MaximumCuddles
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User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The data is either incomplete or wrongly, often willfully wrongly interpreted. I’m literally one of those people he’s talking about; Despite posting in this rarefied little forum full of PMC types, I’m roughly working class in lifestyle and lifetime earning capability.
Instead of going to get an advanced degree, I worked for a living and got married and started a family. I’m an extremely skilled worker with an extremely strong resume, and I’ve been working 40-60 hours a week for the last 15 odd years at decent and respectable enterprises. By all accounts I shouldn’t have to struggle this hard just to keep my head above water.
All I have to do is take a look at my refrigerator to tell you you’re wrong. From 2016 to 2020, if I had friends over I’d always have something special for entertaining; olives, cheeses, charcuterie, pate, maybe some nice liquor or craft beer, high quality meat, a wide variety of fresh fruits, maybe some fun desserts like sorbet or crème brûlée. You name it, it wasn’t extravagant but I always had something I could put together to entertain a few guests.
And that was all on one income, which was a good income but not spectacular by any means. And I managed to save a good amount of money. I could afford to take my wife out to a nice dinner in occasion, we could go on very modest vacations without worrying about it too much.
All that shit is gone now, my family had spaghetti for dinner twice last week. It’s brown bag lunch for me. I don’t keep liquor in the house anymore, too expensive. We’ve basically stopped eating beef because it’s too expensive. For the first time in my entire life I’ve been late on payments on a semi regular basis; I’m quite financially literate but there’s only so much you can do.
And that’s all with my wife working again.
What that people touting these great economic numbers don’t understand is that all the pain and hardship doesn’t end the second the numbers start to get better, the effects of economic stress have long tails that bleed into everything. Just because the earthquake stopped and the house is still standing doesn’t mean it is not still in the process of falling over.
I’m making more money than I ever had but my lifestyle has been severely downgraded since 2020, probably permanently, of which nearly none of the blame can be reasonably laid at the feet of Donald Trump or the republican party.
I live in a deep blue state, in a blue area. And every working class person I know hates the government and the Biden administration. What’s more interesting is my social circle is incredibly diverse.
MaximumCuddles
3mo ago
Eight years later, the “crackhead taxi driver” analogy still holds.
Imagine you have a destination in mind. You hail an Uber, 4.9 stars, great vehicle, clean. You tell them where you want to go and they look at you like you have three heads. And after realizing you’re serious, they flat out refuse to take you there. No matter how much you beg or attempt to reason with them or bribe them.
So you call up a Lyft. 4.6 stars, nice vehicle. Same outcome, first they think you’re joking, then you’re crazy, and finally an idiot.
On and on it goes. Seven vehicles later, you hail an unlicensed taxi cab. The driver opens the door, it smells like piss inside. There are empty beer cans and takeout containers strewn around the vehicle. You tell him where you want to go, the driver looks at you for a minute with his cigarette still in his mouth and says “Fuck it, let’s go. Hop in.”
If you’re a Trump supporter, hearing that you just jump in. So far it’s you’re only shot to get where you’re going, it’s getting late and you’re getting desperate.
Honestly? Don’t blame anyone who chose that way. With the benefit of hindsight, I think they were absolutely right.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Master and Commander is so effortlessly high quality it makes me weep remembering it was basically an “average” excellent movie that we simply took for granted that we would be treated to up to a dozen times a year for like basically 15 years between 1993 - 2008.
It’s also, hilariously, completely bereft of female dialogue. I find it to be a very funny coincidence but frog twitter and their world see it as a sign akin to a burning bush.
It’s fucking rad, A+ would recommend.
I had two small children with special education needs entering the education system right as the lockdowns started, and I’m more or less working class without the resources for private education and therapy, so naturally as the lockdowns went on I was filled with white hot nuclear rage at those responsible for them.
You ever seen a toddler do speech therapy with a mask on with masked adults?
Trust me when I say it’s one of the most frustrating, pointless exercises you could witness. Especially when it’s your kid.
That and the fact that my industry was completely devastated by the lockdowns as it was all in person work.
And I live in a heavily blue state.
So me and mine were absolutely the type of people sacrificed at the altar so that overweight, CNN addicted middle age office workers could have the perception of safety.
MaximumCuddles
10mo ago
Hyup. That’s pretty standard from the US legacy media.
Good news is that these types of outlets are absolutely getting their lunch eaten by alternatives and will likely die out as the boomers die out.
MaximumCuddles
1yr ago
In terms of severity, it’s somewhere in the ballpark of simultaneously being lobotomized and becoming a jihadist.
It’s not just the potential sterilization & being unable to achieve an orgasm for life, it’s also being a lifelong patient, and thusly a financial supporter, for “big pharma”, an industrial complex that is very politically powerful and I find have proven themselves to be extremely dangerous.
They are also often a supporter for a memeplex that is fundamentally hateful towards what I and many others would consider to be healthy, normal behavior and social dynamics.
So not only is a transitioned person deeply alienated towards their own physical body, they are often radicalized against their friends and neighbors who knew them beforehand.
I had a close friend who transitioned during university, in the early 2000s before trans issues became more mainstream. We are both of an age & class where we were some of the earliest people to be “extremely online”. I spent a lot of time lurking in trans friendly spaces, and honestly the right-wing outrage machine might be even underselling how intensely hateful the rhetoric is in those places towards their “enemies”, real or perceived.
At the time I was a supporter but I felt myself being so turned off by the whole “trans communist” schtick that I unconsciously distanced myself from them and I’m likely to never speak to this person again. At the time I didn’t think much of it but with the benefit of hindsight a lot of things sort of fell into place for me.
I have children in public school in a mega blue area, so I have real skin in the game. I can confirm even in elementary school they are already being exposed to this stuff, if I wasn’t so poor I’d put them in private school.
Sure, but two things were abundantly clear even to the political novice; trump wanted the vaccines approved asap and trump wanted the lockdowns lifted as soon as the vaccine became available to let the economy recover, even if it was just to save his own political skin.
If the CARES act was the only major spending bill related to COVID and we got more or less back to business as usual by fall 2020, it would have caused an inflationary period but the damage would have been limited and mitigated by a quick recovery.
There’s a big difference between taking 2000mg of Tylenol and taking 4000mg of Tylenol and four shots of whiskey.
The vast, disparate effects of what you might call the “lockdown political culture” deepened and accelerated this inflationary pressure by absolutely skull-fucking normal supply and demand. And that shit was 1000% on the heads of democrats.
All inflation is just too much money chasing too little goods. The absolutely psychotic extended lockdowns and the hair trigger response we had throughout the administrative state, which was in open rebellion against the Trump administration, caused a ton of problems both on the supply side and the demand side.
I saw this personally as I was privy to the cost increase in my industry which were largely a result of all these collective policies on both the federal level, and on the state and local level, all of which are heavily blue.
So my intuition is that trump might be responsible for like 15% of the inflation surrounding COVID, tops. And the super tight labor market that we had pre-COVID more than makes up for that, and the Trump administration can take at least partial credit for that.
MaximumCuddles
4mo ago
I guess they called for a culture war, and no one showed up.
MaximumCuddles
1yr ago
I’m also quite baffled at the assumption that the burden of proof is on omnivores to defend their diet.
It’s honestly incredibly arrogant. there’s so much stacked against it I think it takes a very fanatical type of person to have that level of hubris.
I mean, just off the top of my head:
1.) Humans are omnivores. That’s how our bodies and brains evolved, and that’s the type of diet that interfaces most completely with us.
2.) Not everyone is a utilitarian, in fact I’d be amazed if even 10% of the population subscribe to beliefs that can be considered fully utilitarian. Outside of that belief system, suffering is often complicated to define and also is often considered morally neutral without greater context.
3.) Even if you are a utilitarian, the state of Nature most animals, including ancestral humans, existed in is incredibly rough and brutal and full of pain and suffering. It’s not a given that domesticated animals, even ones with very sad & short lives, would be better off without human intervention. Or that ending animal domestication will lower total suffering in the world. It’s not even close to a given. There’s a sanitized “Disney channel” version of animals’ lives that I feel that animal lovers sort of unconsciously project on a low level, but the truth is staggeringly cruel.
I could go on and on for hours about this. This is one of the few subjects I’ll likely never budge an inch on, I fully understand the other side of this issue and particularly the instinct not cause unneeded pain and suffering.
But whenever I hear hardcore vegans, which is to say any vegan at all, talk about this all I can think is “This ain’t it, chief”.
MaximumCuddles
4mo ago
In general, it seems apparent that leftists typically believe whole swathes of all possible political ideologies are either overt fascists, crypto-fascists, fascists in training or fascists in denial.
Understanding this explains a tremendous amount of their behavior & speech.
It’s also additionally amusing because these same people make fun of their republican uncle for saying something like “single payer is communist.” They do the same thing except even worse because it’s even less accurate.
The idea that a beltway libertarian or classical liberal is a fascist but just doesn’t know it yet is so absurd on its face that’s it’s laughable. But it’s a common belief on the hard left.
MaximumCuddles
1yr ago
I do find it darkly hilarious that the supposed most positive outcome of transition is a total social death that leads to a phoenix like social rebirth, but with like, makeup and shit.
MaximumCuddles
2mo ago
There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.
And more importantly, my children live here. And hopefully, my children’s children.
MaximumCuddles
11mo ago
Yeah I’ve long felt the whole “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Hypothesis is incredibly brain dead and even downright insulting.
As a sort of aside, I saved a passage from the old place onto my notes without saving the author.
Although to me it’s highly exaggerated and extraordinarily blunt, it still really encapsulates the core of how I feel about this. It’s obviously a response so some context is missing but if anyone knows the author or can provide this missing context that would be cool.
From Dec 2020
“But utilitarian with regard to whom? The whole problem with utilitarianism is the presence of so-called "utility monsters", and homelessness presents a real world example. A small minority of the population wants to use drugs and shit in the street while slowly dying of medieval diseases. But every tiny bit of aid just pleases them so so much that utility calculus DEMANDS we all pay an 80% marginal tax rate to pay incompetent government contractors to build $500k hovels for these people.
Utilitarianism falls flat because each person's measure of utility is internal to their mind and not comparable to anyone else's. It's a moral system that privileges incompetent, clueless and greedy people at the expense of unassuming, conscientious people.
If it were up to me, I'd make it publicly known that the cops aren't going to lift a finger to aid anyone who hasn't paid at least $300 into the treasury this year. So the grocery stores and homeowners could just bayonet them (no reason to waste the ¢45 and noise of a bullet) and the disruptive homeless would retreat to rural areas and OD in the woods where we don't have to pay to bury them. The down on their luck homeless would stay in a shelter for a while and get back on their feet, and the town could maybe not be filled with human shit for ten minutes.
But notice how this policy isn't based on retribution. I don't hate the people being discussed here. I feel vaguely sorry for and disgusted by them. I am just aware that helping them ranges from expensive to impossible and I like holding on to my money without losing it all to taxes. Every dollar the county housing boondoggle gets is a dollar my children won't get, so bayonets it is. If the chronically homeless could somehow be profitably remediated, they would be my best friends.”
MaximumCuddles
11mo ago
Absolutely true.
I also feel similar to the OP. The difference is that I’m a large, very muscular and physically dominant male. I’m an amateur boxer & powerlifter and have been in a few situations where I’ve had to use the skills I’ve developed in adverse conditions.
I’ve lived and worked principally in two cities in my life. Both very blue. One very wealthy and safe but with the growing problems that are discussed here frequently. We will call it city A. Other city much less wealthy, much rougher and with a longer history of violence. Let’s call that city B. Both cities are relatively close tk each other.
Over the last ten years the homeless in city A have gotten increasingly violent, brazen and deranged. They started setting up camps in broad daylight, in the middle of public streets. often the most violently mentally will walk the streets at day and terrify people.
The homeless in city b, while numerous, are largely the same as they’ve even been. They mostly keep to themselves, sometimes annoy tourists, but they are rarely threatening.
While city B has a reputation for violence, I feel much more comfortable there. I once expressed this to a group of people from city A, who were a bit shocked and amused. They asked me why. I told them their homeless are crazy, aggressive and out of control. They asked me why I thought that. I paused for a moment, and said ”If homeless people act like in city B, I think people just beat the shit out of them.”.
I myself had an illustrative example of this personally. Late at night in city A, where I was working, a homeless man locked eyes with me and then took a shit right in front of me.
After the momentary disgust wore off, the rage at this blatant antisocial act set in. I look up, see a security camera staring right at me, looked back at the homeless man, gave him a death stare, and moved on.
I think there are a lot of people feeling like Bernie Goetz out there, but with our growing panopticon and our fully deranged racial politics, that juice is just not worth the squeeze.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
A long, long time ago (2012? 2010?)
I read a rather robust study comparing a lifetime sexual partners of the average person divided by country.
If I recall correctly, Turkey was number one and a big outlier at ~12 per person.
India was the lowest at around 1.8 per person.
A lot of thing made sense to me after that.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
I think if Hlynka should be unbanned if he does “The Hock”, with photographic evidence to back up his claim. Trial by ordeal.
I’m not even remotely kidding.
That might be the funniest deep cut mashup of internet niche humor ever produced. It would be a scream come true.
MaximumCuddles
10mo ago
Sex isn’t everything.
Not having it is.
MaximumCuddles
10mo ago
Amusing aside but I remember reading about pre-revolution Russia and the anti-Czar fever pitch leading up to his deposing.
At one point it was so extreme that during a medical conference, the presiding doctors came to the conclusion that the Czar was directly responsible for the outbreak of syphillis and that the panel’s primary recommendation for responding to the public health crisis is getting rid of the Czar.
Look how well that turned out for them.
Kind of reminds me of BLM in 2020. Rly makes u think.
MaximumCuddles
11mo ago
And to think this placed used to have a big overlap with /r/drama, where “dude bussy lmao” was respected discourse. Truly, how far have we fallen?
But in seriousness yes, it’s usually a term applied, sometimes with a touch of irony, to Femboys & twinks and other entries into the genre of feminine or feminized men on the recieving end.
MaximumCuddles
1yr ago
You know, I consider myself to be a person with a very strong stomach. I very rarely feel disgust on a visceral level, even when dealing with excrement or wounds.
But I was listening to a podcast and at one point they were discussing uterus transplants in india for western trans tourists, trans women obviously.
The idea of grafting a uterus, taken from a “willing” 3rd world natal female, onto a natal man who is an autogynephile so they could feel like a “real woman” filled me with a level of disgust I have never encountered in my entire life. No lie, I had to turn the program off, pull over on the highway and just breathe for a minute.
MaximumCuddles
4mo ago
MaximumCuddles
11mo ago
big naturals
Can’t be mad at that.
But all joking aside the best physique I ever had was me at about 230lbs and 20% body fat.
After 18 months of big lifting and hard work, I was in the locker room, looked in the mirror, and I had the physique of an over the hill samurai. Ropy, thick shoulders. A huge, muscular ass. A core like a tree trunk. And a little pot belly.
I looked like a mook in a Kurosawa movie, screaming at the bar maids to bring me more sake.
Shit was choice, couldn’t be more proud of myself.
I don’t think it was a coincidence that I got married shortly after that.
I don’t know much about Canadian politics but as an outsider, I think I came to that realization with that viral video clip of the two MPs going at it a while back.
One, a conservative, asked a very simple question; “How much does the average house in the Ottowa area cost?”.
The other, a liberal I assume, simply replied with a random accomplishment of the liberal government, completely ignoring the line of questioning.
The conservative asked the same question, and the liberal breathlessly did it again, just blurting out some non-sequitor factoid about the supposed accomplishments of the liberal government.
This went on and on for maybe like ten minutes straight, like literally 25 times.
It was so incredibly baldly dishonest I almost admired it.
Edit: Found it.
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