TIRM
2mo ago
obligatory Kulak "you had to be as smart as a university graduate in 2023 to pass Grade 12 in 1923" graph
I take it this is a deeply misleading graph that fails to account for the Flynn effect/IQ being renormalized over the decades. A 100IQ in the 1930s is equivalent to around an 80IQ circa 2000.
"The numbers used to be bigger" is less impressive when you know that the scale changed.
TIRM
2mo ago
criminalizing drugs again and locking dealers in prison
Good news: they are currently illegal to possess and dealers get locked up. That's true almost everywhere in the US, Portland and Seattle excluded.
TIRM
4mo ago
Denounced as Jew with the standard recitation of anti-Jewish tropes.
So he's Jewish enough for the local self-described white nationalists to name him.
TIRM
1mo ago
There was a "as a black guy worried about my low-IQ genes contaminating my white girlfriend and our future kids" post on the reddit SSC culture war roundup thread shortly before it was permanently canceled. I didn't bother responding to it, but it was so clearly bait. Just the perfect example of intolerable wrongthink.
TIRM
2mo ago
Double nope: coin tumblers make it a random collection of coins rather than traceable coins from Russia or China.
TIRM
18d ago
Every single liberal leftist normie-oriented talking head I ever encountered kept repeating for months
Any chance these drooling morons exist almost entirely in your imagination and almost not at all in real life?
So what, exactly, are our leaders thinking?
I've said it before, I'll say it again: bleeding Russia is on sale right at an amazing discount right now, so we're buying a bit.
"But [list of reasons why long term Ukraine is screwed, won't be able to get back lost territory, etc, etc]." Yeah, sure. Also Russia is exhausting itself at a very small cost to the American taxpayer.
If Russia spends years grinding away to a standstill in Ukraine, then they won't have the ability to attack any further anytime soon.
And very optimistically, it serves as a warning to other countries wanting to invade their neighbors. If they badly desire a drawn out conflict that drains their resources for no obvious gain, we'll give it to them.
We've had it since the 1960s. Please recalibrate what are proposed radical changes to long established norms.
To be clear: no one is banning tiktok. They may force ByteDance to divest from the American form of tiktok. ByteDance can then sell it to non-Chinese owners. Or take their ball and go home. Their choice.
The arguments I've heard in favor of this involve the CCP controlling Chinese companies and the American form of tiktok being a horrible antisocial negative version but the Chinese version being a prosocial positive version. Which would be the CCP messing with our youth. And the black box hand-modified algorithm promoting content is not an even-handed arbiter of memetic popularity. Neither in China nor the US.
Anecdotally my Chinese American in-laws and wife agree that the Chinese version of tiktok is superior. And they use Chinese mainland Apple accounts to load it on their phones because it is the "good" version. So when some Congressman claims that, I accept it.
Any time someone appeals to tradition you should ask whose tradition and when? Back in colonial New England civil divorces were granted for reason of spousal abandonment. So you could just bail on your spouse and they'd get a civil divorce in your absence.
Lots of things are like that. Interracial marriage wasn't common in 1750, but it was legal and accepted. But in 1950 it was very much illegal and almost universally opposed across much of the United States.
I'm not going to greatly respect the hallowed traditions of 1950 in opposition to 1650, 1750 and 1970. Norms and traditions drift in a variety of ways in various places. Then a modern 2024 Conservative cherry picks one they happen to like and declare it to be Tradition, can't be frivolously tearing down Chesterton's fence, etc.
Having no enormous respect for a carefully chosen set of norms and laws circa 1950, and since we're a few generations into the current set of laws and norms, I'm going to follow the good example of Conservatives and declare the current norms to be Tradition and warn everyone not to too easily tear down this fence.
TIRM
4mo ago
trying to run as a war hero when he was anything but
I can't believe I'm leaping to Kerry's defense, of all people, but based on my memories of reviewing his service record, he's much closer to war hero than pretender.
They really did him dirty.
Can't a country of over 300 million come up with a single charismatic, competent, young, energetic leader?
Yes. His name is Obama and he's unfortunately term limited at this point. Something weird happened these past few days for me. Every day I see mention of Michelle Obama running for president. Which doesn't even begin to make sense. But people are so hungry for a return to something like Barack Obama that they can't help but bring up his wife as an alternative.
But I agree: why can't we scrounge up a second one per generation is a good question.
Putting up a faux-pagan idol (in technical accordance with local law) is no more targeting Christians than Muslims. It's not like local Muslims have a great love of pagan idols.
This is not mockery of Christ where you could gotcha them on lack of equivalent mockery of Muhammad. This is a fake goat demon stylized like a Tarot card used exercise legal tenants from the 1st ammendment.
TIRM
7mo ago
And they're free to post here and now. Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions that they ragequit.
TIRM
1mo ago
So you could go after Twitter e.g. because Musk posted unflattering claims about Ukrainian war and the only reason for that is that he's Russian influenced.
I really doubt that is what 'rival influenced' means. "We sold it to one of our other subsidiaries or partners, so it isn't us technically doing it" has to be banned for this to be sensible.
Not to mention going after Twitter for foreign policy views is a glaring 1st Ammendment issue. I think this is a fantasy.
TIRM
4mo ago
Putin attempted a decapitation strike against the Ukrainian government and plainly stated it is not a legitimate nation and is merely part of Russia.
Putin grows hungrier by the eating. I don't buy "if we just gave him a little and stop resisting so much Putin would stop".
TIRM
5mo ago
The Bible has perilously little to say about decorated evergreen trees
I'd say Christmas trees are banned according to Jeremiah 10:3-4. Don't be doing that pagan tree decorating thing.
TIRM
6mo ago
I'm going to take a bold stance: 4chan is valuable.
Sure, it has an obvious signal to noise ratio problem. But I would say not worse than reddit (which is a powerful indictment of the reddit algorithm as it doesn't clearly outperform having no algorithm at all).
On the various boards at various times you can find various distributions of quality. The /pol/ board is lower quality on average than most, but it has it's gems in the mud.
Thanks to the kind and helpful multicultural band of ridiculous edgelords on /pol/ I have repeatedly been informed about the USS Liberty incident.
Outside of that cabal of edgy 4chan posters, I don't think I have ever encountered this incident. Normies don't know.
TIRM
8mo ago
When that film came out I recall historians claiming that it was wildly inaccurate. As a matter of historical fact: the last day of Jesus's life did not occur as depicted in that film. It's not a documentary or factual historical reenactment.
Crucifixion was a really painful and drawn-out way to die. So that was approximately correct and of course believed by Christians. But the wildly exaggerated scourging and out of control Roman soldiers was fictional torture porn for torture porn's sake.
TIRM
26d ago
Yes: using a silly and false theory we can purposefully contrive false conclusions.
TIRM
26d ago
But GW isn't introducing female space marines. So that's a non-issue.
Females custodes is a change. I'm not sure I'd denounce it as wokeness.
TIRM
1mo ago
It is really quite amazing how genetics so horribly strikes Haitians but not to remotely the same degree other black Caribbean populations or black Africans or black British people, etc. It does make one suspicious that maybe a second factor could be at play.
Assuming this is a racial issue: Shouldn't a true to the setting depiction of 40K be full of POCs? If anything it's weird that all of mankind 10s of thousands of years in the future produces mostly white guardsmen and space marines, given their depiction in various media.
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