Fruck
Lacks all conviction
Fruck is just this guy, you know?
User ID: 889
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
In my experience it absolutely has the same effects. Crack psychosis or regular psychosis, people who have lost touch with reality can do amazing and terrible things, things that don't seem humanly possible - that make you start to wonder if they even are human any more, haunting you for the rest of your life. Drug psychosis is usually where you see guys peeling skin off their face, because the drugs affect your nervous system more than sheer determination, but sometimes determination is enough.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
SATC gets unfairly scratched from midwit lists of great TV shows because the Chapo Trap House types who get excited about TV shows love unrealistic “masculine” fantasies of violent crime stories, and not romantic sex comedies. But SATC was critical to the birth of high concept TV, was a key tent pole that kept HBO making shows like Sopranos and The Wire, and presaged so much of modern culture that it’s a crime to miss it.
What SATC was good at was asking really interesting questions, over and over my wife and I would argue late into the night and over coffee in the morning over which character was right and what one should do in that situation; what it was bad at was pussying out when it came time to face the answers.
Dramatic tensions wasted, values crisis resolved:
Similar plots are wasted later
The show spends whole seasons asking questions, only to deus-ex the problems right out of existence when they want to make the characters happy.
Like so many wasted episodes of Sex and the City it is smart enough to understand that tension exists, but not smart enough to come up with a real solution.
Big brother and the bachelor are cultural touchstones and bill payers, as are dool and eastenders and home and away - that doesn't make them great tv. In fact I think you have identified exactly why satc doesn't usually make it onto the lists of prestige tv shows - it's a forty minute sitcom*. The characters don't face consequences for their actions, they are resolved through plot contrivances and contradictions. The wire, the sopranos, breaking bad - these shows are considered prestige because there are consequences for the characters' actions, writing wise.
At any rate you haven't convinced me I am missing out by not watching it, or that if I was more intelligent I would spend dozens of hours watching a show with plot holes so frequently that they are considered part of its structure.
*which is not to shit on sitcoms, many of which I love, they just aren't prestige tv, they don't elevate or transcend the medium the way those shows do.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
I know the clown world meme is played out, but it is hard to not hear the entry of the gladiators when the people who are allegedly on the indigenous people's side are going "hey it's no coincidence his mum fell into a dysfunctional relationship, she's indigenous".
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
It seems to me that he actually is saying that black people hanging around as slaves was a result of "mental enslavement." And that this enslavement continues today.
Which seems like something that is either true in a banal sense (if you are facing a larger and more technologically advanced civilization that will brutalize you for trying to escape are you "mentally enslaved" in any way similar to what we face today? Or are you just enslaved*) or just outright stupid (said technologically superior foe literally publicly mangling you if you try to leave makes it not a choice)
As the old saying goes, you get used to anything eventually. That's what I think he's saying, yeah they were brutally dominated and subjugated into passively accepting their fates, but as any student of the time will tell you, they weren't whipped into submission every day for hundreds of years. They were treated 'decently' if they behaved, and so eventually they all behaved. To the point that yes, there were black people who supported the confederates, there were slaves who believed it was the best they could get.
That is the mental slavery. And yes it absolutely continues to this day, and yes you are one of the slaves, so am I, so is everyone here. But we have never been free - truly free - and so we accept this crude facsimile we are given by the government and corporations and all those who profit from our misery. At least that's what I think he's saying. Maybe it is banal, but so is calling fire hot. People don't lose their shit when you tell them fire is hot though.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
6d ago
This is why David Hogg was called a jackass for trying to primary fellow democrats as DNC chair. It was an explicit break from the premise of the DNC as a neutral leadership institution for democrats anywhere. The value of a reputation of neutrality is that people don’t expect neutral actors to be that sort of backstabber, and they don't make plans to backstab the neutral actors either. It reduces internal coalition tensions.
Of course, if you thought the DNC was neutral before Hogg you were mistaken. They have learned since Clinton made a joint funding agreement with the DNC that effectively gave her control of the party for her run against Sanders in 2016, leading to the wikileaks emails that showed key DNC officials suggesting strategies for the Clinton campaign to use against Sanders and Donna Brazile feeding Clinton debate questions. Primarily they learned not to use email to discuss that sort of thing. That's how you maintain neutrality!
What always struck me as weird though, was that people act like the DCCC are somehow separate from the DNC, despite both being commanded by the party leadership. So when the DCCC blacklisted vendors from supplying Justice Democrat candidates like AOC on behalf of the incumbents, that's somehow different from if the DNC had done it. It's a real "Clark Kent wears glasses. Superman doesn't wear glasses. How are you confusing these guys?" vibe.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3mo ago
Is it motte rerun week? A blast through the past of all our most frustrating arguments?
getting faux-outraged at the stupid 'you didn't build that' (mis-)quotation
No the outrage wasn't fake, that speech was one of the final chinks in the Obama scales over my eyes that had me believing the propaganda that he was a decent guy not into the partisan bullshit. I'm pretty sure someone else has explained this situation better before, but those small business owners were legitimately outraged and rightly so. 'You didn't build that' is not a misquotation, it is precisely what Obama said, and the idea that he was referring to bridges and roads is at best motte and baileying.
Obama's an erudite guy, if he means bridges and roads or infrastructure he is more than capable of saying those words. He said 'that' because it was punchier, encapsulated all he said previously and because it illustrates his position that people who live in a society owe that society in part for their success. It was also a direct and deliberate attack on one of the red tribe's most important values, that through hard work you can get a better life. And those small business owners were correct to view it as the prelude to an attack on small businesses, because that's exactly what happened.
That was the most ridiculous thing I have ever read, and that should mean a lot, because I have read many books, papers, articles, comics, and pamphlets - and some of them were ridiculous on purpose. That was so ridiculous I actually needed to put down my phone and take a walk after reading it, so I didn't pop a blood vessel in rage.
According to the great moral leader Sam Bankman-Fried,
I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that…If you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.
Ideally, one would like to think that if someone is quoting SBF and calling him a great moral leader they would be doing so ironically and would dismiss his foolishness. In fact I assumed at first this was some Straussian mockery of people with strange judgements about reading, like when I say shit like "I don't read non-fiction because I am not a child". If that turns out to be the case then well done Hanania, you got me good. It has been interpreted as legit though, and I really need to work out my anger, I haven't been this triggered in ages.
The vast majority of books are like this in some way. Any Substack essay I have written could’ve been a book if I had the time or inclination to make it into one.
This is the catchphrase of mediocrity in denial. Great authors/artists/musicians aren't great, they just aren't as time conscious as me. It takes a thousand hours to master anything my man, which is why I can say without irony that Michaelangelo is lucky he didn't have to deal with all the drama I do, and that drama is the only reason I am not a world class painter too.
Now you might say that wasn't his point, that he is pointing out that a lot of books out there are repetitive garbage or full of cours that weren't in the manga or deceptively written to shoehorn in an agenda, to which I would say that a) he still said it, and b) no argument there, but it brings us to the second point - sturgeon's law.
According to Google in 2010 129,864,880 books had been published - yes, this is before the self publishing boom. Of course that means over a hundred million complete duds, because that's how humans operate. But it also means millions of works of genius. His first example of a shitty book is David Sinclair’s Lifespan, published in 2019. Sinclair apparently pads it out with:
he addresses issues that are ancillary to conquering aging like what’s going to happen to social security and the impact of a growing population on global warming. He also comes out for universal healthcare, legalized euthanasia, and more income equality
But, uh, that doesn't sound like padding to me? That sounds like a bunch of issues everyone always brings up any time people talk about lengthening life expectancy? "What will happen to pensions and hospitals and infrastructure if nobody dies?" is a pretty good question to ask imo. Hanania seems more upset that Sinclair's resolutions are left wing.
I haven't read the book though, so maybe it is just padding. It doesn't matter, no one who would call himself a genius should be allowed to fall to such obvious recency bias. Since the self publishing boom sturgeon's law has gained at least 9 percentage points, and yes that affects traditionally published books, they all share the same market. Books are getting stupider because we are getting stupider - but that's not on the books! And it certainly doesn't affect the most upsetting part of his argument - his dismissal of old books.
To be fair, he does acknowledge that there are more quality old books than new books, and he does seem to read a lot more non fiction than fiction - and non fiction is much more susceptible to perverse outside incentives because we built an industry around employing liberal arts majors called academia and it's very good at tricking otherwise intelligent people. But he's still fucking wrong!
Side note -
But we should take opportunity costs seriously. Given all the other things you could be reading like scientific papers and news magazines, not to mention other things you could be doing with your time, which non-fiction books are worth reading cover-to-cover?
"You take up my time,
Like some cheap magazine,
When I coulda been learning something,
Oh well, you know what I mean,"
What an economical use of language! Hanania doesn't go far enough, he is too enamoured with his words - I say no books, no papers, no articles - if you can't work your message into a pop song you are an onanist waffling about nothing.
Moving on, Hanania has 3 categories of books he thinks are worth reading, and I am annoyed with him about all of them.
Category 1: History books
When learning history, one can always decide at how granular of a level to investigate an era, topic, or important figure. Most social science or political science books are padded with filler because there are only so many interesting things you can say about most ideas. But history is different; you can always go into more detail about World War II, or the life stories of Ottoman sultans, or the fall of Rome. Even a thousand-page book on a historical topic can only capture a small slice of reality. The returns to reading history are somewhat linear — five hundred pages on World War II give you more insight than a 5-page summary, which gives you more than 5 paragraphs. If you were inclined to read 5,000 pages, you’d get more still, but we generally don’t have the time for that. Most things are not like this. I can’t say the same for, say, Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. I think it can be explained in a few paragraphs, plus some charts. I loved David Reich’s Who We Are, which used the tools of paleoanthropology to go into the history of various major regions of the world. Unlike with Sinclair’s book, it didn’t feel that much of my time was wasted.
When learning history, one can always decide at how granular of a level to investigate an era, topic, or important figure.
Absolutely true, for approximately 1% of human history. What a ridiculous thing to say. Like everyone on the planet, Hanania doesn't know what he knows or even what he doesn't. Which period of history do we know the most about? The current one obviously, followed by the previous, then the one before that and so on all the way back to Gutenberg. Why? Because that's what has been written about. Not in history books, there are no history books about the Tennies or Noughties, but in the very social science and political science books he derides, not to mention the self help books, the memoirs, the business guides, the diy books, the cookbooks, the magazines. Those books are our history. When Hanania is declaring the tweet the ultimate information delivery system he says:
It’s just that reading the book is a large commitment, and puts you at the mercy of one author, who probably took way too long to make his points for reasons of ego and career interest.
And then recommends you filter your understanding of history through whoever chose to write about it. Because authors of histories have no egos or careers?
Side note 2: Side noter - He also says:
Substacks and Tweets are actually efficient methods of transferring information because you cut out so much of the useless fluff people include when they’re trying to build a CV.
"Read substacks and Twitter!" says the guy who has made it big on substack and Twitter. But rest assured it is definitely not for reasons of ego and career interest.
Category 2: Books of Historical Interest
You may want to read Kant, Plato, and the Bible, because many people have been reading them for a very long time, and you want to be a participant in the wider culture. I don’t believe in the “wisdom” to be found in Great Books (see below). But I want to understand my fellow man. A large portion of people who live under the same polity as I do think that the Bible is the literal word of God, so it’s useful to get a glimpse into their reality. Similar things could be said about the Koran or the writings of Confucius. It’s like how one reason to read the NYT is that everyone else is reading it. So not only do you get the value of the news itself, but also insights into what’s considered culturally and socially important.
I don’t believe in the “wisdom” to be found in Great Books (see below). But I want to understand my fellow man.
Now it's all coming together, he's appealing to the old rationalist canard: "Everyone is a fucking idiot except me. So I only have to put 10% effort into something they have to give their all to to extract all the value." I think every motter has made that mistake before, I certainly have. But the overwhelming majority of Christians have never read the whole bible, and never will. You won't understand them better if you know which fabrics the bible says you shouldn't mix, because they have nfi what you are talking about.
The other examples are illustrative however. We have the Koran, the writings of Confucius, and the New York Times. Hanania is telling us who his fellows are - the educated middle class. Not necessarily people who read the Koran and Confucius and the NYT, but people who want to have read those things. If he wanted to understand the majority of people in his polity he'd be promoting watching football and tiktok compilations. This is not meant as a dig, like tlp used to say behaviour informs identity, and educated middle class people are often fantastic people by all metrics. But like tlp also probably said (actually, looking back I feel like you could put this preamble before every sentence I've written so far, but we're in too deep now) your preferences are not your stated preferences. Or in other words.
Category 3: Genius Takes You on a Journey
This final category covers works where you have some combination of a brilliant author who is a great storyteller and an important topic. I check out all of Steven Pinker’s books, because he’s a pleasure to read, he addresses fascinating issues, and I have trust in his judgment and intellect. One of the most valuable books I’ve ever read is Judith Rich Harris’ The Nurture Assumption, as I think the question of nature versus nurture is one that individuals should dig deep into before they even begin forming political opinions.
Some books fall into more than one of the categories above. I’d put On the Origin of Species in categories 2 and 3. The Federalist Papers are worth checking out for insights into the thinking of the men who founded this country, and they might even have some useful things to tell us since we’re still living under the system they designed.
I’ve published one book and have another on the way. I like to think that they’re both combinations of 1 and 3. My book on American foreign policy had two chapters devoted to international relations theory, and the rest gives you my take on topics like the US-Soviet relationship in the 1920s and 1930s and the war on terror, making it useful as a history of American foreign policy. If it was an entire book on IR theory detached from any kind of deep historical analysis, and those have been written, reading it all would probably be a waste of your time. My next book serves as a history of where wokeness came from, and provides practical political advice on what to do about it.
I check out all of Steven Pinker’s books, because he’s a pleasure to read, he addresses fascinating issues, and I have trust in his judgment and intellect.
You probably expected me to target the advert paragraph at the end there in my breakdown, but this line is saying the quiet part out loud. Obviously the whole article is essentially a promo for his new book in a fairly typical format - "Has this ever happened to you? Woman reading book slowly turns pages until her eyes fall out of her head from banality There's got to be a better way! And now there is, History of Woke by Richard Hanania, in all good bookstores." So it seems to me like a mistake to pair it with an explanation that Hanania likes to read Pinker for the same reasons everyone likes to read anything - interest, understanding and entertainment.
Moving on again we get to the part that made me put my phone down and go for a walk: Against Great Books
When I wrote my piece on Enlightened Centrism, some took issue with me saying that I don’t believe in Great Books. After thinking about the topic a bit, I’m more certain that I’m correct. One might read old books for historical interest (Category 2), but the idea that someone writing more than say four hundred years ago could have deep insights into modern issues strikes me as farcical. If old thinkers do have insights, the same points have likely been made more recently and better by others who have had the advantage of coming after them.
See, if we move the goalposts enough I was totally right about great books! Sure they might provide valuable insight into history, and the mindset of great people, they might be a pleasure to read, a good way to pass time, provide lessons applicable outside the scope of their interest, give me a shared language of references and symbols and even act as props to signal my identity to others, but they tell us nothing about trans ideology! Aristotle hasn't even heard of inflation, never mind hyper-inflation! Besides, someone else has probably tweeted about the book, just read the tweet! Something something shadows on the wall amirite?
This isn’t an issue of thinking every previous generation was dumb. Imagine hearing that we just discovered a tribe in the Amazon that previously had no contact with other humans. Nonetheless, this group developed a writing system. Living among them is an individual who they consider the world’s greatest philosopher. Being part of an isolated tribe, this philosopher has had no formal education or exposure to any modern ideas. He doesn’t know about evolution, has never logged on to the internet, has learned nothing of human history outside of the oral tradition of his tribe, and doesn’t even know whether the world is round or why the seasons change. Would it be plausible to believe that this Amazon philosopher had something to teach us about the way our government should be organized or whether the US should adopt protectionist trade policies?
Hey how's this for irony? Not only is this entire paragraph poorly reasoned, it would have been useless even if it wasn't. What information can we pull from this that hasn't been presented already? I've even already mentioned the fatal flaw in this paragraph's argument - it's goalpost moving. Why, Richard, would you ask an indigenous Amazonian philosopher about trade policies or government? If we hit you over the back of the head, stripped you naked and dropped you in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, can we conclude you definitely aren't a Journeying Genius when you inevitably die in agony? Or would it be bizarre to expect a member of the chattering class to have the knowledge and insight necessary to survive such an alien experience?
Most people I think would say no, regardless of how smart he is. We might be fascinated by the Amazon philosopher, but wisdom one can learn from requires some baseline level of knowledge. If you reject the possibility that the Amazon philosopher has great insights into the modern world, on what basis would you trust Ancient Greece?
This is the paragraph where I returned to my earlier conclusion that this was all very sharp satire. Hanania is not an idiot, that is clear, so I do not for one second buy that he doesn't see the disconnect between the insights of a previously uncontacted indigenous Amazonian philosopher and the insights of the primogenitor of Western fucking civilization.
Side note 3: Season of the Witch - I’m about to get to my point, I promise, but one final aside:
A few months ago, I picked up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, after Ross Douthat said I subscribe to pagan morality, which I took as a compliment (…) You might want to read the Stoics out of historical curiosity. I’ll claim them as part of my intellectual tribe to signal that I reject the moral underpinnings of both Christianity and wokeness, the two most powerful faiths in our society.
Starfucking aside, I don’t think Richard has read Meditations. Either that or he really has no idea whatsoever what Christian morality is. Edit: Because Meditations in particular is surely the most Christian work of Pagan philosophy in existence.
It’s not simply that the ancients had less information and access to empirical data, but ways of thinking have improved over time. Bertrand Russell once quipped that Aristotle believed that men had more teeth than women, but it never occurred to him to open his wife’s mouth and start counting.1 One of the best essays I’ve read in a long time is “You live in a world that philosophy built,” by Trevor Klee. We take the basics of the scientific method for granted today, but only after generations of newer scholars throwing off the shackles of official dogma.
And here we reach my favourite paragraph in the piece, and where I will end my pedantic nitpicking, because it essentially dismantles itself. The footnote reads thus:
Reading the link I provided, it seems like Aristotle might have actually been relying on the observations of others, who he thinks counted male and female teeth. The quote is
Males have more teeth than females, in the cases of humans, sheep, goats, and pigs. In other species an observation has not yet been made.
So it sounds like he may have been using proper scientific procedures, and we can only fault him for at worst not double checking. Then again, it’s unclear what he meant by “observation” here, it could’ve been something like “some other guy said it,” in which case Russell’s point would stand. And why would the ancients have gotten the number of teeth wrong across multiple species? It makes sense if they were just making things up, but not if they were actually checking their work. (Updated 5/11/23)
If you are just joining us, Hanania just successfully demonstrated the value in reading the actual words old assholes wrote instead of relying on quips about their writing by other old assholes. I'm not sure if Hanania read the link he provided before writing his piece - it kind of seems like he didn't - the link itself does a great job of explaining the problem, which is called memetic drift.
See Bertrand Russell hated Aristotle, because Bertrand Russell was a contrarian asshole (most of my heroes are.) Ok, maybe that's not why, but it's true. And that's the point. As any fan of the scientific method should know, the ONLY source you can fully trust is a primary source. The only way you will ever know exactly what was written in The Nicomachean Ethics is if you read The Nicomachean Ethics.
I am not saying Aristotle was a primary source and therefore we can believe his History of Animals about women's teeth. What I am saying is that it is unscientific to believe Bertrand Russell's description of Aristotle's beliefs, because Russell had his own agenda and point he was making. Russell wasn't just shitting on Aristotle for no reason - The Impact of Science on Society is a brilliant book I hope everyone on the motte has read, even if I disagree with some of the conclusions - Russell was making a point about the difference between being guided by authority and being guided by evidence, and for that it works excellently. But it's not a good way to learn about Aristotle, because it isn't about Aristotle.
The last point I will bring up is prosody. Words don't just mean their definition, they are always contextual. Last week someone was saying they didn't understand Moldbug's appeal, and it's the same thing. I don't care for him either, but for the people who do, the excessive way he writes is a fundamental component. It speaks to them on a level deeper than definitions, and as a result they get much more out of it. That's the real appeal of Great Books - they are read and promoted and reread and repromoted over centuries because they speak to people in a way that provides more insight than a couple of tweets.
And that's why fiction will always provide more insight than non-fiction. The story is the natural way humans understand things and it communicates beyond the words on the page. Just always keep in mind that the map is not the territory, because it can be easy to forget and when you start thinking life works like a story everything goes to shit.
Edit: clarity
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
Nasim Najafi Aghdam. A youtube... dancer? Avant garde performance artist? Whatever she was, her videos have a real alien and hypnotic quality about them. You get the impression she would have had a completely different life trajectory if David Byrne or John Waters had ever seen her work. That's if you can find any of her videos of course.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
The greatest influence on other people is other people. Do you really give a shit if some guy you don't know shows up to a black tie function in shorts and a t-shirt? If it's your black tie function, or someone you care about maybe, but otherwise generally no. But you know other people expect you to dislike it - it isn't proper - and so you are outraged. All that is required to change it is someone ostentatiously doing otherwise.
Someone with power and influence making a big show of refusing to play ball makes it more acceptable overnight. It starts a chain reaction, people follow suit and soon a critical mass of people refuse to play ball, and the rule gets abolished.
Kanye is powerful, influential and, most importantly in modern America, of the caste which is allowed to talk about race. I don't think this will change any minds, but it has already had an impact - the way he went about it made it practically impossible to talk around - although note how hard the media is trying.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1mo ago
Ah, stupid public, thinking 'vaccines make you immune to a virus' just because scientists have been putting exactly that in kids books and shows and songs, and saying it to the UN and African and Afghani warlords for the past 80 years.
If you don't think the establishment were deliberately relying on the public perception of vaccines being viral immunity you are cuckoo.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2mo ago
This was an interesting post, cheers. I wanted to push back a little on your thing with your dad and grandfather though - not to say that you are wrong, but there might be factors you didn't get to see - with an experience of my own. See my dad passed away not too long ago too and it was tough. He'd been on dialysis for half a decade, gone through one quadruple bypass and had a stent, so we weren't expecting him to last much longer, but I had looked after him (during which time we had grown very close and had a lot of hard but rewarding conversations about our issues with each other) and my youngest brother and sister adored him due to growing up with him after our parents divorced, so we were very broken up. But my other brother, the one closer in age to me, lived interstate and when he saw us at the funeral - particularly me - he was perplexed, because he loved our father, but also despised him for the way he'd treated us older kids growing up.
We grew up before the concept of child abuse really existed in the public consciousness and dad didn't think twice about using violence to poorly solve his problems - he felt it was part of his identity as a former soldier I think. He put my brother through a wall once for mouthing off at him, threw me down a flight of stairs when I swore on Jesus' name that I hadn't shoplifted something he was sure I had (I hadn't) and beat both of us with a bed post once when we didn't do washing he'd forgotten to ask us to do. Those are just a few of the more fucked up examples, I can keep at this all day because dad's violence was one of the defining aspects of my growing up - I still remember sitting in the lounge room watching the six o'clock news about one of the first cases where a parent was convicted of child abuse, and when mum went out of the room to get a cup of tea dad turned the TV down and quietly told my brother and I that if we ever even thought of doing that he would kill us and he wouldn't need 30 seconds to do it.
And I'd forgotten how much I resented looking after him when he first got sick - I certainly didn't want to do it, but he'd looked after me when I was sick so I felt I owed him. I spent a lot of time with him though and like I said, we had some difficult conversations, and I learned that he had genuinely grown since our childhood, and over time we grew to be each other's confidants - I still miss him every day. But my brother never got that and so his image of him was still those dead sharks eyes in the lounge room that night.
Tldr - your dad probably spent a lot of time with a very different person than the granddad you knew and loved, because they lived in a different time with very different standards of behaviour. I don't mean to denigrate your granddad, just saying violence used to be a lot more acceptable as a solution and even monsters can become decent people.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
5mo ago
Uh no bud, I don't care for the spinelessness of most people either, and your second paragraph is entirely on point but the woke mob were absolutely capable of destroying people's livelihoods if they told them to fuck off - that's how my life got ruined. That's why everyone became fucking spineless, because they watched what happened to the people who said no. And what happened to their families, because it was never confined to just the target. So even your family would start distancing themselves from you, because "some of my colleagues don't feel comfortable coming if you are there".
Who did you tell to fuck off?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
5mo ago
I admire how you structured this post in such a way as to make refuting it require about a thousand times the effort you put in to it. Is any of that actually your perspective though? Do you believe the relative prevalence of DEI policies is not largely a function of government disposition? Do you believe those programs were economical and productive?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
I have nothing to add on the object level, but I have to say I think it's pretty cowardly to directly quote another motter's post from earlier in this week's thread without tagging them or even naming them. It would be fine if you did it in the same chain, but when you made a new thread you abstracted it away from the op, and it can't have been mere laziness - you quoted them and it would have been trivial to copy their name too, so the only justification for not tagging them I can see is cowardice.
Although to be honest I would still have had a problem with this post if you had tagged them, because you made a top level comment to air your grievances with another user and I think that is petty attention seeking behaviour. But I wouldn't have thought you were being a coward.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
I don't think that happens enough to matter, in the specific case of hate crime laws.
Lol that is literally the only thing that happens with hate crime laws. Take that littering one for example - how many stories have you heard of where some bigot dumped a bunch of racist flyers on someone's lawn to intimidate them? Never, because that's a dumb way to intimidate someone. But still! It could be used to intimidate someone! We need a law in place! Cut to 6 months later and some guy is getting arrested for passing out flyers calling George Soros an asshole. Every piece of hate speech legislation gets used this way, to add ambiguity to the system, because that is precisely what they are designed for.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11d ago
How long are you going to keep doing this? Why can't you just put forward your positions and then defend them instead of constantly strawmanning your opponents? And no matter what you think, that is what you are doing to Natalie Winters. Well, aside from boosting her media profile. I'll admit, this was a unique variant, but that is still all you do, strawman your opponents and then demand they defend your insane understanding of their position. Cut it out for fucks sake.
and being so low-class the spacetime continuum bends under the enormous weight of the lack of class.
And being so low-class the spacetime continuum bends under the enormous weight of it.
And being so low-class the spacetime continuum bends under the enormous weight of all the trash.
And being so low-class the sheer inferiority warps the spacetime continuum.
And being so low-class the very air around them felt greasy.
What does lack of class weigh Alex?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1mo ago
Kanye West is like a Holocaust-denying parrot. Imagine it, a parrot squawking "six million didn't die, the Holocaust is a lie!" Funny for a few days, but then you're left with a Holocaust-denying parrot squawking and crapping all over its cage.
The value of calling Ye a parrot rests exclusively in the idea he is mindlessly repeating phrases, and while I think that is an odd accusation to level at a guy who just released a rap song literally nobody ever even imagined making before, it maybe fits if you uh, don't count stuff like that. What really frustrates me though is that you extended the analogy so far as to throw parrots under the bus - funny for a few days? Like they're a Yak Bak from the nineties you play with for a bit and throw in the closet? Have you never had a pet bird before?
A parrot is not just for Christmas Alex. They can be for a birthday too. In fact you can eat them all year round.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
You have my sympathy for your experiences with the mentally ill homeless, but you are still being played by the media. The media are calling him schizophrenic as part of their campaign to paint him as innocent, not just because he is out of his mind and might not be cognizant of right and wrong, but also because schizophrenia is a mental illness characterised by a break between the mental model of reality and the factual model of reality and by slowed thinking and lowered motivation. However you can find a doctor who will diagnose just about any man with disordered thinking as schizophrenic, even if they have taken drugs known for causing psychosis, like Neely. Bam, instant sympathy. You would be better off using words like psychotic, or just the usual crazy, lunatic, nuts, bonkers etc
Tldr: schizophrenics are often losers yes, but they are rarely if ever violent and you should not be afraid of them or angry at them, or lump them in with other insane people riding the subway, aka New Yorkers.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
Don't worry guys! Nobody pulled out of twitter advertising due to pressure from activists who don't like free speech. They pulled out due to pressure from democrats who don't like free speech.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2yr ago
So DeSantis' agents lied to the migrants about where they were going and what would be available to them when they got to their destination.
Or they told the truth, and the non English speaking migrants didn't understand, so they said something like "you're going to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. You know, near Boston?" and the immigrants only got 'Boston' out of it.
You should learn from the other side's mistakes here - when you are so upset you try to find a way to sue someone without any suspects or statutes in mind, just the burning desire to sue, you need to take a step back, because you are going to make mistakes.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
22d ago
The special pleading started during the summer of love. It was the fact that protest was so essential to our nation that it overpowered medical science, so essential that it justified burning and looting cities, that caused the Jan 6ers to think storming the capitol was a good idea. In a way they were primed to do it - if burning and looting is an appropriate response to the perception that black men are being slaughtered by the police, what is the appropriate response to the perception of the theft of the election?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3mo ago
And ... what then?
The what then, as I have been shouting in vain for the past few months, is that you have to actually deal with them. You can't just smugly dismiss them and point at your experts, that's how Harris lost the election - they have too much power and don't trust your experts. You could smuckle to yourself about how dumb they are and then go about your day all you liked in the past, but now the dreaded 'conspiracists' (which as far as I can tell is anyone who doesn't fall in immediate lockstep behind any authority figure) run the world's biggest economy and make policy decisions that affect the whole planet, not just trailer parks and tenements. Now you have two choices - work with them to explain your arguments and defeat theirs, or sulk quietly to yourself and then passive aggressively side talk about all these low quality populists.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4mo ago
If Trump didn't turn his head at the exact second he did, he'd be dead now. Call it luck, call it coincidence, call it providence, it wasn't incompetence that saved Trump that day. You can, if you are naive or lying, claim incompetence put him in that position, which is exactly why pretending to be retarded has been such an integral strategy for the deep state. And it is also why the lead 'counter sniper' in Trump's SS detail was two years into his career, wasn't on counter sniper detail, and forgot his radio. And why that chubby cutie was playing hot potato with her gun. And why they blamed the local police. And every other insane detail from that fiasco.
As for the progressive status quo, it's because you keep buying into this ridiculous hysteria despite a decade of fake news declaring every saucy tweet Trump fires off the end of America and democracy. And never mind that the people we supposedly put in charge of promoting America and democracy abroad were primarily lining their own pockets but also helping fund groups that literally fucking hate America and democracy. And you don't mind it, because the media, which you inexplicably still trust, tells you it's just defunding trans operas and aids cures and you probably can't fix it anyway. You have to recognise by now that you are being manipulated. I mean how can you read the motte, read posts by people like @WhiningCoil and @jeroboam and me and not realise that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." is a blatant appeal to red tribe values, in the same category as 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time' and '1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN'?
Edit: edited out a cheap shot
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4mo ago
Previous attempts failed because they were sabotaged with the exact same appeals to decorum and proper conduct and empathy and compassion and coincidence and fortune and anything else that would fucking stick, and all of it topped with a heaping helping of 'while I've never looked into it or even thought about it you probably can't do anything about it and therefore shouldn't even try' as you peddle here.
Yes there are better ways to do things. Considering what has already been uncovered, the amount of graft and waste and just plain corrupt and autocratic bullshit we have already learned has been done in the name of the American people ENTIRELY in the dark, I prefer "incompetence". At least we can see when they fuck up.
I have dated several girls who refused to believe there are any innate differences between men and women. To the point of melting down a bit when they tried to play wrestle with me and discovered that their exercise regimen of an hour at the gym every day doing cardio and weights was no match for my exercise regimen of lying on the couch every night inhaling chips ahoy.
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