FtttG
User ID: 1175
We permit some things and forbid others. Same as every other time and place in history.
Yes, and an "overly permissive" society is a society in which too many things are permitted and too few are forbidden. Not a difficult concept to grasp, I would've thought.
Are these the actions of a society that encourages "doing whatever you want"?
The word "encourage" or any of its synonyms appears nowhere in my post. As far as I grasp Freddie's point, it's not that following the path of least resistance (expending the least amount of effort) is encouraged, but doing the bare minimum isn't forbidden i.e. is permitted.
Sure, you can dress smart casual... as you work nights and weekends (and respond to emails and texts even when you're not "working") to get that big project over the finish line.
No idea what the point is meant to be here. The dress code in my last job, my current job and the job before that (post-Covid) was smart casual. My hours were 9-5 and I rarely had to work late, and never nights. In the two years I worked in my last job there was one occasion in which I had to work on the weekend. I don't think my experience is at all uncommon.
how exactly is anyone supposed to have time to enjoy anything with these cataclysmic threats constantly lurking in the background?
I doubt that, say, King Louis XIV knew how to cook for himself. He had people to do it for him. Should he have been ashamed of himself?
I think so. Is there any skill more fundamental to self-preservation than the ability to feed oneself?
I find that hot so I'm all for it.
Gross.
Antifa and BLM rioters, pro-Palestine student protesters
Go to any one of these protests, and you will find that 20% of the people protesting are true believers and 80% of people are there because their friends were going, or because they're hoping to signal that they're the right kind of person on Instagram, or because they want to get laid. Nothing is more performative or insincere than modern wokeness. How many of the people who shared a black square on their Instagram in June 2020 had even the slightest idea of what the intended message of said image was? You think everyone who ever dressed up in black bloc gear earns a living at the local vegan co-op or working for an activist nonprofit? I'm sure an absolute majority of these people subsequently put away childish things and took a cushy job at Merrill Lynch.
But you can't accuse them of concealing anything.
In punk (and by extension Antifa) circles, pretending that you're from a less affluent background than you really are is so common that satire websites poke fun at it. And while you might concede this point, it's certainly not like leftist apparatchiks would conceal something as fundamental as their ethnic back- oh wait, damn.
Your selective use of the murder rate
You're performing a Gish gallop Chinese robber fallacy by citing a dozen emotionally loaded stories of violent crimes committed in Europe by people who aren't European (conveniently ignoring all the violent crimes committed by Europeans) - and you're accusing me of "selectively" using the dispassionate, objective metric of the murder rate to make my case that Romania is in fact significantly more dangerous (and Ireland significantly safer) than you're claiming? Physician, heal thyself.
I don't dispute that migrants to Europe are overrepresented in crime stats. I don't even dispute that immigration policy into Europe may have been too lax in recent years and may be need to be restricted somewhat. But I am not persuaded that Ireland or any other western European country ought to be an ethnostate. Hell, this entire discussion was prompted by me complaining that Anglophone news outlets cover migrant crime in a dishonest and knowingly misleading way. Why are you so mad at me, of all people?
If Ireland maintains its current immigration levels and the birth rate doesn't increase, the indigenous population will be effectively extinct before the end of the century and in its place will be some amorphous Brazilian blob. I gather you don't care about racial identity, but there are plenty of people who do and don't want to see Western Europe die.
Correct, I don't really care that much about racial identity. Pointing out that other people care about it does nothing to persuade me. Persuade me why I should care.
I have been to Romania and other parts of Eastern Europe. I feel markedly more safe there than major cities in Western Europe. Perhaps Dublin is also still safe, I've never been, but its trajectory is tracking towards Berlin and Birmingham rather than Bucharest and Budapest.
Might I humbly suggest that your subjective feeling of "safety" might be belied by the facts on the ground? Romania's murder rate (1.109/100k) is nearly double Ireland's (0.654/100k), and Hungary's murder rate (0.774/100k) is likewise slightly higher than Ireland's. Germany's (0.823/100k) is likewise lower than Romania's. The only part of your claim that really stacks up is that the UK has a higher murder rate (1.148/100k) than Romania. "Dublin's trajectory is tracking towards Berlin and Birmingham rather than Bucharest and Budapest" - any of these four would represent an upward trajectory from Ireland's current murder rate.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
On the other hand, Bucharest specifically was ranked quite far ahead of Dublin in a list of safest cities in the world, so I take your point. (On the other other hand, Munich was ranked ahead of Bucharest on the same list; and anyway this list is based on user surveys rather than criminological data, a methodology they defend here.) But I strongly suspect that the primary driving factor for how safe a city is is its demographics, and I think it's fair to say that those are primarily controlled at a national rather than local level. If X% of Ireland's population is Roma/Syrian/Algerian etc., there's only so much Dublin city council can do to stop them from living in Dublin (and likewise if a Roma family wants to move from the Romanian countryside to Bucharest).
Much of the opposition to inward migration to Ireland and the UK is based on negative (but, in my view, accurate) stereotypes about Roma people (e.g. Jozef Puska is from a Roma background). In which case, Romania is a spectacularly bad example to use to illustrate your point: Roma people make up about 0.3% of the population of Ireland, but 3.4% of the population of Romania. And they are likewise massively overrepresented in crime, making up 17% of Romania's prison population.
"You Irish should stop letting in so many Roma people and become more like Romania" - like, what? Those two things are mutually exclusive. Where do you think the word "Roma" came from?
FtttG
7mo ago
Tangentially related but this reminds me of a tweet playfully mocking Vance which I found pretty funny, primarily just for how it was phrased:
[vice presidential debate]
moderator: what makes you smile
tim walz: my kids
jd vance: pass
moderator: what’s your favorite donut
jd vance: what if i killed you
If rapists of adult victims can be rehabilitated, then why not rapists of children?
Well this is my point: I think most woke people would categorically state that a cis male rapist of women (or groper, or harasser, or catch-all "creep") cannot be rehabilitated - that one can no more rehabilitate a cis male rapist's preference for penetrating women without their consent than you can convert a gay man to being straight. Remember during #MeToo, when dozens of men had their careers ruined because someone dug up evidence (or "remembered") of them being a little pushy or handsy a decade or more ago, having given every indication of being scrupulously respectful to women ever since, by all accounts? I don't think this is just "this guy may have learned the error of his ways, but he still needs to be brought to justice" - I think the woke stance is explicitly "once a ra(p)(c)ist (broadly defined), always a ra(p)(c)ist (provided you hold the relevant identity characteristics)".
Back from Bizarro World, I believe that rapists and people who rape, molest or statutorily rape children can be reformed and rehabilitated. I just don't think woke people believe that - it's heresy in light of "born this way".
You can argue that because of his past crime and the possibility of recidivism, Van de Velde should not be alone with twelve-year-olds in the future, but what does that have to do with him playing volleyball in a team full of adults?
Nothing, of course. I just think it's a bit rich that commenters here are waving the flag for this dude without even the barest pretence of having any motivation other than owning the libs - but in practice, if they were to interact with this guy in person, if it was their kid at risk of being interfered with ox being gored, their revealed preferences for how they think he should be treated would be functionally indistinguishable from those of the Guardian journalist who wrote this article.
FtttG
11mo ago
No, I saw someone crack that joke on Facebook and thought it was in extremely poor taste.
FtttG
1yr ago
You seriously think he was planning to murder his wife?
Absolutely. He has a severe temper and the reason she left him was because she couldn't tolerate his emotional abuse and the implied threat of violence. The whole movie is him lashing out at the world that denied him the things he felt entitled to (good job, respect). Of course he's going to lash out at the woman who (as he sees it) denied him a stable family. The fact that he abducts the wife and daughter at gunpoint only demonstrates my point.
The movie isn't a commentary on society or anything
Its social commentary may not have succeeded, but it was certainly intended. Quote Wikipedia:
screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith gave his interpretation of what the movie was about. "To me, even though the movie deals with complicated urban issues, it really is just about one basic thing: The main character represents the old power structure of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost. For both of them, it's adjust-or-die time ..."
The violence was also (sort of) real
Uh-huh. Bonus points for the top comment making the exact same GTA comparison I did.
Even Die Hard felt more grounded and believable than this. McClane is a bloody battered wreck by the end of his ordeal, while D-FENS hasn't a scratch on him until he actually gets brought down. And McClane is a cop who deals with hardened criminals every day, while D-FENS is an office drone who's never seen combat, and yet effortlessly mows down Compton gangbangers without a second's hesitation. Whatever Falling Down is, it's not "realistic". I don't even think it was really trying to be.
Have you ever seen the movie Gung Ho?
No I haven't. Does it have a similar plot?
FtttG
6mo ago
I feel the chances are good the goalposts would move again.
What are you basing this accusation on?
FtttG
1yr ago
I'm Irish and I wear shoes in the house. For me, people who ask me to take my shoes off are in roughly the same mental bucket as "people with no underlying conditions still wearing facemasks" and "people with their pronouns in their email signatures".
FtttG
1yr ago
Update regarding the kerfuffle surrounding Biden declaring March 31st the Trans Day of Visibility. Zero Hedge reports that Biden himself has no recollection of doing so.
FtttG
1yr ago
As for OP, there are many women in the Philippines and Ukraine who would be happy to have you.
That's kind of a cheap shot.
FtttG
1yr ago
Is it so completely out of the realm of possibility that a person can be slim and attractive without boring themselves half to death by doing braindead and repetitive busywork tasks constantly?
In my experience, yes. Although cycling via commuting is a good example of a form of exercise which does not fall under "busywork".
So now not only am I leaving even earlier to compensate for my MUCH slower method of transportation
Assuming you live in an urban centre, when factoring in traffic, cycling will often end up being faster than driving or taking public transport. It takes me an hour to get to my office via public transport, but only half an hour on a bike, and that's maintaining a gentle 12 km/h (not even fast enough to break a sweat, obviating the need for a shower).
I like being able to do a full week's shop in one day.
As I said, you can do this if you attach a trailer to your bike.
I like being able to just nip to IKEA and come back
Obviously there are circumstances in which cars are preferable to bikes, but seriously - how often do you go to IKEA? I can't imagine it's more than once a month.
I like being able to make phone calls if I need to.
It isn't remotely difficult to cycle a bike with one hand and operate your phone with the other. I do it all the time.
Most importantly, I like not looking like an absolute fool. Wearing ugly lycra, or flattening my hair into a helmet, and ugh, sweating -- these things are not for me. To say nothing of how woefully bottom heavy and thunder thighed habitual cyclists become! And even though as you note, attaching a trailer to a bike is an option, the problem is it looks absolutely ridiculous!
I must say, it seems very strange for a person so aggressively averse to apparently all forms of physical exercise to be so hyper image-conscious. Sure, a slim, fit dude in fluorescent Lycra looks a little silly compared to a slim, fit dude not wearing Lycra, but neither of them looks nearly as ridiculous as an obese man huffing and puffing after walking a hundred feet. And I don't own any Lycra clothing at all.
This is a roundabout way of saying: if you get as little exercise as it sounds, you probably look like an absolute fool already, even if you're in denial about it.
stop trying to normalise it
I'm not trying to normalise it. It IS normal where I live, as in most Western nations. Only in America, seemingly, is cycling seen as this weird thing that only losers do.
FtttG
2yr ago
A joke is an attempt to be funny. This joke didn't land for you, fair enough, but there's no need to be a dick about it.
FtttG
2yr ago
I read the full post and enjoyed it, but my understanding is that culture war posts go in the culture war thread.
FtttG
2yr ago
You may have thought I was above using a clickbait-y title and attention-grabbing image to draw eyes.
I am not.
Indian women are beautiful. Good luck.
Edit: the second-most controversial comment I've posted this week lol
FtttG
1mo ago
The youths that were indoctrinated and acculturated during the awokening are irreversibly woke at this point.
Didn't Gen Z overwhelmingly vote for Trump?
FtttG
1mo ago
Don't feel like answering if you don't want to, but do you mind my asking - are you a Jewess?
FtttG
2mo ago
Probably I don't understand the religious worldview terribly well, but I think I know it well enough to know it's not worth pursuing.
You said you were envious of Gaiman, who allegedly did all of these things. It seems a reasonable inference.
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