historically, what we now call dating was treated as lower-status than prostitution. The word “date” itself once meant visiting a prostitute. Then working-class “charity girls” undercut professional sex workers by trading companionship and intimacy for dinners, tickets, clothes, and nights out — a practice contemporaries called treating. In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins walk through the late-19th / early-20th century shift: cheap urban leisure (nickelodeons, dance halls, Coney Island), taxi dancers as proto-host clubs, shop girls hunting rich bosses, the rebrand of face-painting into “makeup,” the invention of “personality” and the It Girl, and 1920s petting parties. They argue modern dating is not an ancient institution that suddenly broke. It is a recent, low-commitment market that was controversial when it appeared — and that older courtship systems (family-supervised seasons, explicit marriage-seeking) may be more honest than ambiguous long-term dating. Also discussed: why they treat dating as wife-hunting rather than “seeing where it goes,” why they want paying-for-dates destigmatized as traditional, and how RFAB can generate period-accurate 1920s stories. Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am right off learning a historical fact that blew my mind, which is that historically what we today call dating was seen as lower than prostitution- [00:00:16] Simone Collins: Wait ... [00:00:16] Malcolm Collins: until incredibly recently, up until the 1920s. Even our word date Historically meant visiting a prostitute. [00:00:30] Simone Collins: I thought it was like an, an assignation or a something else. That’s great. An [00:00:35] Malcolm Collins: assignation? [00:00:36] Simone Collins: Like, a rendezvous. [00:00:38] Malcolm Collins: No, it did mean that. But you would never use it for a romantic rendezvous. You used it for business rendezvous. And then it began to be used to mean seeing a prostitute, and then it began to become applied way later during this period where dating had this bad reputation, to seeing what was called a charity woman. [00:00:59] Simone Collins: A charity- So, and- A cha- what’s a charity woman? [00:01:02] Malcolm Collins: W- it’s what today we would call a woman. Okay. So, [00:01:06] Simone Collins: What, what... Oh, okay. Okay. Just, yeah. Okay. I’ll, I’ll say the main thing- What, spell this out for me. [00:01:09] Malcolm Collins: This, [00:01:09] Simone Collins: I’m [00:01:10] Malcolm Collins: so confused ... differentiated a charity woman, okay? [00:01:12] Simone Collins: Okay. [00:01:12] Malcolm Collins: So a charity woman would expect a man to pay for food or an activity. [00:01:20] Simone Collins: Okay. [00:01:20] Malcolm Collins: And she would often court multiple men before getting married. Now, today this sounds like a woman. So we’re gonna go- Yes ... into what alerted me to this. We’re gonna go into the Wikipedia article on this. And even though, the the reason I cite this is even something as lefty as Wikipedia was like, “Oh yeah, this was considered a super, a bad thing to do.” We’re gonna go into the campaigns- Oh ... to arrest these women. We’ll go into what prostitutes were saying about these women, ‘cause they absolutely hated these women. They completely disrupted the way prostitution worked. And we’ll go into why this transformation happened. And I think it’s important to keep this in mind when we live in a world today and people say dating markets are no longer functioning, and they act like something that has existed since the beginning of time just collapsed all of a sudden. Instead of something that’s existed for less than a century collapsed, and what we should do is go back to older mechanisms of dating, like arranged marriage and dating markets like the season, which we are attempting to rebuild. So fun stuff here. Let’s go right into it. So what alerted me to this is the RFab dev, like the only other human who works on it other than Simone and I Bruno reached out with this concept where he wanted us to go into the history of dating. Specifically the claim that dating came from prostitution or was even frowned on by prostitutes. Specifically because it took business from them And it goes on. The term dating did emerge from prostitution and so did the general practice in the early 20th century. Charity girls were deemed competitors who undercut the wages of prostitutes. Basically, easy girls who weren’t formal prostitutes figured out that they could blur the lines by getting dinners or so on paid for. Now, what’s really fascinating is the invention of dating as we understand it and think of it as like this wholesome 1950s practice today would have in its time been seen as extremely or eerily parallel to OnlyFansing today E.g., getting m- multiple men to pay for stuff for you while being an informal sex worker. I- i- in just a new way using new technologies. [00:03:48] Simone Collins: I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. People sort of, like, being angry because someone’s coming in and undercutting them professionally. When they’re like, “What? I work for this,” and then there’s a bunch of tourists who [00:04:00] don’t actually need the money but just want a free dinner. [00:04:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay And who are like, “Well, I didn’t know I could just put nudes of myself online and people-” “... would give me money. Let’s, let’s do this.” [00:04:08] Simone Collins: Oh, no. [00:04:10] Malcolm Collins: I hear this one theory that OnlyFans was, like, predominantly paid for by dads to see their daughter’s friends. And I was like, “That is telling on yourself, buddy.” [00:04:23] Simone Collins: That... Mm. Mm. [00:04:25] Malcolm Collins: But maybe. I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen the movie, You still haven’t seen it. What, what’s it called? Beauty, beauty something. Oh. [00:04:31] Simone Collins: American Beauty? [00:04:32] Malcolm Collins: American Beauty, yeah. [00:04:34] Simone Collins: Seems depressing. I don’t like depressing movies. [00:04:36] Malcolm Collins: It’s not that depressing- [00:04:39] Simone Collins: Mm ... [00:04:40] Malcolm Collins: if I’m gonna be honest. Mostly because all of the characters are so pathetic and unlikable- Girl, [00:04:45] Simone Collins: that sounds- that you [00:04:45] Malcolm Collins: don’t really feel bad for them. [00:04:47] Simone Collins: I don’t wanna watch something about pathetic, unlikel- I’m, I’m really struggling- It’s, it’s a movie about- ... with TV and movies right now ... the birth of the urban [00:04:52] Malcolm Collins: monoculture, if you, if you wanna call it anything. [00:04:55] Simone Collins: Why would I want to watch that? [00:04:56] Malcolm Collins: And how it destroys people’s lives. [00:04:58] Simone Collins: I wanna watch attractive, competent people who are good at their jobs. Is this so hard to do? Is this so difficult? [00:05:05] Malcolm Collins: But to continue here. Modern people don’t fully realize, but paying for a date isn’t providing, it’s confirmation that you can provide. Mm. It isn’t trad, it’s low-grade prostitution and always has been. Dating is paying for companionship with sex as an unspoken bonus. The old criticism that men would expect sex if they took out a woman was fair, but it ignores the truth that the reason men expected this wasn’t because they were jerks or sexist, but because that is what dating was about. What’s really fun is, so when I dove into this, and, and this is one of these topics where I’m just not gonna be able to read all the primary sources I wanted to read on this, ‘cause there was just so much evidence on this. But there was one academic research that cited a guy from the 1920s, I think it was, like, 1925, talking about how he paid, like, $1.50 for a girl, and she didn’t even let him do any heavy petting. Oh, dear. And that was the expectation, and he was quite upset about this [00:06:08] Simone Collins: Huh, $1.50 [00:06:11] Malcolm Collins: That is how it went back then. But basically all of this is confirmed, and it’s dramatically worse than you think, exactly like yesterday when somebody reached out to you. Today, we treat long-term dating as a precursor to marriage, but it’s not. The difference is in the commitment. If two people act as fully committed, then they’re married regardless of paperwork. Modern dating, though, is long-term persistent companionship without commitment. It’s harsh, but long-term low-commitment dating is just prostitution, always has been. I’d agree with this. If you treat dating in the conventional format, it’s very unlikely to lead to marriage. If you look at the way that Simone and I dated I sat her down first date, what’d I say? [00:06:51] Simone Collins: Not looking to date. I’m looking to find a wife. That is what you said. Yeah. You really, I guess, weren’t dating. You were wife hunting. [00:06:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:07:01] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. Yeah. [00:07:05] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And it meant that everything was structured very differently. [00:07:08] Simone Collins: It did. [00:07:09] Malcolm Collins: And the way you thought about every step was very different because it was, we are waiting to see if you clear being good enough to be a wife for me. Mm-hmm. [00:07:19] Simone Collins: Mm. [00:07:20] Malcolm Collins: But let’s dig in In the social context of dating this is by the way Wikipedia I am reading, lefty coded Wikipedia- Okay brainwashed Wikipedia here. Dating, treating is the practice of com- providing companionship and intimate activity in exchange for entertainment, outing, gifts, and other items of monetary value. The activity was prevalent in large areas of the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s, and was commonly engaged in by young working class women. As treating became mor

    Dating Is New & Was Considered Worse than Wh****g

  4. 3d ago

    Fake Diagnosis Invented to Harvest Organs from Living Patients

    Simone woke up to a 5am text thread claiming brain death was invented to harvest organs — and the more she dug, the worse it got. This episode walks through the TJ Hoover case (a man wheeled toward organ recovery who was crying, thrashing, and later survived), the 1968 Harvard “irreversible coma” paper that built the modern framework, the Lazarus sign, the apnea test, paralytics used during recovery, hospital reimbursement incentives, and a New Jersey case where an organ procurement group treated donor registration like a lifetime contract the family had to fight in court. If you only do one thing after watching: check your license and the actual donor registry. Taking the heart off the card is not always enough. Tell the people who would show up at the hospital. Put a revocation in your advance directive.Not medical or legal advice. Organ transplants save lives. The question is whether the current definition, incentives, and paperwork are honest enough to trust. Show Notes The Case of TJ Hoover SIMONE’S SOURCE: It’s not real, lots of people survive incurable brain death, most famously and most recently TJ Hoover According to some reports, A person who has actually met a complete, correctly performed formal determination of brain death/death by neurologic criteria (BD/DNC) does not recover. * By definition, the determination requires permanent loss of function of the brain as a whole, including the brainstem * A later recovery means the person was not, in fact, brain-dead under the applicable standard, or that the diagnosis/process was incomplete or erroneous. * THE PROBLEM IS THAT IT DOESN’T SEEM PEOPLE ARE CORRECTLY DIAGNOSING, because TJ Hoover was one of those people. Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II was hospitalized in Richmond, Kentucky, in October 2021 after a drug overdose and cardiac arrest, according to reporting based on family and former-organ-procurement-worker accounts. He was severely neurologically impaired and entered an organ-donation pathway. His family says they were told he was brain-dead or dead The reported sequence is alarming: * While he was being moved toward the operating room, Hoover’s sister said she saw him open his eyes and look around; she was reportedly told this was a reflex. * During a cardiac catheterization intended to evaluate his heart for potential transplantation, former staff members said Hoover woke or thrashed and was then sedated. * When he reached the operating room for planned organ recovery, a preservation worker described him as moving, thrashing, and visibly crying. Two physicians reportedly refused to take part, and the organ-recovery surgery was stopped. * Hoover survived. Reporting describes ongoing impairments in memory, walking, and speech, and says he lives with his sister, who is his legal guardian. The allegations prompted review by Kentucky authorities and a federal investigation by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), according to NPR’s 2024 reporting So what on earth happened??? * Did Hoover survive? Yes * Did family members understand that he was “brain-dead” or “dead”? Yes. * Was there a completed, valid, documented formal BD/DNC declaration?: Disputed There are also cases of people recovering from formal brain-death declarations The strongest published case that can plausibly be described as survival after a formal brain-death declaration involves a baby girl: * A female infant born at 35 weeks’ gestation suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. * She was declared brain-dead between approximately 40 and 120 hours after birth. * The report stated that apparent confounders were absent. * Instead of deteriorating, she gradually regained neurologic function and was reported healthy at one-year follow-up. But it’s complicated: Current neurological guidance does not endorse determining brain death in infants born before 37 weeks’ gestation because the neonatal examination and diagnostic evidence have not been sufficiently validated in that population. The 2024 review expressly treats the case as a historical misdiagnosis under standards that should not now be used for that patient. The 1968 Harvard Paper on Brain Death SIMONE’S SOURCE:…it is impossible to harvest transplantable organs from an actual dead person IMPOSSIBLE Go get the original Harvard 1968 paper on brain death Their very clear. There will be no public support for killing people for their organs Therefore, we need a new category of death To create public support for organ donation THE PAPER I looked up this paper, and indeed: * It was pivotal to modern brain-dead standards * It explicitly considered organ transplant implications * It enabled procurement of organs from living people The Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee’s August 1968 JAMA report, “A Definition of Irreversible Coma,” set out clinical criteria for a patient whose brain function was believed to have irreversibly ceased. Its criteria included: * Complete unresponsiveness * No spontaneous breathing * No spontaneous movement * Absence of reflexes * A flat EEG as confirmatory evidence * Repeat testing after 24 hours, with exclusions for confounders such as hypothermia or sedating drugs It did not use the contemporary statutory formulation “whole-brain death” in the way later laws did, but it was foundational to the modern brain-death framework. Later U.S. law adopted a formulation under which a person may be declared dead after the irreversible cessation of circulatory/respiratory function or all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem. The report was allegedly meant to respond to two intertwined problems created by intensive-care technology: * Ventilators could preserve circulation and a heartbeat in patients with catastrophic, irreversible brain injury. * Doctors and families needed a way to determine when continued life support was no longer appropriate—and when death had occurred—even though the heart had not stopped. HOWEVER, Organ transplantation was also plainly part of the context. The committee stated that “obsolete criteria” for death could create controversy in transplantation, because organs deteriorate rapidly after circulation stops. Declaring death based on irreversible loss of brain function made it possible to recover organs while oxygenated circulation was still being mechanically maintained Earlier neurologic descriptions of a state like “brain dead” existed, including the 1959 French description of coma dépassé—a state resembling what would later be called brain death. The 1968 Harvard committee’s distinctive contribution was to move from describing profound, apparently irreversible coma to treating it as a criterion of death in U.S. medical practice and, eventually, law. The Downstream Consequence of This * Under prevailing U.S. medical and legal standards, a properly determined brain-dead patient is dead—not a living patient—despite a ventilator-maintained heartbeat, warm skin, and circulation. Brain-death determination is treated as a death determination, not a prognosis or a consent to withdraw care. * Biologically, such bodies can retain some integrated functions with intensive support: circulation, gas exchange via ventilation, wound healing, hormonal activity, and in rare cases gestation. Those facts are why critics argue that brain death does not always match ordinary intuitions about a dead body. How “Brain Dead” Patients are Treated Differently if Organ Donors SIMONE’S SOURCE: Donors are given paralytics So they don’t move during harvest They feel everything Research findings: * Yes, paralytics (aka neuromuscular blocking drug) are used about 90% of the time * Paralytics do NOT provide pain relief or sedation or anesthetization * No, patients are not always medicated for pain, just for organ preservation and to suppress spinal reflexes and stabilize physiology: Per standard procedure, they are not required to prevent conscious suffering because consciousness and pain perception are considered absent. * A review of one center’s cases found that about one-third of brain-dead donors received an opioid, most often fentanyl; about 63% received an inhaled anesthetic such as sevoflurane or isoflurane; and 90% received a neuromuscular blocker. * There are no universally binding national or international intraoperative anesthesia guidelines for brain-dead donor recovery, and protocols vary among hospitals and organ-procurement systems. The review specifically notes limited and conflicting outcome evidence. The Lazarus Sign SIMONE’S SOURCE: Oh look up the “Lazarus reflex” This is when the supposedly dead person tries to fight off the surgeon The Lazarus sign is a pattern of movement sometimes observed in people declared brain-dead who remain on a ventilator. The person may: * Flex both arms at the elbows. * Raise their arms upward. * Bring the hands toward the neck, chin, chest, or endotracheal tube. * Cross the arms over the chest. * Occasionally lift or arch the upper body. The standard explanation is that the movement is generated by neural circuits in the spinal cord below the brainstem, without input from the cerebral cortex or brainstem. * There is no sound basis to describe it as a conscious defensive act if the brain-death diagnosis was correctly made. * IF THE DIAGNOSIS WAS CORRECTLY MADE Because the arms may appear to reach toward the face or tube, people sometimes describe it as “trying to pull out the tube,” “sitting up,” or “fighting the surgeon.” It can be deeply unsettling to see and it deserves a clear explanation before family members witness withdrawal of ventilation or donor surgery. NOTE: The paper I referenced for some descriptions of this reports on two brain-dead patients who survived for over 100 days after being declared brain dead, who both showed these signs. The paper says organ donation was recommended to both families, but both families refused. The Apn

    Fake Diagnosis Invented to Harvest Organs from Living Patients

  5. 4d ago

    New Trend: Alpine Divorce (Men Learn They Can Just ... Leave Annoying Women)

    What is alpine divorce? This episode breaks down the viral outdoor trend where partners get left behind on hikes, climbs, and trail adventures. We explore the term’s surprising literary origins, recent social media stories, and a high-profile negligence case on Austria’s highest peak, then look at how mismatched fitness, pacing, and expectations turn outdoor dates into breakups. From Grand Canyon and desert peak accounts to crowded trail TikToks and the wider man-versus-bear conversation, we examine outdoor culture, preparedness, and why solo travel content can paint an unrealistic picture of wilderness risk. The hosts share personal near-misses, national-park safety stats, and practical takeaways on communication, chivalry, and knowing when a hike simply isn’t a good date idea. Show Notes The Guardian: Women are being abandoned by their partners on hiking trails. What’s behind ‘alpine divorce’? “On social media, women describe alpine divorce as going on a hike, climb or other outdoor adventure with a male partner, only to be abandoned or left behind – perhaps he went too fast and neglected to wait, or a fight on the trail resulted in him storming off. Breakups have quickly followed. In a TikTok with more than 4.2m likes, a woman bawls as she takes shaky steps down a rock formation. “He left me by myself, I should have never come with him,” sobs the woman, who did not respond to a request for comment. Others flooded the comments section with stories about being served with an alpine divorce. One woman described a 12-hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her, during which she was assisted by a “very nice man from Norway” who carried her backpack. Another described getting lost in the woods after a man left her behind, and immediately blocking his number once she got home. There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil … but it usually has a negative effect on the partner. Many of the women described having some level of dependence on their partner in nature. They may not have been carrying the right supplies or enough water, or were not familiar with the terrain, making them feel vulnerable. “It’s such a common thing,” said Julie Ellison, the first female editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine who now works as an outdoor lifestyle photographer. She has heard “so many stories” about men fumbling outdoor dates. “There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil or ill-intentioned, but it usually has a negative effect on the partner who’s being left behind.” A recent case study illustrates this point: last month, an amateur Austrian mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend behind on his country’s highest peak while he went in search of help. The man, a Salzburg chef identified only as Thomas P, said he was “endlessly sorry” for her death, and his lawyer called it a “tragic accident”. But Thomas P could not explain why he failed to wrap his freezing girlfriend in her emergency blanket before heading down the mountain without her. Earlier in their trek he had also told a police officer over the phone that they did not need any help, even though a rescue helicopter was made available to them. A former girlfriend testified that Thomas P had left her behind on a trail during a hike in 2023 – “so that was the last mountain expedition we undertook together”, she said. Outdoor culture romanticizes pushing your limits and flexing endurance. Folk heroes have been made out of rugged men such as Timothy Treadwell, the environmentalist who was mauled by the grizzly bears he lived alongside, or Christopher McCandless, who eschewed society to live alone in the wild and later died of starvation. “There’s this emphasis on strength, independence and stoicism that is really embedded in the way males are taught to prioritize character traits,” said Doriel Jacov, a New York-based therapist who specializes in relationship patterns. “Masculinity seems to play a role in how alpine divorce manifests in real life.” A man walking 100ft ahead of his girlfriend because he cannot be bothered to wait for her is bad manners. But failing to properly care for someone in an environment they’re not prepared to handle alone can cause real harm. “I can’t see how leaving someone in a highly unsafe position wouldn’t qualify as an abusive dynamic, especially if [the man] is aware to some degree that that’s what they’re doing,” said Jacov. Naomi, 46, an educator and member of the Wine Hiking Society, a community organization for women that promotes outdoor exploration and socialization, was not surprised when she saw discussion of alpine divorce on TikTok. “It feels like another version of a #MeToo story to me,” she said. “My response is like, well of course [this happens].” About 20 years ago, Naomi hit Deseret Peak, an 11,036ft (3,363-metre) mountain close to her home in Salt Lake City, with two friends: another woman and a man who she had a “close” but not romantic relationship with. On the way up, Naomi started to feel disoriented, possibly from altitude sickness. But the man, who was chasing a goal of hiking the highest peak in every county in Utah, did not want to stop. (Naomi requested to use only her first name for the sake of privacy.) The man and woman left Naomi on the way up. She knew that they would not come back for her because the trail was a loop, and she feared she would pass out. “I felt like I had to crawl on my hands and knees, and finally I made it to the top.” Naomi eventually stopped hiking with the man. “I realized at some point that every bad thing that would happen to me outside, he was the common denominator,” she said. “I would find myself in sketchy situations that were way outside my comfort zone, which is often a theme in these stories of either being left behind or pushing yourself beyond your limit.” A few years ago, Naomi was hiking Arches national park in Utah when her group noticed a woman lying on the ground in distress. The woman told them she suffered from severe vertigo – not ideal given the park’s topography – and her date had gone to retrieve his camera after she accidentally dropped it into the bowl near Delicate Arch. “There was no way she was going to get out by herself, and we hiked with her back down to the trailhead,” Naomi said. On the way, they learned that she was on a “second or third date” with the man. “We were asking her, like, ‘So … this might be the last date, huh?’”” What are people posting on Tiktok? The most famous one with 5.1M views (WHY IS THIS WOMAN FILMING HERSELF WHILE WALKING DOWN DANGEROUS ROCKS) * Reads: POV: you go on a hike with him in the mountains but he leaves you alone by yourself and you realize he never liked you to begin with * As she walks, there are clearly other people on the trail; she is not alone. Another woman named Lara Marcellin / @thespicypisces444 posted: “PSA ladies never go hiking with a man” with a clip she filmed while she was lost/stranded and trying to find her way. * She describes stepping briefly off-trail (bathroom), then discovering he was gone * Iit took her a long time (reports of ~2 hours) to reach the car. * Multiple millions of views reported; follow-ups discuss the aftermath and trust issues. Covered as another clear example of the same pattern. There’s one woman who posted a photo of herself with the text “POV you refuse to be the victim of alpine divorce” in which she films herself with her boyfriend on a leash on a hiking trail” The sister movement of female solo travel 22-year-old Kamryn Renae, aka the “PCT Princess,”went viral while (allegedly) solo thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and has said she funds the trip through OnlyFans. * Ironically on her non-only fans Instagram, where she has 298K followers, she ended up influencing a lot of young women who got into solo hiking/camping because of her * When I looked at her account I found that two women I already follow also follow her * And comments are oddly bifurcated * On one of her latest posts, which includes photos of her wearing a skin-tight white shirt with no bra that says “I books and sex”, comments are a mix of stuff from women who find her aspirational to men who clearly are there for the OF comment * Examples: * Laurenashen: How is this diva hiking the entire PCT trail and looking so cute while doing it?? I would look endlessly ugly 😂 * Oceanpeaches: “(Not trying to be weird) but it genuinely must feel SO NICE to hike without a bra on!!” * Ginnicholas: “I have so many questions about your adventures. How do you keep your devices charged. I’m planning a hike of the pct next year and want to create content for my kids and friends do you have any suggestions or pointers” * Heteromationprecariat: I took love books, and sex. However, books are easier to come upon. * A little concerned about her form of influencing? * She hikes in little miniskirts and tight tiny shirts without bras and speaks in a little baby voice and most of her equipment is pink * She starts off her days by putting on makeup, painting her nails, etc. * In a YouTube video titled Kamryn Renae and the Paradox of Outdoor Influencers, Broey Deschanel (a female culture commentator) talks about how Kamryn influenced her to get out more, but wrestles with whether her childlike affect is legit or a contrived persona * She also talks about conspiracy theories that she’s not actually hiking the trail solo (instead traveling with a guy), or that she’s possibly staying in hotels at night Other famous female solo travel influencers: * Alyssa Ramos (My Life’s a Travel Movie) * Eva zu Beck, Lexie Alford (Lexie Limitless) (No OF) * Ciara Johnson (Hey Ciara) (No OF) * Liz Carlson (Young Adventuress) There is definitely OF hiking content. Pro T

  6. Aug 28

    Why Do Indians **** At Such High Rates? Why Is A Country of Such Smart People So Poor?

    Simone and Malcolm walk through a widely circulated write-up on izzat—the North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi honor/reputation system—after Homath quote-tweeted it. They treat it the same way they treat critiques of Western hookup culture, Chinese face, or American individualism: as a cultural technology that can either support or sabotage flourishing. They read the original Kiwi Farms post, then fact-check it. Izzat is a real, documented concept of collective family/clan honor. It is not practiced by all Indians. It is concentrated among many Hindi and Muslim communities in the north and is a poor fit for Jain, Christian, and Buddhist communities. Admitting fault can be treated as humiliating the whole group. Disputes can escalate past the original slight. Police and officials sometimes avoid taking sides. Honor killings are the part the original post underplayed: UNFPA and NGO estimates put worldwide honor killings in the thousands per year, and peer-reviewed work ties izzat to those cases in India and Pakistan. The 2017 Delhi toilet/urination murder they cite is a real case. They also cover jugaad (workaround culture that can mean frugal innovation or cheating the rule), H-1B co-ethnic hiring and the Cognizant discrimination findings, Air India training scandals, and why a high-performing Indian diaspora can coexist with a country that still struggles with public goods and trust. Malcolm’s secondary explanation: License Raj and the post-independence decision to treat British rule as synonymous with capitalism. Firsthand: their travel business had clients from many countries. Indian sub-agencies, they say, repeatedly broke vendor contracts, hid large bills, and scammed end customers—including after second chances. They live in a majority-Indian neighborhood and like their neighbors. The argument is about norms and selection, not “all Indians.” They close by comparing this to Africans, Chinese, and Indians criticizing Western individualism and hookup culture, and by arguing that slapping “racist” on a pattern debate makes the backlash worse (Streisand effect), especially after Canada’s diploma-mill wave. Weekend episodes and citations: Patreon / Substack.Books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG Show Notes The Izaat Post On November 2nd, 2025, @XJosh posted three recent Kiwifarms screenshots to X, saying: Kiwi Farms user breaks down ‘Izzat’, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior: they all participate in an invisible clout-chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read The screenshots, showing a post by GluttonousManSlob read: Hi. I didn’t see this term mentioned in the thread, so I wanted to share this all with you. It’s about Izzat. Some posts have mentioned ‘saving face’, which is Izzat, but I wanted to elaborate on it. Izzat has no direct translation into English. We only have terms that can broach the same concept such as ‘honour’ or ‘reputation’ or ‘face’. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero-sum game of collective honour shared by whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to Enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith. Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero-sum game where just about any action is justified (including murder) to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of izzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything (murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing). The only morality in Izzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Izzat is attacked is the complete destruction of whoever insulted it. Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. i.e. ‘Sorry I broke your garden gnome.’ With two Indians in an argument, the stakes are always deadly thanks to Izzat. Neither of them can back down, nor can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Izzat is shared, you are shaming everyone who shares your Izzat. So, admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means even if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial (like a broken garden gnome), it could spiral into a decades long honour feud. Izzat is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes. Because Izzat is a zero-sum game, all participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Izzat dispute, this means that he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonouring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function. Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official responsible for the water pipe denies it’s a problem and counterattacks him instead, because daring to question his efficacy in his role was challenging his Izzat. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed. Izzat is also the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive not to be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Izzat and conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him. It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the west. And yes, izzat is very much a system that enables short term success. But the fundamental reality is the prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the west practiced something similar to Izzat. Our systems can only exist on the assumption of good faith, and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he can just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long-term prosperity, functionality or stability of these systems. The stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favour. You all know about that infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous. Losing is not. By employing ‘clever’ means (jugaad), he successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of jugaad, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he is seen as a righteous and dignified man in the Izzat framework. * We can attest to this being an issue: One of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world: The USA, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and India * While we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients getting in trouble by helping people flee the country (pretty reasonable) for the most part our agency clients were reasonable * However, our Indian clients were so systematically scammy that we had to completely change our terms * They violated major vendor contracts so egregiously we almost lost key vendors that were crucial for our business operations * One racked up $60,000 in expenses in a way that was obscured from us and then disappeared, leaving us with the bill * We also started hearing from these clients’ direct customers, who were being scammed by them I read a story in India about a man offering to pay another man to use a public toilet instead of defecating openly. The latter left and came back with several friends and beat the former to death. The problem was not that he was defecating openly, but that he was criticised for doing so. And with Izzat, it’s not an eye-for-an-eye. Izzat is often an eye-for-a-whole-head. Disproportionately and brutally annihilating your enemies is the correct move to make because you take back your lost Izzat and then some. This kind of vindictiveness would be rightly seen as horrifying and disgusting in most of the world. There was a greentext from 4chan (I don’t have it so bear with me). Anon knew an Indian. This Indian would make outlandish claims (he could benchpress 500kg, he was a billionaire, he did arms deals with the US government). Anon said he didn’t believe the Indian. The Indian reacted with righteous indignation. The situation escalated to the point where the Indian was emailing Anon death threats. Anon responded by forwarding the emails to the police. The Indian killed himself. Anon was left baffled at the whole situation and had no idea what the f**k just happened. So, without Izzat, this looks like an utterly insane and pointless sequence of events. But with Izzat? The Indian’s actions suddenly make sense. He was boasting to increase his Izzat, and when Anon simply stated his disbelief, it was seen as a vicious attack on his Izzat. The Indian escalated the situation to restore the lost Izzat. When the police got involved, the dispute had become public, so the Indian’s shame had increased to unbearable levels. He committed suicide in order to save his remaining Izzat. Anon had

    Why Do Indians **** At Such High Rates? Why Is A Country of Such Smart People So Poor?

  7. Aug 27

    How Erasing Blackface Erased Black Culture: The Uncle Tom Effect

    Target pulled a kids’ Halloween costume after people said it looked like blackface. Malcolm and Simone use that controversy as a jumping-off point for a much larger argument: that systematically scrubbing minstrel shows, cakewalks, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Song of the South, Splash Mountain, Aunt Jemima, and similar “tainted” material didn’t just remove racism — it severed Black Americans from large parts of their own cultural history and from the credit for innovations that built American popular music, comedy, and theater. They walk through: * What Uncle Tom actually does in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel vs. what “Uncle Tom” means now * Cakewalk as plantation satire of white ballroom dance — and the line from that rhythm into ragtime, jazz, R&B, and rock * Minstrel structure as the ancestor of standup, the sitcom, and a lot of classic American slapstick * Brer Rabbit / Uncle Remus as West African trickster tradition (Anansi/hare) fused with Jack tales — and why replacing Splash Mountain with The Princess and the Frog trades one set of problems for another * Banjo origins, tap’s African + Irish fusion, “tar baby,” family-barbecue “caricatures,” and how labeling ordinary Black life as a racist stereotype pushed later generations toward the opposite * Why they think groups that treated every racially adjacent artifact as radioactive helped create a cultural vacuum later filled by gangster/rap identity Provocative, heavily historical, and not YouTube-algorithm-friendly. Watch at your own risk. RFab (editing, research, companions): https://rfab.ai/ Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins [0:00]:Hello, Simone. Recently, Target has been in hot water because they decided to release blackface as a Halloween costume. Simone Collins [0:08]:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Malcolm Collins [0:09]:They’d say this was by accident, but it is it’s hilarious. But I wanted to take this opportunity. So we’ll go into this incident. But what’s more interesting is I wanna take this opportunity to explore how erasing blackface and mistrial shows from America’s memory and cultural identity was the tool that was used to erase most of black culture. And when I say this, people will think, oh, he’s exaggerating. Simone Collins [0:48]:No. They’ll think, oh, he’s speedrunning a YouTube ban, I guess. Malcolm Collins [0:54]:What are you doing? So I we I guess we’ll call it the uncle Tom effect is what I’ll call this. So when you hear No. Simone Collins [1:02]:Let’s call it the Aunt Jemima effect. Come on. She was our woman. She was our lady. Malcolm Collins [1:06]:Uncle Tom’s a much better example. When you hear the term uncle Tom, what do you think? Somebody calls someone an uncle Tom. Okay. What they are saying is that they are not a good black person. They are somebody who kowtows to white people. They are somebody who is obsequious to white people and tries to fit in with white society. Okay? Simone Collins [1:30]:Okay. I’m looking up uncle Tom’s cat. Malcolm Collins [1:31]:So uncle Tom in the book is a character who dies protecting black people attempting to escape slavery. Simone Collins [1:41]:Okay. Great way to go. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s an antislavery Yes. Oh, yeah. The antislavery novel it’s by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Malcolm Collins [1:47]:She was a But it’s not like the character is poorly written or anything. The book became one of the most popular books in American history. The character is introduced. He saves a white girl from drowning. He is then, sold to a very mean slave driver. Simone Collins [2:02]:Yeah. Away from his wife and children. Malcolm Collins [2:04]:So Away from his wife and children. And then he ends up being beaten to death, saving two other black women who were attempting to escape. And his last words are wishing to protect the the for for mercy on the people person who’s beating him to death. And it’s very clearly like a Jesus analogy. Right? Now this is not a figure that should be shamed in black culture. This is not a figure whose name should be associated with shame. Simone Collins [2:33]:No. I mean, it’s it’s a figure who was clearly mistreated by white slave owners. So Malcolm Collins [2:38]:He’s one of the most important figures, literary figures in blacks being freed from slavery to begin with. I and so Simone Collins [2:47]:why would he say why yeah. How? Malcolm Collins [2:48]:His name becomes synonymous if you talk to a black teen today Simone Collins [2:53]:Okay. Malcolm Collins [2:54]:With turning on black people. Simone Collins [2:56]:Right? Real? Oh, yeah. Know Victor Stowe was white. Okay. Sorry. Anyway, maybe that’s the problem. Malcolm Collins [3:00]:This is what we are going to continue to see, this particular effect around all of these critical moments of black history, if you remove the minstrel shows, you remove cakewalking. If you remove cakewalking, then you remove the Simone Collins [3:17]:link. Cakewalking? It’s a cakewalking. Is it is it an expression meaning that it’s easy? Malcolm Collins [3:24]:No. Cakewalking was a style of dancing that African slaves did. Now today, it’s considered very offensive, and no one does it because the very name of it came from the concept of, we will have the slaves come and dance against each other for a piece of cake that the master would give them. Simone Collins [3:41]:Oh, yeah. A a cakewalk is a nineteenth century African American partner dance that originated on Southern plantations, which also evolved into a modern idiom and a digital music software name. Okay. I okay. I just didn’t know. Speaker 3 [3:53]:I’m gonna get fancy now. Keep on swinging. Simone Collins [4:19]:I just heard cakewalk. Like, oh, it would be so easy. Malcolm Collins [4:21]:To be a cakewalk. Well, yeah, the the that that also the modern idiom is easy as a cakewalk became, like, what the slave owners said because they they’d looked too derisively at these. They would, you know, it was, like, entertainment for them to have the blacks do the cakewalk. But, anyway, so you Oh, it’s a cute dance. If you remove cakewalking from the cultural history, you remove the descendant forms of music that came from cake walking Simone Collins [4:46]:Oh. Malcolm Collins [4:47]:Which include ragtime, jazz Oh, ragtime’s great. Rock and roll. No. Basically, form of American music evolved from the cakewalk dances that were constructed. And so blacks can say, wait. Why did we erase this? It’s like, well, because clearly a racist derogatory thing they were doing. And it’s the same thing that happened with uncle Tom’s Cabin. So with uncle Tom’s Cabin, they began to hold Tom shows. Right? And this was the stage play production of uncle Tom’s cabin. Simone Collins [5:22]:Oh, okay. In the stage to Broadway. That’s great. Malcolm Collins [5:25]:Productions of uncle Tom’s cabin, you ended up having the the the characters would begin to act more comedically or more in ways that represented normal black tropes. And so they would act obsequiously. They would act in a way that where the uncle Tom moniker might make sense. And so black culture began to use the evoked set, what they had seen more recently, the stage play, instead of the critical character that sparked a huge part of the abolition movement. Wow. And they then denigrated the entire line because of this one connection to actual racism. Take something like the Mistral Show. If you take people are familiar with the Mistral Show where black people were well, first, it began with whites doing in blackface sort of caricatures that were derogatory of black people on stage. And then these evolved into often not necessarily derogatory, but endearing caricatures and caricatures which were the ancestor of huge amounts of what we today think of as the three stooges, for example. Most comedy of this period was done in the style that was pioneered by the minstrel show. Simone Collins [6:57]:And hold on. If I I’ll check this, but weren’t minstrel shows originally things that took place in England and Europe that, you know, there would be traveling minstrels, and they would make jokes around prevailing tropes at that time. So it’s kind Malcolm Collins [7:12]:of equal for the point being is is when you’re like, oh, this is a racist against black thing. Simone Collins [7:17]:No. No. No. This existed before slavery, like, black slavery in The United States. Right? Malcolm Collins [7:21]:Yeah. The the the it’s like when you have the NAACCP fighting to take down Andy and Amos, which a third of Americans watched at its height, which had caricatures that at its time were not dissimilar to the caricatures white comedians were playing. For example, the three stooges. For example, I could I’ll go through a list later of numerous white comedians that did similar bits, but it was just normal at the time. And it removed a huge amount of black representation, but then also removed the link in American history where you don’t see that this form of the the minstrel shows that did have racism in them, but it also launched the careers of the first major black actors in America. It also launched the first black theatrical company in America. It also brought black people to Broadway for the first time in America. and it it style that it pioneered later became the American sitcom. It later became the American night show. Simone Collins [8:32]:And I guess trying to erase that or disassociate them from any form of blackness removes both black credit and black influence, but also very positive connotations and and performances from black artists. Malcolm Collins [8:46]:Right. And what’s what’s worse is that black history the this is this is the bigger part, is that groups like the NAACP and WHO have been like, we’re gonna erase everything that is tied to racism. And it’s like, bro, black American culture is tied to racism. And when I say it’s tied to racism, it’s t

    How Erasing Blackface Erased Black Culture: The Uncle Tom Effect

  8. Aug 26

    Aid Workers Keep Getting ** & It's Being Covered Up (The Data Is Scary)

    In this episode of Based Camp, Simone walks through a question most humanitarian orgs would rather leave off the annual report: how often are aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and refugee-support staff sexually assaulted — and why do official databases, NGOs, and political tribes treat some perpetrators as unspeakable?The episode starts with a 2024 r/rapecounseling post from a high-school volunteer who said she was assaulted by a man she had been helping at a refugee organization, then deleted the thread. From there Simone stacks official sources against what workers say to each other when they think no one is compiling a press release. Show Notes A July 2024 Reddit post in r/rapecounseling by a user identifying as a high-school-age female volunteer describes being raped for several hours and nearly killed by “one refugee guy” she had been helping weekly at a refugee support organization and temporary accommodations. * She wrote that she had been assisting families, talking with them and their children, and helping with integration; “uncomfortable things happened from some guys” but she continued because she felt she was doing good. * After the assault she lost her virginity to him, faced blame from some family/friends for volunteering in the first place, and questioned whether she had given “wrong signals” or dressed inappropriately relative to “their culture and religion.” * The post is unsubstantiated and received little engagement. OP ultimately deleted her post. Ultimately, when it comes to aid work: * Organizations seem to be systematically under-reporting cases of rape * Sometimes refusing to report it entirely * Most cases that get coverage have to do with organizational reporting, perhaps because it’s the one thing orgs think they can control * When it comes to attacks by outsiders, the only place you see people opening up candidly is among volunteers on places like reddit * And the craziest thing about women’s own accounts is both: * How universal and distressing the women find harassment to be * How ultimately dismissive they are of it, in a way that reminds me an awful lot of colonial-era texts I’ve read Let’s get into it. Scant Reporting The Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) has tracked major violent incidents against aid workers since 1997, records rape/serious sexual assault as a category. * Here’s their 2025 report * The report does not provide a number of reported rapes in 2025. Its provisional mid-year figures report roughly 230 aid-worker deaths through 30 June 2025, but it does not publish a rape or sexual-assault total for that period. * The report does not say that rape was unreported, nor does it give a reason for omitting a 2025 rape total. * Rape and sexual assault are within AWSD’s tracked incident categories, but the report’s 2025 discussion and tables present only killings, serious injuries, kidnappings, and arrests/detentions—not a separate sexual-violence count. Therefore, no defensible 2025 rape total can be extracted from this report. * The report’s compilers explicitly flag underreporting as big problem in several contexts, especially in Sudan and with organizations refusing to report incidents because they might be nervous about losing funding * They also have criteria that make many genuine incidents not get counted * E.g. if someone was not kidnapped or detained for at least 24 hours, IT DOESN’T COUNT * If someone was assaulted and not “seriously injured” IT DOESN’T COUNT * Their full criteria * Killing * Kidnapping lasting more than 24 hours * Serious injury * Rape or sexual assault * Arrest or detention lasting more than 24 hours — a category AWSD began tracking distinctly in 2025. Known Cases SOMETIMES THEY ARE AMERICAN: In late 2014, Sarah Pierce (pseudonym), a U.S. aid worker with the Carter Center in a remote South Sudan field site, was raped in her tent by an American colleague. She reported it the next day. After speaking about the incident and criticizing the organization’s support, her contract was not renewed; she described feeling she was effectively punished for reporting. The organization stated it provided medical care and counseling and acted out of concern for her welfare. In February 2015, Canadian aid worker Megan Nobert was drugged (cocktail including morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and cocaine) and raped by a Syrian UNICEF contractor colleague on a UN base/Protection of Civilians site in Bentiu, South Sudan—an IDP/refugee-style camp setting. She woke up naked and ill with no memory of the assault. Toxicology confirmed the drugs. Her organization’s and UN response was described as dismissive; there was no meaningful investigation or accountability. Nobert later went public and founded Report the Abuse to collect other testimonies. The most prominent public incident occurred in July 2016 at the Terrain Hotel compound in Juba, South Sudan—a site used by foreigners and aid workers during the civil war. South Sudanese government soldiers killed a local journalist, looted the compound, and raped several foreign women. One Western woman reported being raped by 15 soldiers after being given the choice of sex or being gang-raped and shot. Associated Press interviews with eight survivors (three of whom described rape) and reporting by Human Rights Watch, NPR, and The Guardian documented the attack. UN peacekeepers stationed nearby did not respond to calls for help. Many survivors requested anonymity to protect themselves or their organizations’ ongoing operations. Underreporting, Reluctance, Cover-Ups Report the Abuse (founded by Megan Nobert, the woman who was raped by Syrian UNICEF contractor) collected over 1,000 self-reports from aid workers (mostly international). * Roughly 72% identified as survivors of sexual violence; around 13% of reports involved rape in some analyses. 87% knew a colleague who had experienced it. * Perpetrators were frequently colleagues (one analysis put this at ~64% of cases). A 2024 academic analysis of 62 public survivor testimonies found that in 45 of 60 cases the assailant’s behavior was described as condoned by supervisors or the organization. * 54 out of 60 indicated that no legal or even internal complaint process was pursued after the incident * Many victims were isolated or received no meaningful support. Shame, fear of career damage, not being believed, and “cowboy culture” in remote field settings are repeatedly cited barriers. * See: #AidToo, or when situation permits rape: sexual violence among humanitarian aid workers * They found that Incidents most often involve colleagues within the same organization; the next most common alleged perpetrators are staff from other agencies, peacekeepers, or armed groups. Assault by members of the local population is described as least common. Where They Talk About it Without Talking About it We do get a picture of reality when volunteers vent or trade advice online E.g. a post on /r/peacecorps titled “It’s Hard Being a Woman in PC” * “As I near the end of my two-year service I gotta say, I’m proud of myself. Because being a woman volunteer in certain host countries is freakin’ hard. I know male volunteers have their share of issues, but this post is for the women.” * “During my training, I feel my team did the best to educate me about the reality of being a woman during service. They highlighted the help lines offered, the numbers of safety & security, and assurances of therapy should we need it in the future. And they warned us on how the men acted differently than what we’re used to. They even acted out scenarios and how to approach them safely. But guys, I think it’s impossible for us to fully be prepared even with having the knowledge beforehand. The hissing, whistling, and catcalling is a type of harassment we’re not used to in the United States. Yes, we have our share of pervs, but it’s not as normalized.” * “While serving in Latin America, I’m always on edge. Waiting to be howled at, waiting to be approached by a sleazy male trying to hit on me. I can’t take a walk alone or do errands without men catcalling. It bleeds into professional situations as well where counterparts, teachers, and community members will proposition me during working hours (most married or with partners!). I need to adapt because the reality is that it’s a part of the culture. What I see as sexual harassment isn’t viewed the same way in my host country. Yet, I somehow need to set my boundaries while not alienating myself from my community. While I don’t feel unsafe, it’s simply an exhausting obstacle I need to overcome daily.” * “It can be challenging because you don’t want the actions of some to overshadow your whole experience as a volunteer. But it can be so damn hard. When I went home for vacation, the tension wasn’t there... It was...Quiet. I could walk with my friends in peace. Wear whatever I wanted, such as shorts. No men tried to get my attention or block my path to flirt with me. I could wait in line for a meal and not have a man ask for sex or a kiss on the lips in broken English. I felt like a human instead of some object to be pursued as an American trophy or a visa ticket. The United States is by no means perfect, but there’s privileges I never realized I had until doing service.” * COMMENTS * It is important to tell recruits to many, many countries (especially young, “conventionally attractive” women who are only known to host communities through “blue movies” and perceived to be loose): * You will get catcalled, proposed to, hit on, touched inappropriately on a DAILY basis by multiple men. Sometimes those men will be in your community and it’s difficult to navigate. Sometimes you’re in a good mood and can laugh it off and everyone thinks the joke is funny....And some days, it’s the 10th proposal of the day and you’re just done with the dehumanization of the

    Aid Workers Keep Getting ** & It's Being Covered Up (The Data Is Scary)
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About

Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics. Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs. If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com

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