HorthyMiklosKatonaja
No bio...
User ID: 540
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
12d ago
And then the characters make some offhand comment about a magic spell that lets you switch gender which certain people who were "born in the wrong body" use to cure their condition. And then MC from Earth explains how in our world those people are oppressed and everyone shakes their heads about how unenlightened that is.
Surefire giveaway that the author is trans themselves, or at least moves in social circles where they have to interact with a lot of them. Really common in recent years for some reason.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
15d ago
no-gay-guy-would-wear-this setup
One of those "Federal Breast Inspector" T-shirts.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
15d ago
A Pride flag plus a "Black Lives Matter" sign is pretty much obligatory for every business in a "hipster" neighborhood. Just means "We support $CURRENT_THING". Reminds me of Havel's greengrocer.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
19d ago
Alex Jones is a professional liar. If anyone deserves to be unpersoned, he does.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
28d ago
Back in the eighties, Benetton (anyone remember them?) were running ads that had nothing to do with clothes, with pictures of some random African kid. I still don't know what the message there was supposed to be.
Were I ever to embrace Christianity, it would be Lewis' libertarian version:
"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema [or porn??]; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."
Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 78-79). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Such a contrast with the sects of which Handmaid's Tale is an exaggerated version.
One can make a case, however, from Screwtape Letters that Lewis would have thought video games inspired by Satan!
"Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up. This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids."
Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters (pp. 136-137). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
"He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one."
... maybe through the vicarious bloodlust of GTA or Postal, they finally succeeded??
Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters (p. 44). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1mo ago
It looks more like Newspeak: "27,000 EURASIAN SOLDIERS UNALIVED IN DOUBLEPLUSGOOD VICTORY IN GHANA"
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1mo ago
People are unalived rather than killed.
I wonder if the bot would pass "mur-diddley-urdered". Deliberately make the censorship look stupid.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1mo ago
I'm remembering a 1954 movie, and it's worth a chuckle pretending that them refers to giant ants.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1mo ago
What annoys me, and has become quite common lately, are people who write in to advice columns who deliberately obscure the gender of everyone mentioned in their letter. They, spouse, sibling, child, partner.
Since I was in college, I've read every advice column I've been able to get my hands on, as a way to make up for my complete social cluelessness. Dear Abby, Ann Landers, Miss Manners, Carolyn Hax, Care & Feeding, Captain Awkward.
I try to picture in my head the people involved in these situations. But I cannot picture a genderless person - my mind short-circuits and just gives me a sentient cloud of fog!
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
while they have some tricks those will be impenetrable to patients.
I know that if the ending of the name is the queen of the fae, it's going to be really fucking expensive.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
They should go back to the old-fashioned "Dr. Billings' Soothing Syrup" type names.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
We still have /r/shitpoliticssays to carry the anti-progressive flag.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
Other than losing my hair and having to urinate every hour or so, no. I guess I got lucky in my genes.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
Who said I was young?
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
40?? I'm already 57. I walk eight miles a day and I'm still in great health (though I put down enough beer that my liver probably isn't thanking me (I never get hangovers though)), but that can't last forever.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2mo ago
And even if you're healthy, what happens if you get Alzheimer's? You wouldn't even know it, and eventually you'd either freeze to death trying to walk to work or get in a car accident if you still drive.
I have never been in a romantic relationship and furthermore have no friends or loved ones, and the very day I become conscious of physical or mental deterioration, I'm checking into a hotel and euthanizing myself with the strongest poison I can get my hands on.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
Advice columnist Carolyn Hax once wrote something to the effect of, "We have five senses for a reason. How smart is it to look for a romantic partner without using any of them?", referring to the fact that photos are often old or complete fakes.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
And didn't he originally say something about all cars in America being driverless by 2025 - something which nobody who has ever dealt with liability lawyers could possibly have believed for an instant??
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
Optimus robot
Musk is famous for overpromising and excessively-optimistic timelines. He's basically the Peter Molyneux of tech. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously, unless we see the robot performing household tasks with proof that there isn't someone operating it like a waldo.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
I expected something about racial integration.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
There's also the factor that I'm old enough to remember when Fairfax County was 98% native-English-speaking white, and I've always possessed the ingrained mindset that "the way things were as I first remember them, is the way they ought to be forever."
Maybe it's a form of autism; I don't know.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
3mo ago
I wonder if he's ever ridden the Fairfax Connector buses and found himself the only English-speaking person there. I suppose he would not feel, as I do, like an outsider - an endangered species - in what was once my own country.
I guess I'm just a xenophobe by nature. Whether this qualifies as a mental illness, a personality defect, or just a neutral personality trait depends on your outlook. The Redditors of /r/nova would certainly consider it either of the first two.
Gone with the Wind
Atlas Shrugged. Dagny Taggart could be seen as a prototype girlboss.
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