FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
2mo ago
Yeah, I hate when people use "out of the box thinking" to refer to "strategies that have occurred to normal people, but the normal people didn't use them because they're morally objectionable".
FtttG
2mo ago
Fuck, but don't marry.
And try to go back to her place rather than inviting her back to yours.
I finished The Man in the High Castle last week. Pretty good, although I still preferred A Scanner Darkly. It made me want to play Wolfenstein The New Order again.
A few months ago I was asking for recommendations for books about Catharism. A few weeks ago it came up in conversation with my aunt, who recommended The Perfect Heresy, which I'm now about 30 pages into. It's a fascinating reminder that there's nothing new under the sun. If I told you I was reading a book about a faction of elites who:
- believe that there's no distinction between men and women, and the thing that defines us is an ineffable immaterial essence
- don't have children, a decision they justify on utilitarian grounds
- practise a plant-based diet
am I talking about French heretics in the 12th century, or woke Western PMCs today?
FtttG
2mo ago
FtttG
2mo ago
I think a Bollywood dance number could really liven the thing up. Something like this would make for a nice change of pace from the monotony of sombre ballads, Eurodisco and reggaeton.
FtttG
2mo ago
Lmao this is true. Reminds me of this.
FtttG
2mo ago
FtttG
2mo ago
I have a Belgian friend who told me he learned in school that the death toll was in the same ballpark as the Holocaust, but I haven't personally researched the topic.
FtttG
2mo ago
Rule #3: before you've had sex with someone, don't use the word "canoodling" in conversation.
FtttG
2mo ago
If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?
Yes.
FtttG
2mo ago
There genuinely has been concerted, ideological voting for Israel in this and previous Eurovision
Even if that's the case, it doesn't prove that it's "the right" doing this. Normies, liberals and centrists can engage in concerted ideological voting just as well as anyone else.
Erika Vikman's performance was hilarious, probably the purest embodiment of the ethos of the Eurovision.
I think it's presumptuous to assume that a girl considers you part of her in-group just because she agreed to go on a second date with you.
My girlfriend is currently trying to persuade a close friend of hers (I'll call her D) to cut ties with one of her friends (A). I disliked A literally from the moment I met her, as not only do I find her vapid and annoying, she also seems like a legitimately shitty person. (It was a relief to find out that my girlfriend dislikes A just as much as I do). A openly announced that she goes on dates with guys from Tinder, goes back to their houses, then steals shit before leaving. Of course D laughed it off like "oh yeah, she's just being a girlboss" and insisted that she'd never steal from one of her friends. Mais quelle surprise when A starts borrowing clothes and other items from D and never returns them (or loses them and doesn't offer to replace them); or when D invited A to stay in D's parents' house, and various expensive items mysteriously went missing while she was staying there. D's parents now despise A, understandably enough.
In fairness, Eurovision faced repeated demands for Israel to be banned from competing, but stuck to their guns, and there's no question that Israel would have been given the award without fuss if they'd gotten the most votes. Some people have drawn analogies with how Russia was banned after the invasion of Ukraine, which seems like a transparent false equivalence to me: Ukraine was invaded by Russia and Ukraine fought back, therefore we ban Russia from competing; Israel was invaded by Palestine and Israel fought back, therefore we ought to ban - Israel?* I mean Palestine aren't in the Eurovision so you can't ban them, but why should you ban Israel?
*I know, I know, Israel "really" invaded Palestine 75 years ago, but come on, surely no one really thinks they started the current war.
Germany is the obvious one, to the point that a lot of people think they take it too far (e.g. deporting people who criticise Israel). Arguably Australia and Canada, although I don't really believe either of the latter two were really guilty of "genocide" as such, but certainly genocide-adjacent activities. I've heard that American high schools have gotten a lot better in recent years about teaching pupils about slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, Vietnam etc. (even if I'm sure it likely often devolves into lists of atrocities those horrible Red Tribers committed, which we noble Blue Tribers opposed at every turn).
FtttG
2mo ago
Of course it's easier. And I'm not singling out the Turks for criticism as uniquely evil: this whitewashing of history is reprehensible no matter who does it, whether it's the Americans, the Japanese, the Belgians, the Brits etc.
FtttG
2mo ago
It's one thing to refuse to allow your national identity to be defined by a horrendous crime committed generations ago. It's quite another to pretend it never happened at all, as modern-day Turkey quite explicitly does.
FtttG
2mo ago
So frequent there's a term for it.
FtttG
2mo ago
Whose coverage did you watch? We watched on ARD. I miss Terry Wogan. Tried Graham Norton on the BBC after Wogan died, Eurovision is gay enough without the extra help.
Just a YouTube livestream, but one of my friend's friends was this bitchy gay guy who had us falling about the place laughing with his snarky comments. It was almost like having our own personal Norton.
Greek performer appears on camera with her huge glasses
Guy: "She looks like she's dressed for the wedding of someone she doesn't like very much."
(on the Swiss singer) "She's hot by the standards of women who work in accounts receivable."
Israeli journalist appears onscreen to announce the results of the Israeli jury vote
Guy: "Who's this IDF slag?"
FtttG
2mo ago
Someone who'll cheat with you will also cheat on you.
Someone who'll steal for you will also steal from you.
The Eurovision Song Contest was held this evening, which I haven't watched in about twenty years. A friend of mine suggested that we watch it, but was unsure if she'd be able to host, as her flatmate was insistent on boycotting it in light of Israel being "allowed" to participate. In the end her flatmate was out of the house so we were able to watch it in her flat.
I'd assumed that, given the absence of her anti-Zionist flatmate, we'd be able to enjoy the Eurovision as the trashy, campy experience that was intended, without politics intruding. I was mistaken: my friend, her boyfriend and one of her friends insisted on turning off the stream during Israel's performance and made innumerable derisive comments about them during the night. I'm a coward who wants to keep the peace so I held my tongue for the most part.
Israel received modest double-digit votes from the national juries, but after the audience vote, they rocketed up to first place with an astonishing 357 votes, total. In second place was Austria with 258 jury votes, and in the end Austria clinched it. (I honestly cannot say who deserved it more as, as previously mentioned, they turned off the stream during the Israeli performance. I found the Austrian one a little annoying, and if it had been up to me, based on the performances I actually saw, I would have given it to the Germans.)
I was rather dismayed with how quickly my friend retreated into semi-ironic conspiritorialism: saying that the Eurovision would have to investigate their voting procedures next year to ensure no ballot-stuffing was taking place, or attributing Israel's massive success among the audiences as the result of concerted, strategic voting efforts by "the right". (The idea that foul play must have been involved seems to be a consensus opinion, if /r/Ireland is any indication.) The possibilities that a) normie Europeans legitimately liked Israel's performance on a musical level more than the other countries; or b) normie Europeans voted for Israel for political reasons because they're more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than the Palestinian - seem not to have occurred to her.
I am growing increasingly dismayed by the level of ambient nominally pro-Palestinian (but really anti-Israeli) sentiment in Ireland, but it's comforting to be reminded that it's quite the outlier among European countries.
Things took an even weirder turn when Armenia performed and the conversation turned to the Armenian genocide of the 1910s. My friend's Turkish boyfriend, who'd been enthusiastically participating in the Israel-bashing, suddenly became rather defensive, explaining how it wasn't a genocide but merely ethnic cleansing, and anyway forced marches are completely different from genocide, and anyway how do you even establish intent to exterminate a particular ethnic group, and it's hypocritical of European nations to accuse the Turks of genocide when they've done things that were just as bad if not worse* (it was a real mask-off, vino veritas moment, and even my friend seemed to be a bit taken aback by how worked up he got). I felt like saying - it's a bit rich of you to accuse Israel of genocide on the basis of their having killed ~110,000 Palestinians in the span of 75 years, but dismiss the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in one year as "mere" ethnic cleansing. My girlfriend, who's nowhere near as sympathetic to the Israelis as I am, admitted that I had a point here. I hate to say it, but the "it's antisemitism" theory seems to have greater predictive power than many of its competing alternatives.
*On this point I agreed with him: the Armenian genocide is at least as reprehensible as, to pick one example, Belgian conduct in the Congo.
Nominating for an AAQC based on this clause alone.
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