HalloweenSnarry
No bio...
User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
5mo ago
For some, the easy retort here is "what's the difference?"
I guess I'll echo the chorus and say that at least it's not Intelligent Design. I almost respect the foolish honesty of Young-Earth Creationism.
EDIT: 2rafa put it better: this isn't 2005, this isn't a sound-the-alarms moment the way it would have been once upon a time.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
To leave aside the divisive "groomer" argument, you still need to argue that transgenderism is inherently-negative cetis paribus--i.e., the problems associated with it would still be present absent the element of social stigma. This doesn't have to include over-correcting enthusiasm, just more whether these outcomes are replicable in a vacuum.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
According to YouTube's front page, though, there are better women's sports to watch, at least if you want to stare at athletes' rear ends...
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
As amusing as I find this, I believe that things that happened 100-140 years ago are still fairly relevant to us today, much more so than in medieval times. I think I've said as much before here, and I'd like to point to a comment made earlier this week about how we arguably haven't had enough time for the effects of the end of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act et. al to fully cash out.
100 years ago is not terribly long ago on the generational scale.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
When you phrase it that way, it sounds like a slam-dunk, but I think there's probably enough wiggle room between what we did get and the unrealized plan. A larger campaign might be comparatively more sanitized for the American public.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
I suppose I'm not entirely sure, so I'll leave it as an open challenge/prompt. The sustained dissonance between audience and critic ratings on RottenTomatoes might not exactly tell you if wokeness is eroding the final product, I suspect, but I'm open to someone arguing for a semi-reliable heuristic based on some logical factors. Maybe asking for proof that a vibe shift really is taking place is too hard an ask for anyone, but I'd still like to make sure that "latest thing bombed, Hollywood is doomed" is something more than social media amplifying whispers into thunderclaps.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
I suspect that this is sarcasm. While drags queens do have some overlap, the motivations aren't the same.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
What would you call that situation, if not a hoax?
A plot? A scheme?
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
If you mean the literal Moral Majority, it disbanded in 1989.
Yeah, that group wasn't around in the 90's, but the spirit was definitely still there, I'd argue.
I think this opens up a whole 'nother discussion: are able-bodied young men fleeing a country under war a potential source of civil unrest, or just a horde of chickenshits who probably don't pose any threat, as evidenced by them not staying to fight for what they thought was right?
The only thing is, you'd have to examine the various waves and people who've come to the US, from Chinese fleeing the Communists, Vietnamese fleeing the Communists, Cubans fleeing the Communists, Venezuelans fleeing the Commun Socialists...
Okay, okay, dark-hinting aside, I think most people who immigrate and have at least a half-good excuse are mostly just there for the paycheck and little else. Sometimes, they can organize and be a potentially-good source of violence, but the one example I can think of are the Rwandan tutsis of the RPF, who may have raised some hell in Uganda(?), but their most (in)famous hell-raising was done inside the borders of Rwanda, under the leadership of the Western-educated Kagame.
Some people do just get along with the American program better than others, that's for sure.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
Scalping is only profitable when you can buy something that's artificially underpriced and sell it for what buyers actually are willing to pay.
This makes it sound like scalpers are doing a service and keeping people from foolishly spending less money, as if a buyer is going to say "oh man, I'm glad I bought [thing] for $200 instead of $100!"
I think, in practice, scalping is more "guy buys 50%+ of the stock of [thing], forcing people to buy it from him because it's sold out because the guy bought 50%+ of [thing]." You can raise the prices on something, but so long as it is sufficiently scarce, it probably won't stop someone from thinking they can flip it for better. (See also: gun and ammo prices during the pandemic)
Your dynamic pricing idea also doesn't seem to account for botting--what happens when the price dips to a good low point, and then is immediately hammered for north of, say, 10% of all tickets?
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
To add onto Ec's reply, I think the argument they were trying to make is that the Olympics and all other televised major sports sell a subtly/deceptively-unrealistic image of human capabilities. Frankly, I think a lot of sports-related marketing also does that (athletes on the Wheaties boxes!), and if, instead, we were honest while still trying to make sports a thing for everyone, we'd probably have to become bio-realist to some degree.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
Are any of those corporations the companies that actually matter, though? Certainly not any Fortune 500 biz, I bet.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
I'll echo Pongalh here and say that I think there at least used to be a pretense of relying on hard evidence. For example, the first wave of environmentalism in the 1970's wasn't merely about vibes, there were things people could point to as proof that we had enshittified America The Beautiful and needed to start cleaning up after ourselves.
I suspect the cynical explanation is that the British government doesn't have the same motive for putting its thumb on the scale like the American government would. They don't need to sell their people on any narrative in particular, because they don't really get themselves into wars (and pretty much most of the ones the UK has been in after WWII have been divisive at best) and they aren't tied up in global affairs like the US is.
So, I would say, yes, the BBC will probably be tilted in favor of the establishment, but there's no real pressure to be against said establishment.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
"We're going to throw you in jail, not because you broke any law but because fuck you." "Yea, you broke a bunch of laws other people are in jail for, but we aren't gonna punish you because we like you." Very just!
Are there not countries around the world that work somewhat like this, where the de facto law is much more informal than it would seem? I think there's some value in having a "Rule Zero"/"Because I Said So" clause in law, where a situation is sufficiently outside a system's reference class and it also demands swift and decisive action.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
I suppose the solution is merely to not be scandalous--but this would be quite a high bar for many politicians to clear.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
What the heck does "policy starvation" mean? I've seen it a few times here and I can only sort-of guess at what it means.
Also, from my point of view, I suspect that any breakdown of Enlightenment power will only lead to a return to massive, bloody war, and less so any re-discovery of God. The conditions under which the Enlightenment was born were, if I'm not mistaken, near-constant sectarian conflict.
I asked this because that's the vibe I've gotten from this position, that The Statue Must Stand Lest The Odessans Suffer Rootlessness or something. It was perhaps too jocular of me to phrase it the way I did, but I feel like Botond has blown his own concerns out of proportion. If that is indeed not what he's getting at, then I fail to see what the concern is. What will happen once the statue is gone? They jettison a part of their founding myth that they want nothing to do with because of its ties to a people who are interfering with their ability to have a city in the first place?
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
I mean, didn't Dilbert get yoinked from newspapers because Adams started injecting his politics into the strip? I'm amazed it took this long for it to happen, but nonetheless, it seems like a fairly strong repudiation of Adams' legacy.
HalloweenSnarry
1yr ago
Question then is how the hell he got to QAnon from Green Party.
HalloweenSnarry
22d ago
Yeah, those sandwiches you can get at 7-11 or Lawson probably are just literally built different compared to how it'd be done here in the US.
There's an argument that this divestiture/ban/whatever is bad because we should focus on strong universal data privacy and the like, something that targets all social media and doesn't single out TikTok. I agree with that, but nonetheless, I think I'm on Noah's side with this, that we are in another Cold War and smacking an arm of the CCP on their little pizza hands is worth the questionable struggle presented by the bill.
Edit to add: This all being said, I suppose this will be the first real test of the right-wing theory about the power of the Cathedral. Will Yass's billions and Trump's bluster be able to make the Deep State blink, or will Yass find himself regretting getting on the Trump Train? Will Team Blue get what it wants regarding China, or is the American public too wedded to their social media to take this sitting down?
ETA2: I'm also not unsympathetic to a common thread in the replies here and to Noah: that it seems hypocritical and pointless of us to be so concerned about Chinese surveillance and control, about illiberalism from abroad, when we still have to deal with the same things at home. But I'd argue that it is precisely why we must take a stand against this. If we cannot stand up for ourselves against an outside enemy, we will never be able to stand up for ourselves against an inside enemy. "My brother and I against the clan, my clan and I against the world" and all that.
More options
Context Copy link