MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
No bio...
User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I feel the same way, I don’t think online gambling (which in my mind includes buying loot boxes for regular games as well( should be legal simply because it removes all friction from the process and allows for much easier age check bypassing. By requiring a gambler to get into a car, drive to a casino and put a physical credit card into a physical machine, you force enough friction that a person would have a harder time gambling when they weren’t thinking about it. It’s also much harder for a child to fool an employee of the casino if they must be physically in the same building.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
From my point of view, it seems to represent blue-collar working-man masculinity for most people who have them. The point is to signal that you’re a hard working man’s man. Most of the drivers are actually urban professionals of one type or another, at least where I am, most actual contractors use minivans.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
I think a lot of the bias in the pro-Muslim direction is a lack of lived experience with this stuff. If you’re a zoomer, you were a baby when 9-11 happened, and you didn’t actually see what the intifada did, or any of the ISIS beheadings or suicide bombings and IEDs in Iraq/Afghanistan. So the impression you’d get from the media is something Like “Muslims were sitting in Palestine, minding their own business when those colonialist Jews showed up and for no reason at all decided to require all kinds of security measures and put up walls.” No, every one of the security checkpoints was because of various jihad and intifada attacks against civilians.
I don’t think Israel is perfect here. The settler movement is making everything worse. Bombing hospitals is not a good thing to do. The list honestly goes beyond this as well.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
If bombing Iran buys us five or ten years, it’s probably worth it. I don’t think they can restart a program we just blew up and have a bomb in two years.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
Yes, but it was also quite the psychological and even philosophical blow. Before 2001, we just sort of assumed that the world order was USA and Western Europe on top, everyone wanting to be us. We basically ended up not only resting on our laurels, but often tearing up the things that lead to our success.
Culturally, we tore up quite a lot of the social technologies that made success possible. We decided on some level that self-control, decency in a very broad sense, family and the centrality of protecting children from physical and emotional and psychological trauma, excellence as a virtue. Those things became sort of passé. Only old people and boring people still thought that one man, one woman for life with the woman as primary caregivers, or worried about too much sex, drugs, and violence in movies. Who cares, we are the top civilization heading for victory, and everyone wants to be like us.
Educational standards did not keep up, and in fact they are pretty low by this point. We decided that having an educated population was less important than the uncomfortable need to make kids learn things. But again, we were dominant, and believed we would always be dominant.
So what happens when we were rudely awakened by 19 guys with box cutters taking down major landmarks in America. And Americans had no idea how or why it happened or what we should start doing to fix it. We thought we permanently were going to be the utopian future. What now.
My contention is that our stories, especially popular stories are how people deal with the stories. Battlestar Galactics was an attempt to deal with 9/11. We thought everything was fine. Then the Cylons blew up the colonies. You never knew who was or wasn’t a cylon which is kinda like the jihadists who might or might not have been integrated into American society. The story explored all kinds of the different facets of the situation.
I think our current mania for medieval fantasy and romantasy is a longing for things that exist in those archetypes — strong, wise leadership, nobility, tradition, and heroism. And so how would a knight deal with some of the problems we face right now? Or a wise King?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
No, if Iran with a nuke is dangerous, letting them have it because you don’t want to lose a midterm is short sighted. A nuke detonated anywhere on earth would kill millions. That would certainly be worse than losing a midterm. Especially if that nuke hits an American or allied city, an American military base, or some high value target in the Middle East.
Israel is Israel and they’re frankly not part of my analysis here. If Israel didn’t exist, I think the history of Islamic radicalism would make an Islamic nuke a danger to world stability. A religion that says those who kill for God with a weapon that can obliterate a city is not something that would improve my insomnia.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
I’m rather impressed because of the political capital used. This isn’t the kind of decision one should make with an eye to what the people will think about it. If you need to prevent an enemy from getting too powerful to deal with, you need to act even if it is unpopular. An Islamist state with a history of supporting terrorism is not a state that should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. It’s beyond crazy to me that everyone is worried about poll numbers here when the issue was Iran with access to a weapon that could kill millions.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
I mean the objection is that no one could remain a public figure after suggesting I want to “end” any group other than whites. If he’d been talking about “ending Jewishness” or “ending blackness” or “ending femininity” he’d have been fired rather publicly. In fact, reading his statement he doesn’t say “I object to Jewishness, like other forms of bigotry.” He said “I object to antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry.”
If he’d worked with a group that suggested that treason to blackness is service to humanity, he would never be in a position to have anything else he said taken seriously. He’d probably be banned even on Twitter.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
It’s a Jewish specific thing in this context because Jewish laws forbid that anything that touches something unclean must be destroyed. Christianity has no similar rules. If I hold a race in a church, it might be offensive, but it doesn’t render the building “unchristian” to the point that it must be destroyed. The closest I can think of is hala in Islam or no beef in Hinduism. Reserving the holy things of religion against things that break those rules isn’t special treatment is the condition doesn’t exist for other religions.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I’m just looking at his particular interest in Africa, and food insecurity in Africa and tge Congo. None of this sounds like a guy with right-leaning tendencies. He does have a grandiose agenda and vision for how and what he’s going to do in DRC, but the choice of “American hunger to control black people in Africa” has no right-coded hooks, but does have left-coded hooks (international food security, American Empire, etc). This just doesn’t read like even a center left idea. This sounds pretty progressive in its choice of location and race-hierarchy and America-booing. I don’t think anyone remotely MAGA, NRx, or dissident right is going to glom onto “people in Congo need my help because America is using food to control black people in Africa.” They won’t because this isn’t on the list of concerns right leaning people would have. Right spaces tend toward nationalism, religion, masculinity, and similar issues. He doesn’t care about any right-coded ideology at all.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I mean, for most things medical, electrical, or legal, there’s no good reason for anyone without the training to attempt to DIY. For food and food additive advice, I’d look for someone who’s a Registered Dietitian, because they have trained in the material and would know the information you need.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I don’t think that the meaning is self evidently the same as originalism. There are other ways to derive intent that don’t come directly from the written text of the constitution or case law or any other written all.
The first amendment says “Congress will make no law establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The plain meaning is “no state church, and congress (NB: only one branch of government is mentioned in the text). So what does religion mean, in this context? What does free exercise mean in this context? What happens if Trump issues an executive order enjoining the entire country to the Orthodox Church in America? The text actually doesn’t say anything about executive orders. So you’d have to look to other things: what kinds of things were the people debating the bill saying about the bill, what were they trying to prevent from happening? What did they say when trying to sell the Bill of Rights to the People? What did early case law say about things like various states having official churches? What did they think religion means? These things are not plain reading of the meaning of the text. (Which, going only by the text, only prevents Congress from passing a law to make a National Religion or to forbid a religion from being practiced. That’s what the meaning of the words on the paper say.”
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I don’t really think that “food insecurity” which is how im understanding his bizarre ideas about controlling colored people with food, is a neutral or red idea. I’ve really only heard it in blue leaning areas. As is his concern about said colored people as a group separate from poverty issues. Reds don’t tend to do that, they tend to talk about poverty as a problem and solve for poverty, with a pretty strong allergy to bringing up race in most contexts. It’s almost a useful heuristic at this point. A person who brings up minorities unbidden when talking about an unrelated subject is likely a blue.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
TBH I think the big problem, which I’ve talked about before is that really most shouldn’t be following politics and probably shouldn’t be voting. Voter apathy isn’t a flaw in the system, it’s a feature. If people who don’t understand politics are heavily politically active, it’s honestly a problem to be solved because those people generally make terrible decisions. Even if they were somehow given “good” news sources, most of them don’t understand the issues well to make good decisions. Take away the “good, true’ news, and you have a situation in which people who don’t know what is going on and wouldn’t understand what is going on even if they got the truth are voting based on who looks most truthful and leader-like while lying to them on TV or TikTok. When people like that decide elections, it’s more likely to damage the country than do go.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I think the trope exists because most fantasy is based on D&D over anything to do with medieval times. It gets particularly irritating when the characters in the story act like modern people with modern concerns and attitudes rather than anything that someone living in the actual Middle Ages would have believed.
Some things I think were beneficial and should be brought back. Communitarianism, connection to friends and neighbors, belief in God. In a lot of ways I think that lifestyle is much more appealing as it gave everyone a place and a purpose with mutual support and respect.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
See for me neither the combat nor the gambits really grabbed me. The fact that you spend most of the game without having to make decisions about fighting just sort of removes the fun. You cruise through most of the game that way — once you figure out the correct balance of auto commands to get the AI to not be stupid, you could put down the controller and grab a sandwich while the game fought itself. Which then turned the gameplay into moving around the game zones and solving puzzles.which aren’t bad, but are really pretty simple and don’t add much replay to the game. I felt like the entire experience was on rails to some degree. X was extremely linear, but at least you had to play the game yourself.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
TBH for whatever reason evangelicals tend to have nearly blind support for Israel, and that’s long been the GOP base of support. I believe this is why Israel is seen as the one country to support here. It’s more pander than anything, and not too bad so long as it doesn’t have to many negative effects on security.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I think the whole idea is frankly pagan. I don’t think it’s very Christian to say that God has to do anything we decide he should, and the idea smacks of magical thinking.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I don’t think it’s quite the mainstream position in the right-leaning spaces. They might nod along with “evil” or “ideologically possessed” (which started with JBP, I think) but I don’t think, aside from mocking college students and wine moms that they call liberals stupid.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4d ago
I mean, ideally all of this would happen organically. Subculture is how you get new ideas, new insights. But because of modern technology and our understanding of psychology we managed to basically take artificial control over the engines of culture. Music used to come from seedy dive bars where local artists would work on their sound before being discovered by labels. They’d sound unique because the isolation from the mainstream music scene allowed them to experiment and invent new and interesting sounds. New ideas tend to come from the fringes where an idea can be worked on and perfected away from mainstream culture.
The internet and especially social media have changed all of this. Those hidden pockets of creativity are now put online where the concepts are put online and co-opted or destroyed before they can be refined enough to stand on their own. Worse, the internet has created a situation in which everyone is almost constantly being bombarded with content (read:propaganda) all the time. You think like everyone around you unless you take special care to unplug. But especially in politics, this means it’s almost impossible to come up with something new, unless you’re pretty much a radical. Everyone else is reading the same script, the one that doesn’t work anymore because it’s not 1982 anymore. Most of the apparatus of politics runs on inertia a dead system that ran on Consensus, on very carefully crafted campaigns and old tired bromides and ideas about politics that were invented for your grandparents or great grandparents. We have AI and fentanyl, we’re possibly approaching WW3, and our traditional ways of thinking about politics was laid down when digital clocks were the height of modern technology, Spock was on TV, and kids hid under their desks because the commies were going to nuke us.
Give me the radicals, even if they’re wrong. It’s the only defense against total stagnation and irrelevance.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4d ago
I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.
But I think hyper fixating on “omg” he doesn’t know the population doesn’t mean much for very obvious reasons.
First of all, he’s not remotely involved in planning the war. The people who are absolutely have the relevant information and probably intelligence assets on the ground telling them where the targeting drones should go first. It’s like being shocked that the CEO at apple doesn’t know exactly how much RAM the new iPhone has — he’s not the one designing the phone, he’s the one who demanded the phone be designed at built. As with most high powered elites, he has people to handle the details and he has been told that the military can probably pull this off. That’s all he needs to know.
Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on. China has a billion people, but how many of them are in the military? How many are rapidly aging members of the generation before the one-child policy? How many are women? Deciding Cruz doesn’t have any idea about Iran because he didn’t know off by heart tge exact population of Iran is really silly.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4d ago
I think it’s the narrative liberals tend to tell themselves in which the only reason someone disagrees with the liberal position is that they have a defect, either moral, intellectual, or in cases where they feel charitable, educational. You didn’t, according to this narrative, study the issues and come to a different conclusion. You came to that conclusion because you’re stupid or uneducated unless you just somehow get off on hurting people. So when white wine moms talk to you about why you came to the wrong conclusion, they assume that they’re talking to a lesser being not as evolved or educated as they are.
Conservatives don’t have quite the same narrative. They don’t assume that their liberal counterparts never studied the issue, they assume that they’re perhaps sheltered and get their information from biased sources. But that doesn’t make you stupid or uninformed.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
5d ago
I mean im not sure that works. I’m sure that you’re not going to literally disappear everyone who went to a protest where 50501 is present, however the data gleaned from such events would be extremely useful to bad actors if they wanted to make things interesting.
First, running the list and public profiles of attendees is a treasure trove of information that can be weaponized against them. For example, I can look for common elements in those profiles. Perhaps an interest in art, a type of music, favorite TV shows, etc. I can then use that data to find other people with that profile who are not yet protesting but might. I can perhaps check these names against other databases. Any unpaid parking tickets? Anyone looking for a job I can flag in a background check? I don’t need to go after all of them or even most of them. I can probably get better bang for the buck by targeting random people who are perhaps really well connected on social media. If I arrest 50, but they post about the experience online, and those posts, because of the number of followers goes fairly viral, I can probably discourage people from protesting without having to really waste time and energy trying to brute force the thing.
The beauty of AI in this case is that I can use big data to control people in ways that are pretty invisible until they punish rule breakers. If I can make it hard to get an apartment, or a job, or for you or you kids to get into a good college, I don’t need to body slam you and throw you in jail, I can just reward the good ones with prestige and easier life while punishing the bad by withholding privileges. If protesting means that the only jobs you can get are at Wendy’s, I don’t even need to make it illegal. People won’t do it because they don’t want to get stuck working at Wendy’s and living with cockroaches in a squatter apartment with 6 roommates.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
5d ago
The democrats suck as a party. They just don’t seem to understand how anything works in actual politics.
1). They have insanely high standards especially as the minority party. Like Al Franken was reasonably popular. But Alas, he had a picture taken in the early 1990s of him pretending to touch a sleeping woman’s boobs not even actually touching, just hands near the boobs, and it was an obvious joke by a professional comedian. But that’s the end of him because even though the picture was 15 years old when it came to light, it was just too much. And I’m sure this has happened many other times as well.
2). They publicly in-fight and publicly refuse to accept party discipline and therefore cannot get a real coalition going. Kamala lost, in part because she was not pro-Gaza enough for that wing of her party. To the degree that GOP members and voters disagree, they are extremely disciplined in voting. Disagree with your GOP membership’s position, you do so in the primary elections, but in the general, every GOP candidate gets the support of the party and the voters. There’s not even public disagreement. The party wants your support, and you are expected to shut up (at least in public) and vote with the party.
3). They lack media platforms in major markets. If you want to hear conservative news, you have a very large network to choose from. You have podcasts, YouTubers, tv news networks, radio, websites, substacks, etc. and they are generally agreed on what they support, or at least who they support. They have a mutual respect and understanding that you don’t attack other conservatives unless they’re going too far to the left. The Left has individuals with TV, radio, or podcasts, but they really don’t support each other. Raechel Maddow doesn’t tell the same story as Ezra Klein who doesn’t tell the same story as Thom Hartmann.
- they seem to lack any sort of clear, coherent vision of what life in a Democratic Party run America would look like. And because they can’t articulate a clear vision, it’s really hard to get people to buy into it. If they had a vision for America as Denmark, but multicultural, or something, sure they could probably get some buy in. If they said “competent leadership” again, I think people would go for it. When your best come-on is “ those other guys are nuts and want to have a white Christian nationalist fascist dictatorship with blackjack and hookers,” it’s hard to get past the question of “okay, but what are YOU going to do for me? Because he promised to make Americans strong and prosperous again, and all you got is he’s lying and a fascist”.
5). They mistake procedure for power. Democrats famously asked the permission of the parliamentarian to add “increase the minimum wage” to a budget bill. This parliamentarian has no power, and can be fired at the whim of Congress. But when the parliamentarian said no, they basically threw up their hands and gave up. When a Supreme Court seat came open during and election, republicans suspecting they’d win, refused to confirm any Obama appointed nominee and thus took a lifetime seat on the SCOTUS for their side. One group chooses procedures as a proxy for power, the other simply uses their power to get power. And the party that chooses power wins, unsurprisingly.
I’m convinced that most younger Americans have generally gone to the GOP if they want power. Theres just no way that a party who couldn’t tell an octogenarian with obvious dementia that he couldn’t run for a second presidential term is going to weird much power. It’s a very weird thing. The democrats want the trappings of power — the fundraisers, the ceremonies, the interviews on legacy media that pretend they’re important. But for anyone who wants actual power, the GOP is the lace to be.
Mine brother, we shalt party like it’s 1699!
More options
Context Copy link