Iconochasm
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Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1yr ago
And? By the logic of disparate impact, the residents of Martha's Vineyard (which includes the Obamas) are "openly white supremacist". It's a community founded in, steeped in, and projecting outwards colonial Whiteness. The residents should welcome their town of stolen land being aggressively decolonized by Latinx folx with indigenous ancestry.
Less schadenfreudenly, has anyone ever been happy with the claim of "I'm not racist, just classist"?
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1yr ago
It is also a fact that the nazis were far right
I'll dispute that. There's a reason PoliticalCompassMemes classes them as AuthCenter. Nazism is weird, and very clearly a mutation off of socialism. There is definitely a reasonable argument that they shed core elementals of socialist thought (like class abolition) during that mutation, but they kept others (like the framework of being a revolutionary ideology to remake all society in their own image), and that leaves in them a weird position compared to other types of "right-wing" ideologies. If just being racist and homophobic is enough, then Marx, Engels and Guevera are "far-right". If we're going to ignore the distinctions and categories enough to group Brandon Sanderson with the Nazis, then everyone to the left of Joe Manchin is Stalinist - and apparently it doesn't matter if they never sent anyone to the gulag.
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1yr ago
That seems like a bad example. I have never heard anyone refer to Trudeau as manly. He is "Prime Minister Bieber", the substance-free, effeminate pretty boy.
But even setting that aside, what you're saying seems like the sort of "do as I say, not as I do" intentional sabotage from Western elites. Maybe someone should slip esteogen and SSRIs into the water at Davos.
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1yr ago
The God of Growth Mindset
On this Winter Solstice, let's take a few minutes to consider the merits of Norse Paganism. Epistemic disclaimer: Head-canon derived from decades old, fringe Neopaganism, with supporting research helplessly confounded by a certain fucking new video game.
First, consider the example of Gaston.
No one's slick as Gaston
No one's quick as Gaston
No one fights like Gaston
Douses lights like Gaston
No one hits like Gaston
Matches wits like Gaston
No one shoots like Gaston
Makes those beauts like Gaston
No one fucks like Gaston
No one cucks like Gaston
Er, little confused at the end there, but it's got the spirit.
And then this incredible dude (Perfect! A pure paragon!) gets into his first real scrap and in spite of his multiple sneak attacks, weapons, morale advantage and assorted other edges, attributes and bonuses he fucking dies.
Imagine being the toady, or just any of the people in the village who knew the guy. How do you reconcile that? How do you interpret that in a world that still makes sense? Do you just embrace chaos and the premise of an uncaring malevolent universe?
How often must this have happened in real life? Actual combat is messy and chaotic and subject to the vicissitudes of chance and fate. How many local champions and heroes were heralded by oracles, won the admiration of their peers, and then died ignominiously before actually accomplishing anything?
I think Valhalla is the answer to this problem. Valhalla is the Hall of the Slain, and it's inhabitants are those killed in combat. As far as afterlifes go, this one is pretty fantastic. Valhalla is an enormous tessellated Hall made of lesser-but-still-enormous Halls, and it's aesthetic is metal as hell. The rafters are spears, the roof is overlapped golden shields. You wake up every day and PVP all of your friends. You can all go all out because come dinner time, everyone's wounds will heal and the "dead" will get back up. Then you get to feast on the succulent meat of the boar Sæhrímnir, who gets a much less pleasant go of things, being slaughtered and risen to be slaughtered anew every day. You get as much mead as you want from the udders of the goat Heiðrún, served by buxom blonde valkyries.
Importantly, the einherjar are not there by chance; one of Odin's many names is "Chooser of the Slain". The Slain have some role to play during Ragnarok, as the army of mooks for the named Gods while they have their Endgame-tier epic battle against All Of The Antagonists At Once. Several of Glad-of-War's adventures in the myths are centered around preparing for Ragnarok, mostly in the form of acquiring Int bonuses and wizard powers. Gallows-God hangs himself on Yggdrasil to gain knowledge of the runes. Old One-Eye gouges out his own eye to earn the right to drink from Mimir's well of wisdom. The Father of Magic Songs goes to circuitous lengths to steal the Mead of Inspiration (the few drops he loses are said to be responsible for mediocre poets and scholars; throw shade as you will). Truthfinder has riddle-fights with other renowned sages to pick up any missing scraps of lore about how the end will go down.
The senseless deaths of great heroes seems more obvious when we consider it from Odin's perspective. He needs warriors, and he needs them more than these random mortal chiefs and kings. And obviously, he wants them at the height of their martial prowess, before they are bowed by age, their strength stolen by the thief Time. Good and mighty people die randomly in battle because Odin wants them preserved at their best... is a much nicer thing for grieving friends and family to tell each other than some cynical account of meaningless chance. The weak and cowardly fighter who slinks off to live another day survives because he doesn't deserve a noble death in battle, a seat in Valhalla. This too feels closer to justice.
It's a fun Just-So Story. But it implies that Odin wants you at your best, if you're still alive, it could mean that you have stronger yet to grow.
Paganism intrigues me because of how different the relationship with the divine is. I was raised Catholic. We prayed for salvation. We prayed for grace and mercy. For all that the priests talk of what God wants from us, it's a categorically unequal relationship. I want eternal paradise, and God wants me to not be such a piece of shit that he feels obligated to keep it from me... but that's entirely his decision. There's nothing really I have to offer Him. The pagans viewed their gods as being amenable to trades (though it's usually phrased in a less mercenary/capitalistic manner). Father of Victory isn't someone you pray to for salvation. He won't fix your problems for you. But he might, with a worthy offering, nudge you in a direction that can help you grow in a way to handle your shit yourself. This view of Odin is as something like a Dungeon Master who could be bribed into offering side quests. He benefits himself, by growing you stronger before he claims you into his forces, soul to be spent in a Pyrrhic stalemate with fire giants. You prove your commitment to being worth the effort by making an offering/sacrifice.
I know a few people here were formerly soldiers. Probably none of us will ever die in battle. But I would argue that given what his stories focus on, more than battle and leadership, Wand-Wielder is a god of knowledge, learning, and truthseeking. He's the patron god of X-risk. He is a god of frenzy, but that frenzy overlaps in concept with inspiration. If you've ever succumbed to the manly urge to binge amphetamines and code or research for nine days and nine nights, perhaps the Dispenser of the Mead of Inspiration was with you.
This mess of myth and fanfiction has coalesced into a small ritual for me. I take the night of the Winter Solstice as an opportunity for reflection and contemplation for the year to come. I think about the lessons I've learned in the past year, the areas I have personally improved, especially the ones I didn't expect or plan for. I have this notion in my head (probably from EY), that the hardest part of seizing an opportunity is noticing that one exists in the first place. I try to think of which ones I noticed and took advantage of, and what events might look like misses with the benefit of hindsight.
And then I think about what the next year might have in store. I try to imagine the idealized, heroic Iconochasm that might look back at me from next year, and wonder what roads he could have walked, and chances he could have taken. How is he better than me, and how might he have gotten there from here?
Odin doesn't eat, he only drinks mead, and sometimes inhales burned plants used in magic. Obviously, mead is traditional, but it's the symbolism that counts. A proper offering is an intoxicant, for the Lord of Frenzy, Madness, and Inspiration. I'll be gifting the Yule Father whiskey and an edible tonight. And in return, I'll be asking for CR-appropriate "random" encounters to optimally foster personal growth.
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1yr ago
Disappointed with Musk here. Maximally inflammatory schitzoposting is the stuff that needs free speech protections the most.
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1yr ago
The gay claims about Mateen seem thoroughly disproven. Further, Pulse wasn't even his preferred target, and he seems to have not even known it was a gay nightclub.
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1yr ago
Sending partisans in to loom over ballot boxes has to be one of the least trustworthy ways to actually secure elections.
We already do this, everywhere. Every time I have worked the polls, both parties had partisans on hand to observe everything, on top of the county election staff and the volunteer staff.
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1yr ago
Er, this is actually the level of incompetent hostility that right-wingers already expect from the ATF, and the response from the Democrats is less "this is good on a meta level" and more "this is good because fuck your ilk".
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1yr ago
I believe that "the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place" is more true than false, but because of a couple of edge cases I prefer the weaker "the core SJ movement >99.9% believes SJ is good and conservatism is evil".
What is the point of this sort of comparison? I'm sure the religious fanatics who were burning Pokémon cards and Harry Potter Books thought they were making the world a better place. People didn't send their kids to gay conversion camps to make the world worse. The Taliban think they're doing the right thing by forbidden women to learn, the Soviets and Nazis thought they were making the world better with their atrocities.
No one is a villain in their own story. Everyone thinks that their beliefs are good and result in good things. But specifically calling for generosity in regards to SJ on this seems particularly perverse, because as an ideology, SJ emphatically denies that generous goodwill to anyone else.
And it seems double-perverse given how much of SJ appears to be upper-class double-think games, e.g. the numerous times Darwin has expressed annoyed confusion that people keep trying to take SJ ideology literally and seriously, instead of just knowing that it's tribal-signaling mouth-sounds.
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1yr ago
Male power fantasies in fiction are still very common, I think you'll find. There's an entire section of literary criticism in which the ur-narrative is The Hero's Journey. Being the Son of Heaven or some other kind of Chosen One comes standard.
This is actually the initial inspiration for this insight, the difference in how defensive people get about male power fantasy fiction versus female power fantasy fiction. The women tend to get far more upset about their Mary Sues being criticized than the men do when their comparable fiction is criticized. And this ties into the gender roles you mentioned. When men get mocked for identifying too much with Goku or Captain America, most of them seem to eventually learn to sheepishly roll with it, and maybe if they're lucky and earnest they take some enduring inspiration about the value of hard training and hard virtue. Men enact their gender role by doing, and all but the most obstinate or gifted will eventually figure out that they're not the Main Character because their actions provide tangible feedback that they're not cracking home runs every at-bat, or clearly the strongest fighter at the gym. At a certain point they accept that they shouldn't expect to stumble into a fortuitous encounter that radically changes their destiny.
This is also a more developed genre, with stronger conventions about how to justify the fantasy, and a longer track record of subverting it. Even in the 80's, Eddings was mocking his own Chosen One for being a meathead who needs to shut the fuck up and just do what The Prophecy tells him. The breakout from the 90's, Wheel of Time, is about how being the Chosen One is an insane nightmare of relentless suffering. I'm unaware of any of the women's stuff subverting itself even now. AIUI, it's still blank-slate-but-sassy 17 year old world famous assassins immediately captivating the billionaire were-faerie Prince, played totally straight, and the fans of that genre get extremely upset when someone notices that this stuff is on the level of the schlockiest old comic books.
Conversely, women's gender role is more along the lines of being recognized for enduring general value/importance. This allows much less in the way of feedback, because having low-grade people/competitors fail to recognize that value before someone much higher status comes along to see it is a mainstay element of the fantasy. And so I observe women in their 30's getting more defensive than middle school boys when their power fantasy schlock is criticized for being schlock.
End result is that I think by 30, there are many more women who still think they might get swept off their feet by a handsome millionaire if they just have the right Maid in Manhattan encounter, compared to the men who still think they're going to be a rockstar who does MMA and invents new tech on the side.
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1yr ago
I strongly suspect that this is a "blue tribe midwit" phenomenon. I would also bet that most of those people think IQ is a fake statistic made up by racists in general, and that most of them would cite the "regatta" example as proof. That idea is much rarer among the people who don't even pretend they read the NYT. "Parents pass down traits like brawn and brains" is the sort of folk wisdom that everyone has... except for the people who've had that scooped out and replaced with something else.
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1yr ago
the suggestion appears to be to change the weighting until it evens out the races, regardless of the impact on the efficiency of detecting lost revenue.
The most obvious stuff seems like it wouldn't even require much of an algorithm. If (Times SSN Claimed As Dependent >1), Then Audit (All Taypayers Claiming SSN As Dependent). If (Claimed Income) != (Reported Income), then Audit.
If this sort of thing is really the source of the discrepancy, then it's not even some AI algorithm thing. It's just basic computerized logic checking. The sane solution is to try to teach the black community to not commit easily detectable tax fraud, and instead engage in incredibly based tax avoidance.
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1yr ago
I have a few issues with this comparison. First, the thing we'd be treating is the depression, with medications and therapies designed to fix the undesirable internal state. Secondly, the state of depression treatment is, AIUI, not really where we'd like it to be in terms of scientific reliability, and that's still a much better situation that the fraught nightmare of running experiments on trans people. And third, my issue is not with "access to treatment and therapy" (for adults, at least), but with epistemic demands on other people. If a depressed person demands that we validate their belief that everyone hates them for being smarter than the rest of us, and if we fail to validate that belief they might kill themselves... that is toxic AF. That's emotional blackmail. That's either despicably insincere, or something to have that person committed over. The worst response would be enabling that person in their toxic, abusive behavior.
If someone is suicidal, there are ways to seek help that aren't virulently anti-social, and empathy is not a blank check.
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1yr ago
I don't really enter the culture war roundup thread here, just check what the self posts have to say,
This is the part that removes all validity of your criticism. You ignore 95% of the content of the site, but one cherry-picked example is damning?
If you saw the same article with only this distinction, would you tell anyone they were meaningfully different? I wouldn't.
The problem is you would never see that article in the first place, at least framed that way. The interview would be chopped and pasted and recontextualized as something like "DeSantis angrily disputes homophobic concerns from civil rights groups". I watch network news in the morning because my parents do, and they want to talk to me about it, and the problem is exactly what Pushaw is talking about. They see 40 seconds of clips featuring three different question/responses from an interview with Hershel Walker, and they have no idea how long that interview was, what was left out, what context is being omitted, etc. They just get the impression that "Walker was interviewed by the news and this is what he had to say". They don't even notice until I point it out that that 40 seconds features more intense grilling than all Democrats combined have gotten on that channel in the last two years.
Compared to living with that crap, a full court press delegitimating effort is at least an actionable strategy. Actually treat them like the partisan SuperPAC they essentially are.
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1yr ago
At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media.
ABC morning news in 2022 reminds me of clips John Stewart would play of Glenn Beck in 2004. Even the pretense of objectivity feels like gaslighting. They don't care at all that you learn any facts about what happened, the only important thing is that you feel who are the bad guys (the Republicans) and who are the good guys (the Democrats).
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1yr ago
As these millennial women enter their 40s, and huge, double digit percentage of them never managed to form a family, they will become a huge cultural force, a massive living testament to the lie their generation was fed and eagerly believed.
The last time we had this, with the excess women after the deaths in the Civil War, we got Prohibition. I think your take here is very optimistic. I think we're more likely to see a renewed movement to ban video games under the fig leafs of gambling and encouraging violence.
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1yr ago
Qualifications aside, it still seems like a red flag for a raging case of Main Character Syndrome. My dude, get over yourself and put on some business casual.
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1yr ago
In the context of the present culture war, and in particular as regards young people who don't conform to gender norms, I see an expansion of the term, in particular eliminating the context of a close relationship and intent to form a sexual relationship with a particular minor. Then, grooming just becomes introducing sexually related content or concepts to minors, especially when those relate to non-conventional concepts.
As part of the reputationally and financially ruinous lawsuits against the Boy Scouts, many examples of flagged behavior from their private archives were made public. One example in my area was a scout leader in the mid-80s who was banned from the organization after giving a half dozen teenaged boys access to beer and porn on a camping trip. There is no indication that he singled one out to try to rape. If we want to be charitable, it sounds like something The Onion's VP Joe Biden would do, "Hey boys, here's some Bud and a Playboy, then I'll show you how to do donuts in the 'Vette!" That guy was still banned from the organization, decades before anyone got serious about youth protection, because that behavior is such an obvious red flag that you don't need to wait around for a kid to get raped.
Actively trying to prevent and shut down that sort of behavior is so thoroughly not enough that the organization responsible was dealt reputational and financial ruin by the courts. So, by that standard, how should we think of, e.g. librarians who fight tooth and nail to ensure child pornography is kept in elementary schools? "Oh, it's not grooming, it's just being wildly sketchier and more cavalier with children than the organization that just had the shit kicked out of it for insufficient zealousness in protecting kids." It should not be a tall ask to have the "what I wish I'd had growing up" to be restricted to normal standards for age appropriateness.
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1yr ago
Alien vs Predator 3: No Matter Who Wins, We Lose.
Some final thoughts and commentary on this race, focusing mostly on the campaign ads. I had wanted to link the ads I'm seeing as I discuss them, but there does not seem to be any easy repository. Some of the Oz ads, or similar clips, are available on his website and Youtube channel. Fetterman has a much more expansive listing of clips on his Youtube channel, but they don't seem very similar to the ads I'm actually seeing FIVE TIMES EVERY COMMERCIAL BREAK. Note that this is all in the Philly market.
Let's start with this Fetterman ad which is not one I've ever seen on TV, though there are some similar themes, and some glaring omissions. The ads I see do hit that note about wanting to "cut taxes for working families", but I have never seen a Fetterman ad say one word about the minimum wage. His ads talk about how Oz has 10 mansions, but Fetterman wants to cut taxes and make sure no community gets left behind and he definitely wants to fight crime and get more stuff made in Pennsylvania.
He still plays this like he's an anti-establishment Republican; you could be forgiven for thinking he was a moderate Tea Partier. Zero references to progressive or left-wing causes, he is nativist, vague on actual policies, but he is definitely One Of Us, not like that Turk.
On a related note, Josh Shapiro has a spot running where is also in favor of cutting taxes, and promises to put parents on the state education board. Taking in the tenor of these campaign pitches, I would be very morose if I were a leftist.
Fetterman does also have another ad running a lot, with a very positive, uplifting tone, where he doesn't say anything negative and ends by "respectfully asking for your vote".
Oz has a parallel one (unfortunately, it evades my Google-fu). In it, Oz expresses gratitude on behalf of himself and his family for "your kindness, and your grace". Just a strong positive note from both of them to end on, only mostly ruined by the shitflinging from the last few months... and their other ads... and all the ads being run by affiliated groups.
Oz has this ad, or one very similar running all the time. Oz stresses that he is like, amazingly super compassionate, and that the real problem is extremism on both sides. His ads position him as a moderate, who just want solutions gosh-darnit by listening and working together and building a reality-warping engine from a condensed singularity of generic moderation.
Both men have allies running harsh attack ads. CRAZY JOHN FETTERMAN WANTS CRIMINALS TO RUN WILD. He also, I hear, MOOCHES OFF HIS PARENTS. It must be nice to actually work for a year, and be so upset about it that you have daddy buy you a political office that is supposed to be extremely part time instead. There is another pair of ads featuring black people ripping into Fetterman for the whole situation where he heard gunfire, grabbed a shotgun, and held up the first black jogger he saw. Obviously a brutally negative ad aimed directly at the black community in Philly.
The other side has ads running against Oz, but almost more at Republicans in general. Republicans want to BAN ALL ABORTION even in cases of RAPE AND INCEST. Look at this 10 YEAR OLD GIRL who could be FORCED TO CARRY HER RAPISTS BABY. Republicans apparently also are going to DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. These ads focus less on attacking Oz directly, and more on the logic that as a Republican vote, he'll enable the other more extreme Republicans, which is an interesting bit of raw tribalism/game theory. They make a bit of hay out of Oz's statement at the debate that abortion should be between "a woman and her doctor and local politicians", but not as much as is made of Fetterman's performance. One ad just runs this clip, almost without commentary. Another has a bunch of Very Concerned People discussing how much Fetterman's debate failure changed their opinions, because he clearly can't do the job. One line effectively pings off a previous Fetterman ad where he bizarrely talks about how grateful he was to get to spent time with his family while recovering, by saying that he looks like he should be resting with his family instead of running for Senate. Oz is also going to RAISE YOUR TAXES (lolwut?), including one little snippet that should win an award for dishonesty, where the name "OZ" is pasted above a newspaper headline style snippet reading "CUT MEDICARE" and "RAISED YOUR TAXES", clearly implying that he has already done so, in spite of his never having held office before.
So, I want to talk about the REPUBLICAN PLAN TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. I went to look and see if this is something that anyone is actually talking about, but what I'm mostly finding is onion links in partisan outlets that link to stories that link to stories that link to stories that have that one time in 2010 that Mike Lee said we were going to have to do something about SS going insolvent. Are there any actual, current plans by actual Republicans to do anything that could reasonably be called "gutting SS/Medicare"? My impression is of desperate, disingenuous fearmongering, but I only have so much tolerance for digging through Dark Hinting from the outgroup, and I'm not entirely discounting the possibility that there is something serious in there.
Finally, some Kabbalah. I find it delightful that his support for releasing criminals has been an albatross around the neck of a candidate named Fetter-man. Unfortunately, the surname apparently has no linguistic connection to fetters, it's actually an old Germanic nickname/insult for "the fat guy", which again is odd because John looks like he has lost a bunch of weight, all of which went to his hideous neck goiter. "Mehmet Oz", OTOH, apparently just means "praiseworthy courage", which is so bland and boring and inappropriate I can't even make fun of it.
"John Fetterman" has a gematria of 1065, which is the Return of Partnership Income Tax form. "Mehmet Oz" has a gematria of 728, and Luke 7:28 reads "I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” The Khabbalistic implications of this are obvious, but I cannot find anything saying if Oz was a C-section or not. If Fetterman wins, this should be a critical attribute of the next Republican challenger in 2028.
If there is some hidden message in their names that will reveal the winner, it eludes me. But I can say with confidence and joy that 48 hours from now I will be 5+ years away from seeing a single ad for either of these fuckheads again. May God have mercy on us all.
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1yr ago
I mean, would you react in the exact same way if your kid was in some other way rendered unable to have kids themselves, like they were gay or got a vasectomy once they were an adult?
I find myself having a mild preference against them being gay for what seems to be this reason, but homosexuality is less of an obstacle for having biokids these days. Similarly, I'd be rather annoyed if they both went childfree, but in that situation I can consider context or make the pitch for why kids are worthwhile and then respect the decision of reasoned adults.
I think we're tipping in hysteria pretty clearly here.
The downthread topic that sparked this was a proposed bill to take kids away from parents who expressed resistance or skepticism. Take that threat entirely off the table, and ensure that I get to make my own determination on how sincere/serious the gender-nonconformity is while my kids are minors, and almost all of the heated goes away.
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1yr ago
As a calibrating scenario, remember that guy who tried to assassinate the conservative supreme court justices a few months back? That situation seems to have gone very quiet, but let's speculate that he was found to have been "inspired" by the rhetoric of a leftist group or media. Would it be reasonable to sue/prosecute Ruth Sent Us or MSNBC into oblivion?
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1yr ago
Keystone Clown Contest Part 2: Ischemic Boogaloo
See here for the last discussion of the Hoodie Ogre vs the Huckster Healer.
In Our Last Exciting Episode...
Mehmet Oz, in an effort to look like a real person, went to a grocery store and was caught on camera complaining about the price of crudités, which is apparently New Jerseyan (or maybe Ottoman) for "uncooked vegetable platter, maybe with dip". So Fetterman did the obvious thing and ran ads and had a fundraiser about how obviously elitest and out of touch it is to use (forgive me) Fr*nch words for common things.
Fetterman’s campaign said it had raised more than half a million dollars off the viral video within a day, including more than $65,000 from a sticker that has the phrase “Wegners: Let them eat Crudite” on it.
Oz's people clapped back with this banger
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,”
(Speaking as a man who once spent three weeks on the "all cheesesteak diet" and learned a painful lesson thereby, eat your vegetables.)
Again, Fetterman's people did the obvious thing and harshly criticized Oz for this failure of decorum. Many variations on "Imagine your doctor making fun of you."
So, the next point of contention to come up is the debates. Team Fetterman initially tried to use the mockery about his stroke as a reason to dodge out on them altogether,, to which Team Oz published this vicious list of concessions
Doctor Oz promises not to intentionally hurt John’s feelings at any point.
We will all allow John to have all of his notes in front of him along with any earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff in real time.
At any point, John Fetterman can raise his hand and say “bathroom break!”
If the topic of his pardoned murderers comes up, we will allow extra rime for him to explain that second-degree murder is “not as bad as first-degree murder.
We will pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.
(Incidentally, "lying liberal Fetterman" is a terrible mocking nickname. I never thought I'd long for the days of Shady Katie McGinty. I wish I could find one of the ads that really hammed up the nickname, but they don't seem to be on Youtube.)
Team Fetterman is obviously outraged.
Ok, more serious face on.
As of now, the first debate was supposed to have been on Sept 6th, and didn't happen. Fetterman has committed to one debate, but not until mid-late October, which will be weeks after early voting starts. Team Fetterman has been flipping stories about his health issues, from downplaying it, to "almost died", and now it's purportedly some minor auditory processing issues. Some people covering him have expressed concerns, including the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. Fetterman has only had some brief interactions with the public or reporters since his stroke in May, heavily supervised. The ads he's been bombarding the Philly market with are supposedly made with pre-stroke recordings. His current speaking is.... not great. This issue, and Oz campaign ads hammering Fetterman on his progressive crime policies may be working to Oz's favor, as Fetterman's lead seems to be more like 4-5%, down from 11% a month ago.
But at least he's got the Snookie vote.
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1yr ago
Well, if you want Limited Government then I hear Somalia is a great place.
Somalia-the-meme was a civil war between a half dozen competing governments, many of which were fundamentalist Islamic. And that was still an improvement in most QoL measures over the previous socialist government.
Forgive student loans so we can give them more loans to gamble on college sports teams so they need a new loan. With sufficiently altruistic accounting, we can feedback loop GDP to infinity, pay ourselves a few trillion (pocket change compared to infinity!) while lecturing the plebes that they only think food and gas cost unpayable abstract numbers because they're bigots.
I want to say this is how Economics 2.0 worked in Accelerando, but I don't think Stross was cynical enough to flesh out the details.
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