Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
I'm absolutely convinced that on a minor policy matter, something Trump has never really thought about or understood, anyone with a strong verbal IQ has at least a 50/50 shot at convincing Trump to take a stand on anything.
I'm convinced that if the Democratic Party was just willing to let Trump get the credit, they could have had their entire wishlist of infrastructure/green energy projects during his presidency on a scale unprecedented since the CCC.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
This is exactly the sort of thing I'd hate when it was used by the Left against the Right, and turns out... I still hate it. A pox on whoever first decided that "dogwhistles" were a thing. You might as well say she's pro-corporate-monopolies.
Mantergeistmann
5mo ago
That nuclear baseload is a beautiful line.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
It's a weird thing to say, but the more I read him, the more I come to the conclusion that Kipling is remarkably underrated and underappreciated, and that's even taking into account the modern climate and improvements in cultural tolerance.
Mantergeistmann
6mo ago
These jobs should be more or less easy-in-easy-out temporary employment for people who need cash to pay their bills. If you read some of the mid century "road" novels, you'll see how a pretty common modus operandi was for the protagonist to roll into town on his last dollar, pick up a few days work doing janitorial work at a auto garage or something, and then go on his merry (usually drunk) way of philosophizing. I've written about this before. It's not so much that people in the 50s/60s were raising full families on these unappealing jobs, it's that these unappealing jobs were the equivalent of day rate motel stays.
I think you're the first person I've seen in the wild who seems to agree with me thay not all jobs need to pay a "living wage", and that that's okay! That some jobs should be just for the high school kid after school or during the summer, or someone who isnt trying to support a family on it ling term. I don't know how you deal with people getting stuck in a rut and eventually not being ready for retirement, though... I'm sure many will say that it isn't their problem to make sure others don't make poor life choices, but that doesn't help convince the general population when the news is publishing sob stories.
Mantergeistmann
5mo ago
there are 500,000 dead in Gaza
That looks like an order of magnitude greater than most estimates. Where are you getting that number from?
Mantergeistmann
6mo ago
And, as far as throwing fuel on the fire, JK Rowling has weighed in:
The literary crowd that had a hell of a lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before he was convicted has been strangely muted in its response to multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who’d never met, yet — as with Weinstein — tell remarkably similar stories
My understanding is that the venn diagram of "people who hate Rowling for her trans views" and "Neil Gaiman superfans" is very close to a circle, so I'm expecting there to be either a lot of cognitive dissonance, deliberate head-in-the-sand, or crazy explainers as to why they're on the same side.
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
We demand that leadership does not discriminate against workers on the basis of their race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.
Aside from the last one, isn't that just literally the law?
Mantergeistmann
24d ago
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment
I'm assuming there's no good analysis as to why this airstrike is grounds for impeachment whereas all the other airstrikes and drone attacks over the decades weren't?
Mantergeistmann
3mo ago
You'd think the overfishing is something Conservatives could absolutely be brought on board with. I know a fair few in favour of protecting our environment (but not climate change initiatives, since they think those are all just an excuse for socialist economic transition), and given that China is one of the biggest overfishers, especially in other nations' waters... feels like a failure of messaging more than anything else.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
Similarly, young men on voicechat on videogames have been talking about fucking each others' moms in various depraved ways for decades, while lots of women experience this as traumatising aggression. It's clearly a gendered phenomenon, potentially even a biological one - it wouldn't surprise me if we found that isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea where men bond with "your momma" jokes.
There's an (unfortunately incomplete) cuneiform tablet dating back to 1500 B.C. that includes, among other jokes, "[...] of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. Who is it?"
Sadly, the fragmented tablet does not include the punchline, although given the other jokes/riddles, it presumably would have lost something in the translation.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
I feel like if the Trump campaign released such an ad, there'd be 18 dozen different articles up by now about how it's completely racist.
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
My understanding is that men are still allowed to attend such things. However, i have no doubts that an equivalent event advertising itself specifically for men (but still allowing women) would either draw the wrath of Title IX, or else be overwhelmed with women showing up in protest.
edit: What Voxel said below.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I'm not sure if you're getting how big of a mania this is. People ended up bullied out of certain amateur forums for merely using AI illustrations.
I've seen the unironic take on some D&D forums that if you want an image of your character and can't afford to commission custom art, it is more moral to search Pinterest/Deviantart/whatever and download an image that looks kind of like what you imagine, rather than "use AI and steal from the artists it's trained on".
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope--are we talking about Israel vs. Hamas, Israel vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world that funds them, or Israel + its supporters in the US vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world?
That's one of the interesting things about power... local power can be a massively different beast than total power, or even future local power.
"My garden may be smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is harder than your sternum", and all that.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
One of the most fascinating protest signs that I ever saw simply said LIBERALS GET THE BULLET TOO in all-caps sharpie. To this day, I'm not even sure they were protesting.
I'm reminded of the BLM flag that was the snake with "YES WE WILL TREAD" or something similar. Like, they were protesting oppressive police by... wanting to oppress libertarians? Constitutionalists? The US Navy post-9/11? I mean, I assume they simply interpreted the entire flag as "Outgroup Flag" and didn't think about it, but still.
Mantergeistmann
3mo ago
Could have been worse. Could have started a "Reply all" chain. It took my company a surprisingly long amount if time to figure out how to stop those.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
The "I can't be trusted alone in a room with a woman that isn't my wife" mike pence?
Wasn't that about avoiding spurious accusations?
Mantergeistmann
3mo ago
Originally it was supposed to be Snow White and Evil Queen going toe-to-toe, but now she just falls off a cliff or something?
I mean, that style of villain death is a Disney classic.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
Not really a new concern, though, is it?
Mantergeistmann
5mo ago
Instead, I felt the urge to police left wing people celebrating the shooting. But I soon noticed there weren't actually nearly as many of these as I expected.
You must hang out with a different crowd than I do. Some of the kindest people I know were still saying, "Well, wouldn't it be better if he had been assassinated?"
Mantergeistmann
9mo ago
I loved the branched conversation style over single-threaded forums like PHPBB that dominated the web before.
It's funny you say that, because I honestly really miss forums, and how they've been completely displaced by Reddit and Discord.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
I'm reminded of Shamus Young's old post about Twitter:
Twitter is like owning a television that only shows me scandals by the Yellows, and acts of virtue by Purple. I no longer have to go to the trouble of fooling myself. We’ve invented software to automate and industrialize the process, and then added a scoring system so that the masses will constantly bring it fresh fuel. It’s a system of rules with the emergent property of creating a continuous flow of crowd-sourced propaganda. We’ve gameified tribal bigotry.
Mantergeistmann
2yr ago
I have a bit of a weird stance on vigilantism. I think it's morally justified... as long as the vigilante immediately turns themselves in, pleads guilty, and accepts the punishment meted out by the court. That allows for redress of extreme injustice by someone with sufficient conviction to accept the result of their actions, but prevents an endless cycle of retaliatory extrajudicial violence.
In theory, at least. I'm sure it's a terrible idea in real life.
Thst point at least is rather weak. If the US military hasn't kept an up to date plan for military action to secure the Panama Canal for a very long time now, I'll eat several of my hats.
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