TIRM
1yr ago
At the top of the page I see liquid metal. Scrolling down I see a drawing of a medieval fortress.
Okay. I had a really good username that exceeds 25 characters. But this will do.
Also thanks setting this up, coming from a long time pre-Motte culture war roundup poster.
Edit: 2 posts in an someone's downvoting everything. Both of us are at zero. Please consider abandoning reddit voting. Having an option to downvote at all is too much for most.
Edit 2: Someone sent me the reddit suicide report message. From 'System', so they are abusing baked in features. Really off to a dramatic start.
TIRM
1yr ago
the Hasids are at least Human which is more than I can say for what the regime has in store for us.
Fearing genocide or dehumanization from "the regime"? You mean Biden and Congressional Dems?
TIRM
1yr ago
Anyone who finds this interesting and wants to hear one of the best radio segments ever recorded, may I recommend this wild ride:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/534/a-not-so-simple-majority
TIRM
1yr ago
Try a Sig P226. Better ergonomics than a Glock. Holds 18 rounds. I quite enjoy mine.
TIRM
1yr ago
There are finite resources. That's certainly true if the material universe. Conservation of mass and energy, etc. But in a metaphorical sense, there is similarly a conservation of rhetorical light and heat.
A "hot" statement that comes in strong with jabs against your opponents does little to illuminate them. Metaphorically like a damp torch that burns, but produces little light.
In contrast, an LED light is very bright yet produces little heat. It produces the most light per inputted unit of energy. Perhaps we should be more like an LED light and less like a smoldering damp fire in our attempts to illuminate relevant issues.
To the small degree that an efficient light produces heat, so shall we also produce some incidental heat. But let's not purposefully produce heat knowing that it comes at an unavoidable cost to light.
TIRM
1yr ago
Yes. This is the larger point. So many people trained on sneers and snide snark. They think their anti-productive meanness is actually a good thing.
So a venue that bans discussion-destroying sneers is valuable. Heat is available in hyper-abundance everywhere. Let's have one place where light is selected for.
TIRM
1yr ago
I cannot think of anyone, save perhaps Noam Chomsky, who is not guilty of employing rhetoric and oratory to appeal to our emotions.
I get the rest of your post, but holding up the comical atrocity denier Chomsky is hard to take. He uses a neutral tone and series of seemingly sensible statements to justify his favored brand of horrific crimes against humanity. He was a shill for the Khmer Rouge in opposition to people correctly claiming that they were engaged in horrific mass murder.
Chomsky is the worst sort of apologist for mass murder.
TIRM
1yr ago
But isn't the median disposable income deranged by the top 3%?
No. And that is why averages and medians are separate concepts with seperate applications.
If I'm in a conference hall and Jeff Bezos walks in, then the median income increases by almost nothing.
the utilitarian case for a strong welfare state seems extremely strong on its face
But us Americans don't need abstract arguments based on a very naive understanding for this. We had the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Which I don't believe right wingers like the consequences of. I believe the standard criticism is that these programs produce single family households that ruin the development of boys, foster multi-genetational dependence on handouts, longer term are to blame for high crime rates and increased drug use, etc, etc. All of course at substantial cost to the taxpayer and feeding the ever expanding bureaucracies. Just hard failures from a right leaning point of view. I've heard this on conservative talk radio and seen it online.
So in their utilitarian calculus, these programs are clearly net negatives. So let's not make a naive utilitarian calculus, let's use the actual reasoning that the right would employ.
TIRM
1yr ago
Republicans may not be the right we want, but it is the right we get in America.
TIRM
1yr ago
Yes. I mean in terms of electable major party. Like in the halls of Congress Republicans are the right we get.
TIRM
1yr ago
the future of the West is highly diverse, urban, self-expressive (trans accepting), and abundant
I can’t help wonder what families are supposed to be like in this vision
Presumably much like they always were, but with a bit more openly gay or mixed race. The charitable view of this future is largely positive. Things like families would still exist.
As an atheist in mixed race marriage, the thought of a future America with no common religion and an ethnic hodgepodge sounds good to me. Though I would like some civic nationalism and recognize the dangers of anomie.
TIRM
1yr ago
This is it. I don't care about the "benefits" of living in the local major city. Trash and shit strewn homeless encampments, dirty needles, shit on the sidewalks, comical levels of property crime, did I mention the Hep-A infected shit?
But none of that exists in any suburb that I have lived in. The lack of effective public transportation is an effective filter to all those problems. I have a family to raise, so I live outside of city limits.
TIRM
1yr ago
but is the scene it depicts any uglier than, say, this one?
Yes. Very much so. Like comparing a classical painting and photos of a burn victim.
TIRM
1yr ago
Apparently no advertiser other than boner pills or online casinos will touch Cumtown. They are add free, other than the in-show boner pill endorsements.
TIRM
1yr ago
I recently discovered Carpenter Brut and Perturbator. It never occurred to me that synth music could be good, much less seriously rock.
TIRM
1yr ago
Trudeau officially retired it.
TIRM
1yr ago
Russian nuclear forces probably don't work and so we can safely discount Russia's 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and 4000 strategic weapons. How they've come to that conclusion is beyond me, given that the technologies involved are fairly simple and old.
The US spent over $10 trillion inflation adjusted dollars as of 1996 on its nuclear program. Our current maintenance costs on our tiny arsenal are around $40 billion per year. Nuclear weapons are old tech, to be sure. But damn does it cost a lot to maintain them.
And looking at Russian equipment, they appear to have embezzled the maintenance funds.
But on the other hand, if even a few percent of 6,300 nuclear weapons work, that's still a lot of nuclear strikes. So let's not be too brave about denouncing their arsenal.
TIRM
1yr ago
Of all the dumb things they do, I'm fine with this one. They provide healthcare to their employees. If a local government bans some subset of healthcare then it is sensible for Amazon to pay for transportation. I don't see how that's different from my employer paying for my dental care and doctor's visits.
Also testing. Just made an account.
Can the user name length rule be expanded to 35 characters?
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