Skulldrinker
No bio...
User ID: 1874
Skulldrinker
5mo ago
I remember when a recent whistleblower or leaker or whoever said that a crashed captured UFO was found to contain "Unknown Elements," with no further explanation of what that's supposed to mean, and it very much killed all of my interest in UFOs. We know what an element is even if we haven't seen it before. All the elements on the periodic table are known, or theoretically known. There's no room on the table for an element that isn't an rapid-decaying ultra-heavy metal. Unless we're talking about an incredibly exotic isotope of element 325 that somehow exists for more than 2 seconds and isn't hideously radioactive. Or Element Zero, in which case, I guess we should head to the Charon Relay in the outer system. Is the unknown element he describes a tiny sample in some sort of larger mechanism, like the Freon in a refrigerator? Or is the hull of this thing made of 70% Glorkium? Or did the guy mean elements as in elements of construction? Then I'd love a cursory description of the novel metamaterials that this thing is made of; whatever nanotubules or gels or frictionless fluids or super-conductors it's made of would be super-interesting to just have a cursory description of. Or is this guy just a 'tard that knows "Element" is a science word?
Also, your top-level post is bad and you should feel bad.
Skulldrinker
5mo ago
Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?
People in general are quite capable of saying the thing they think is currently popular, then doing something else. Women on the Internet in particular, but everyone does this, male or female, on the internet or off. Everyone I've seen complaining about "Capitalism, amirite" still has the latest iPhone.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
Combined with world travel within an existing social circle and without grinding repetitive labor, and it sounds good to me right now at over 30. Maybe negotiate some sort of bonus if my living/travel costs come in way under the estimate.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
Well, the scenario that involved mace I imagined playing out was me getting between them and telling him to go away, then him either getting physical or saying something technically threatening, then me macing him, then using more physical force on the debuffed target if necessary. Which I still wasn't happy with.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:
When am I allowed to mace a hobo?
The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.
But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.
He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."
With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.
After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.
Cut to work.
Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.
Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.
The first thing she says?
"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."
The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."
"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-
"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."
So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.
Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.
Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
Wait, the public school system is that easy to get in to? I have a degree and aren't on any registries that I know of.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
Arkham Horror
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
My experience is that Latinas are never single, are super stranger-danger-y, and too people-pleasing to just fucking say no, thus wasting your time.
but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.
Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."
The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.
Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
By the numbers, what IS the median experience of an Israeli taken hostage? What's the % on being released? The % on being tortured before being released? The % on just never being seen again? Honest question.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
My objection to ethnic swaps is also related to the use of race in (semi)original works; my best recent example is the The Last of Us HBO adaptation, which was overall very good. But I still noticed that no diverse person is ever allowed to be bad,. The closest we got was a reasonable Asian FEDRA school administrator who's technically a fascist, and Marlene, a character that is worshipped by 1/3rd of the cast, is a romantic revolutionary, and who's mild badness is part of the show's entire grey/grey moral choice thing re: Ellie. In "bad" settlement #1, everyone is a beardy Midwestern type you'd see at a MAGA rally, with guns and trucks, and they're obsessed with hunting down one particular guy, who appears to have been the only black man in town (and who has a great moral excuse for ratting on his neighbors, conveniently. In the game, he and his brother weren't being specifically hunted by white people, they were just survivors like the main duo). "bad" settlement #2 is also mono-ethnic. They run into one "good" settlement, which of fucking course calls itself communist and is run by a black woman. It's like Stephen King; black people are so good they're magic. You can always tell who's good and who's bad by where the African-Americans are. The game itself has this too, but it's pretty tame by comparison and I don't have issues with it beyond Noticing.
When you have to have diversity but also can't depict anyone diverse as "bad," all the antagonistic roles get concentrated in the non-diverse characters, and any diverse antagonist that sneaks in has a maudlin excuse that makes them tragic and sympathetic, only the straight white male is capable of just being evil.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
resentment-obsessed
Robyn Hood by Director X?
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
Why do you expect consistency from social posturing? The college kids chanting River to the Sea are just making mouth noises that they've been told are the mouth noises non-excluded, invited-to-parties people make. They wouldn't know what to do with a Jew even if they caught one.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
Wellness classes represent the top end of that spectrum?
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
I see a decent number of women on the apps writing things like "I'd rather be approached in person, but that doesn't happen, so here I am". So consider that permission to do so?
Are these women aware that in the 2010s, there was a campaign of feminists telling men that no one wants to be approached in person anywhere ever? I also recall ~30% of Facebook posts by women being complaints that men talk to (or look at) them. Yes, I still very much mad.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
You're using Satanic and Diabolic as words that just mean "Badness." It sounds dumb and histrionic, tuned to rile up boomers and Jesus-freaks. If you want to use Satanic the same way other people use Racism, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, be my guest, just know that it doesn't play well with every crowd.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
The film is In Bruges
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
Going on the 2010s internet asking this question got you a list of places where women didn't want to be talked to by men. This included streets and gyms and supermarkets, but also all classes and clubs, parties, bars, conventions, concerts, festivals, and speed dating events. Oh, and if a woman turns you down, it's always because she was afraid of you. That last part in particular has completely fucked my self-esteem to this day.
Half the time that a woman approaches me at a social event (once every two years or so) I somehow get in trouble for it. Her friends mobilize or an event coordinator complains. One time a completely unaffiliated woman called security on me because a woman asked me to dance with her.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
What about Bruges? How accurate was the film?
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
I don't find calling things Satanic convincing, since Satanism was a confabulated Boogeyman, and by now I associate the term with generic American protestantism.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
The difference between a misinterpretation and the correct and true meaning of the text seems to be kinda fuzzy. Earlier in the thread, it was claimed that one Jesus quote is a joke, the other is totes super-profound.
Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner; give away all your shit and give no thought to the morrow, love your neighbor and turn the other cheek are all way more reasonable if worldly things like providing for your family, planning for the future, taking care of yourself, and not being punched on both sides of your face are about to not matter. Early Christians also thought that the apocalypse was right around the corner, until the world kept inconveniently persistently existing and they had to re-think their expectations.
Then the protestant reformation happened and some people started taking literalist readings of the original text, and came to the same conclusion of early Christians; the end of the world is right around the corner. And thus we have that marvelous work of human literature, Left Behind.
IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
What's the hobby?
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
Can you use it as a toy to dick around with while at work? If not, no one will care.
A week ago in downtown Chicago by Daley Plaza, there was a large van with LCD panels on every side of it showing dead Palestinian children, and it's stereo blasting uncreative rap lyrics about free Palestine. I deeply regret not getting footage of it, but I did say "Look, a semi-automated propaganda van! Boy do I love living in a cyberpunk dystopia."
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