Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
1hr ago
We are not allowing AI-generated drive-bys from first time posters.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
1hr ago
It seems like you keep circling around the same points you won't quite touch. Let me ask this:
What does "winning" mean for the US?
Because I don't think anyone ever claimed Iran could militarily defeat the US. And everyone knows that the US could, if it were willing to expend unlimited monies and go scorched earth, end the regime and even occupy the country. We could turn Iran into a parking lot. We could turn Iran into a colony. That we have the military power to do this has never been in doubt. What has been, and is, in doubt is whether we have the money and the political will to... do anything other than lob some missiles at them and declare "mission accomplished."
You say Iran does not "meaningfully" control the Strait of Hormuz. No, they don't. It's true, ships can sail through it and probably emerge unscathed. And yet, it's still considered dangerous, because Iran is still shooting at them, and strangely, commercial vessels are not comforted by being told "They'll probably miss you."
If we were "winning" the way you say we are, I would expect us to be in complete, undisputed, absolute control of the Straits. As in, zero Iranian missiles. No ships being threatened. None. Nada. Iran incapable of posing a threat to so much as a dingy, either because they literally no longer have the capacity to threaten, or know that firing one shot will bring consequences they are unwilling to bear.
That's not where we are. Why not? What have we accomplished? I want to know what my ROI is as an American taxpayer who's paying this bill. What have we won? Killing a lot of Iranians and making them spend a generation rebuilding does nothing for me as an American. I actually... don't care a lot about Israel, so Iran being less likely to attack Israel (note: less, not "will never happen again") is also not something I am invested in. Iran less likely to build nuclear weapons is some small benefit, but I remain unconvinced by your confident assurances that in 10 years Iran will not be building nuclear weapons. Iran not sponsoring terrorism anymore? Zero Islamic jihadist organizations being funded by Iran? That seems... very optimistic.
So tell me what we won. Kicking over a country like it's an anthill is a very expensive "victory" if you use a fleet of backhoes to do it and the ants are just going to keep stinging you.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5hr ago
Your ban was not for the topic you wanted to talk about.
You have banned me too much under the wildcard rule which really just means per your discretion you don't like my posts.
You have no idea how many people I'd be banning if I banned people because I don't like their posts.
I think it's impossible to become a true forum regular while also being one of the types of posters you mention
We have many forum regulars who are those types of posters.
And that huge ban would obviously not be given to a regular
We have given permabans to people who've been here for years.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5hr ago
Even themotte has to crack down on holocaust denial, HBD and other topics from time to time.
Sigh. You're baiting me, aren't you?
No, we've never "cracked down" on topics *. We've cracked down on obsessive single-issue posters and people turning their hobby horses into culture-warring and consensus-building. We've never forbidden Holocaust denial or HBD posting or even pedo-posting from the guys who want to abolish the age of consent.
- (Once, many years ago on the old subreddit, before my time, the mods put a temporary moratorium on HBD posting because it was close to turning into open calls for race war.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
6hr ago
It was the "((they))" that looked like Joo-posting. Multiple parentheses are an online "Jew" tag, and "Jews responsible for all the liberal degenerate things I hate" is not an uncommon mind virus here, but other than generic "Jews=Hollywood" I was struggling to see the connection.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
1d ago
But the point is ((they)) would think that’s so abhorrent what’s the point of the film
Is this supposed to mean Jews? If so, draw me a diagram, please. If not, what exactly do you mean by "they"?
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
Mild mod rebuke:
Who is "we"?
This is about as literal an example of consensus-building as I've seen. You just assume everyone here on the Motte is on your side here. You're posting, literally, about opposing sides in the Culture War and just taking it as a given that one side is "us."
And you're not wrong that defenders of either Woke 1 or Woke 2 (whatever that is) are pretty scarce here. If I had to pick a side, yes, I'm a disaffected anti-woke like (almost) everyone else.
Still. We may be skewing further and further in one direction, but the Motte itself is not intended to be a partisan platform and we will not be "claimed" and you will not assert that only one side is "us."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
8d ago
This rant comes up quite often, in literary spaces, on social media, and on reddit. On reddit, unsurprisingly, it is generally not received well (probably why your post was removed). The usual feminist response is "Boo hoo, fiction catered to men forever, now it's our turn" and/or "Boo hoo, we had to grow up reading about boys, why can't boys read about girls?"
Both of those arguments are of course very disingenuous, but you shouldn't really expect much better on reddit.
(I personally have given up trying to shop my Heinlein-inspired YA teens-in-space novel around.)
That said, I do think "Nothing to read for boys" is overstated. Even "Nothing published recently for boys" is not entirely true. But it's hard, man. You pretty much have to go looking for small, niche publishers or indies... and if your tastes don't happen to run towards Christian homeschoolers or right-wing nutjobs, the selection is even sparser.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
8d ago
Dude, any time someone says something that is (arguably) wrong, the options basically boil down to "You're mistaken" or "You're lying." But it is quite belligerent to follow "I think you're wrong about this" with "So did you misunderstand or are you a liar"? I find your argumentation in this thread very obnoxious because you're doubling down on "Well, either he's stupid and doesn't know what he's talking about or he's making the whole thing up." Neither of those framings are charitable or conducive to good discussion, and you do not seem to actually be interested in fostering good discussion, but rather, seeing how much you can needle people. I've told you once and I am now underlining it: stop this. I don't mean stop being pedantic about exactly what "fraud charge" means- by all means, be pedantic and argue whether that was an appropriate term to use. I mean stop using fangs over word choices and pedantic details.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
10d ago
"Fraud" can mean punitive damages for being deceptive, which is not technically "fraud" as a criminal charge but is something juries are allowed to take into account in a civil trial. You could have accused him of being imprecise rather than going to "You are making this up."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
10d ago
While I do not like MKC's snarky rebuttal, I have to agree that you seem to be doing a reverse-karen: "This poor guy got screwed because all the ladies were on Team Woman and too stupid or emotional to consider evidence." But the evidence is that this guy is dumb, irresponsible, and basically handed over his paycheck to his girlfriend to run his life, was terrible with money, the relationship imploded predictably (after they had two children!) and guess what, he's now responsible for the aftermath of that. We could quibble over the specific dollar amounts she should or should not be entitled to, but yeah, the case really was quibbling over how much he owed. Like, my dude, you have two kids with a woman you couldn't be bothered to marry to hook up with almost-free medical coverage? Yeah, that's gonna cost you. On deployment, you go out and drink like a sailor (because, duh) and ask her to pay for your bar tabs? Yeah, you're gonna owe her for that.
Agreed that fraud should not have entered the discussion, and it sounds like Chad's lawyer was terrible (are we surprised that Chad is as good at picking lawyers as he is at picking baby-mommas?), and I don't doubt the chicks were biased, but you have to be pretty much on Team Pump-And-Dump-The-Bitches-Deserve-It to think Chad should have escaped responsibility here.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
10d ago
or perhaps the story itself is fabricated
I (as a mod) do not appreciate the low-key insinuations that the OP is lying, and while I'd have let "your framing might be missing any more details in her favor" go (because yes, that is certainly possible), you have no reason to be accusing him of outright making up this entire story. Do people make up stories to post here? Yes, I'm sure they do, though less frequently than on reddit - I have certainly raised my eyebrows at a few implausible just-so stories posted here - but "maybe this is all made up" is a shitty thing to say just by way of disagreement with the thesis.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
11d ago
Jesus wept. Simple math, people. I like AI but stop using it because you are too lazy to break out a calculator and the sort of deductive reasoning you'd give an undergrad interviewing for his first internship.
Current spot price of gold is about $4,350/troy ounce.
An avoirdupois pound is 14.583 troy ounces, or $63,436.05. So $1B in gold would be about 15,764 lbs, or 7.88 tons.
There are cargo planes that can carry over 100 tons. So I don't know how you posed your question, but it is clearly not "physically impossible" for a cargo plan to carry billions of dollars.
(I don't know if the UAE has literal tons of gold on hand, or if that's how they'd transport cash. Supposing they have a vault full of US bank notes, each bill is about 1 gram so $1B in $USD100 bills would be 10M x 1 gram = 10 metric tons/9.8 tons. So whatever form the "cash" takes, yes, it's physically possible to carry billions in a cargo plane.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13d ago
Well, no argument here that MAGA messaging sucks. But you know the phenomenon of all those Bernie bros who turned Trumpers? I think it not unlikely a lot of burrito MAGAs will turn into DSAers.
The fact that you initiated this as you being angry that you think your father had it better than you is why people are debating that. You did a poor job of framing this about whether or not your party is appealing to its base.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13d ago
Okay, fine, but that is also why people are voting for the DSA. Like you, their anger may be understandable but their reasoning is, as you put it, retarded. Maybe your base does need better messaging (the Dems certainly do) but it's not surprising you're getting tripped up by people pointing out that the things you claim are, uh, not necessarily true.
I'd prefer people engage with facts rather than demanding their anger and resentment be given a populist head-pat.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13d ago
Dot com millionaires were not a thing in the early 90s, but as far back as the 80s, computer programming was considered a very well-paying profession.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13d ago
You're telling a lot of people they're missing the point. They're not missing the point. They're disagreeing with you.
Housing, food, and educational costs are real, measurable things that can be tested against your personal experience. Some of them check out against your perceptions, some don't. But it's also relevant, all the ways in which your life and the things available to you are different than when your father grew up. Saying "I want the same life my father had".... Well, too bad? The world is different. Your children also will not grow up in the same world you did.
Now what you're saying is "My world is worse than the one my father had." And that's debatable, which is why people are talking about lifestyle inflation and burrito availability, and you're stomping your foot and saying "No, no, you're missing the point!" But really, this is the point.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
14d ago
Yeah, like not to belabor this too much, because I am not personally an oyster-enjoyer, literally or figuratively. But the point I was making is not that oysters are perfectly fine and no one should complain about them or find them disgusting, but that I find it dishonest to claim you consider oysters a perfectly fine thing to enjoy, just not for you, yet make it clear in your reactions that that is not actually how you feel.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
14d ago
The shaming is the contradiction.
You might not like oysters, or want to watch people eating them, but presumably you won't make a point of letting oyster-enjoyers know how gross you think they are.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
14d ago
Well, in that case, you are saying specifically that is not "fine" for someone with a female partner to like fan service.
Which, fair enough, if those are the boundaries you've established in your relationship. It's not unlike porn; some women are fine with their men watching porn, some are very much not.
But I'm talking about the phenomenon of women finding it objectionable for guys in general to watch it. @HereAndGone2 was not talking about her partner watching fan service, she's talking about being offended that she sees it.
Again, rather like porn: if you hate porn and wish it did not exist and wish men did not watch it, fine. But be honest about it, don't say "It's fine that it exists, I understand men like it, but also I will complain about it and try to shame men who enjoy it."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
15d ago
There were some other things going on, but yes, we don't normally remove posts like that. Mea culpa, I will take the blame for messing up the threads.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
15d ago
@FCfromSSC is an admin. As for the removed posts, the poster is a ban evader who slipped through.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
16d ago
Why is there a groping scene in the show? For the male viewers to get their thrills. Which is fine, that's what these shows are about, but expecting women to watch it and go "nope, nothing to see here" is a bit much.
Okay, but... why?
Put it this way: you're entitled to dislike fan service. You're entitled to disdain the male gaze. You're entitled to not be interested in shows that exist to please men.
But you are arguing two contradictory things:
- "It's fine."
- "You shouldn't expect a woman to just sit there and not complain about it."
Like, if you genuinely believe that it's "fine" for some shows to featuring boobs and butts and groping and fan service, why is it "too much" to expect a woman to watch it without going off?
Now, if she was compelled/tricked/reluctantly dragged into watching it, or had no idea what sort of show it was and was enjoying it until the sudden fan service, okay, I can see some hard eye rolls, but I'm going to be honest, I don't think you (or most women) are "fine" with shows like that. You just sort of grudgingly tolerate their existence.
(FWIW, I have never seen Berserk and am not much into anime nowadays. Just sayin', as much as I dislike the seething hatred that sweats out of some of our He-Man Wimmin-Haters, they aren't completely wrong that a lot of media just gets outright snipped for the horrific crime of... being appealing to men.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
17d ago
You are allowed to express opinions, other people are allowed to express opinions about your opinions, and whether or not technical analysis is beneficial or not is arguable enough that you are in no position to tell someone "not to tell people" this.
You've been warned repeatedly for the kind of low-effort eye-poking antagonism that constitutes the majority of your posts. Even your posts that don't get reports are mostly like this.
Your next warning will not be a warning.
Every time you post, you repeat this lament. At this point, I am not sure you're not a troll.
But taking you at face value: what do you want? What are you asking here? What do you want people to say?
Either HBD is true or it's not. If it is true, then it doesn't matter whether it's "fair" in some cosmic sense. Of course it's not. No one is promised fairness. It's not fair some people are born into loving families in first world countries and other people are abandoned at birth in a slum. You are dealt the hand you're dealt. What other justice is there but "treat people as individuals"?
You can advocate for fair treatment. You can advocate for help to redress historical injustice. You can argue against the premise. But shaking your fist at reality because reality is unfair seems... really pointless.
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