TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
5d ago
LGBT identification has risen among younger people, but so has social conservatism. This is seen in stats for young voters but there’s also no shortage of anecdotes floating around the internet of teachers complaining about their students seeming more openly right-wing in recent years (in fairness this also coincides neatly with the sharp rise in ideological progressivism among teachers).
I think the aggressive LGBT promotion toward children has a radicalizing effect, in both directions. Without such programs most kids, especially below a certain age, would simply not think about gay people (much less trans people) at all, unless they had personal experience, i.e. a gay relative or family friend. With the programs, they are forced to think about the issue, and some are attracted while others are repelled.
TheDemonRazgriz
8d ago
It’s an exact quote of what Trump said when he was told Ruth Bader Ginsberg had just died.
TheDemonRazgriz
12d ago
I’m curious what you mean by this (sincerely).
TheDemonRazgriz
12d ago
Adding on to @grognard’s comment below, I recall hearing that the misconception of jannies having .gov emails came from a mocking tweet saying that a number of them had signed up with their “gov names [as in real names] and .edu emails”, which was misunderstood as “.gov and .edu emails”. Then, as the internet is wont to do, this more salacious rumor spread faster than the truth.
TheDemonRazgriz
12d ago
What do they have to lose?
If it came out that a Ukrainian operation assassinated the US president, they would lose all remaining support from the US. I don’t think even the staunch pro-Ukraine faction (i.e. congressional Democrats) would stand for that, “don’t assassinate the president” is a pretty stark red line. And what would be the gain? Trade anti-Ukraine Trump for anti-Ukraine Vance?
I suppose I could see a lone-wolf mentally-unstable fanatic type trying to kill Trump out of some sense of revenge but an intentional SBU op seems absurd.
TheDemonRazgriz
14d ago
Congress? (Ha!)
Seriously, I wish I knew how we (as a society) could push in that direction, but it’s hard to see it happening in reality. It’s a nice thought though, isn’t it?
TheDemonRazgriz
14d ago
I wouldn’t be so sure of China not invading Japan in the event of a truly large-scale Pacific war (i.e. the scale that leads to China being at war with South Korea and/or the US). If nothing else, there are significant US military bases throughout Japan that would surely be struck in the event of a Sino-American war, and it is difficult to see the Japanese government letting that slide without considering it an act of war against Japan itself, not least because some of those bases are shared with Japanese personnel. They are rearming for a reason. A full-scale Chinese invasion of the Japanese home islands is pretty unlikely, yes, but it’s not impossible (certainly it’s more likely than a Chinese invasion of the continental US) and I would not consider them to be “safe” from Chinese attack in any meaningful sense.
TheDemonRazgriz
15d ago
Perhaps the federal government should be allowed neither to extrajudicially drone-murder its citizens, nor to arbitrarily deport residents without checking who they are.
TheDemonRazgriz
26d ago
Overall, the show is overhyped but also interesting enough, and really isn't pushing some sort of woke angle.
Yeah, I've been looking for an opportunity to jump into this, with my perspective on the show from here in the States, where it's been popular but not explosively dominating the pop-culture discourse like it seems to be across the pond. I didn't watch the whole show, but my fiancée did and I caught significant chunks of it. I thought it was a very well-made psychological thriller/crime drama. The actors were very good -- the child actor playing the son in particular, but the supporting cast were quite good too, the father in particular stands out in my memory as having some solid scenes. I'm a bit of a sucker for the one-shot long-take gimmick but I thought it was done really well and with purpose, it ratchets up the tension and makes things feel more real (perhaps a factor in why everyone seems to be taking it so damn seriously). It's not made explicit whether he actually committed the murder until, iirc, the third episode and you can really feel the confusion of the characters as they believe or don't believe the story, his parents being in denial until the end, etc. The show overall kind of feels like a plot you might see in an episode of Law and Order: SVU but given a higher production value and done in a sort of elevated indie-artsy style. It's genuinely very well done.
So, I definitely understand why the show was a hit. What I do not understand is why it has become this absurd social flashpoint. Yes, the show includes some cringey dialogue about the young killer being radicalized by "the manosphere", but the point of the show (or at least, this is how it seemed to my American eyes) is the drama, the social commentary is just there to make things topical -- like when CSI would do an episode about killers organizing in chat rooms in the 2000s -- and is very much secondary to just being an interesting piece of fiction in and of itself. I did not get the sense that it was pushing any kind of significant message at all, really. There's an element of "this could be your kid next" but only in the way that you're supposed to think "ooohh, Michael Myers could come to YOUR town!" when you watch Halloween.
What I'm getting at is this. The interesting question, in my mind, is not "why does the show exist in the form it does" or "why is it popular"; it is a somewhat-soapy crime drama involving children and families and a salacious murder, and has some elements tying in to topical hot-button issues. In short, it's top-tier mom-bait -- think again of the venerable Law and Order: SVU -- that's been elevated to wider success on the back of good execution (direction, cinematography, and acting). This kind of stuff has been successful for decades, and Adolescence is an unusually well-crafted example of the type, but nothing more -- so the interesting question, to me, is "why did the British government and mass media latch onto this so insanely hard?" They're talking about it like it's some kind of exposé and not, you know, a completely fictional TV show. Because -- to reiterate -- the show by itself does not come off as a preachy after-school special type of thing, or even especially woke. It's the same sort of salacious, loosely-based-on-the-headlines drama that people have been making for decades. When I first saw that people in the UK government wanted to show it in schools I sincerely thought it was a joke -- but now it seems like they're really going to do it. Is it just a sort of dark bread and circuses thing, "let's gin up some furor about this fictional story so we can avoid dealing with our many real problems"? If so, it looks like it's working, as both woke and anti-woke commentators are taking the whole thing incredibly seriously. Pardon my French, but, what the fuck is going on in England?
TheDemonRazgriz
26d ago
Is the murderer in Adolescence supposed to be working class? I haven't watched it but the kid looks clearly middle-class coded, he doesn't have a working class affect or style of dress at all.
The family is supposed to be sort of upper working class: the kid's father is a plumber, who runs his own business, but also when his plumbing van gets graffitied it's a point that he can't afford the chunk of cash to get it properly repainted.
TheDemonRazgriz
27d ago
I support concealed carry because the people who carry concealed should be prioritized over the people who attack them. This is clearly accomplished.
Yeah, this part I very much agree with.
TheDemonRazgriz
28d ago
When the safe-injection site was first proposed, it was proposed as an experiment. The proponents had several outcome metrics and statistics which they said the safe-injection site would improve. As part of the two-year pilot, money was allocated for a study which would verify these metrics and provide a solid scientific basis on which to continue or stop the project. So the pilot was approved and started up.
Six months before the pilot was to end, the study was canceled as the safe-injection site was "obviously working". And thus the site was made permanent.
Do you have a link discussing this, for the benefit of us non-Canadians? The nefariousness of that situation seems fairly extreme; I'd like to say it's shocking but truthfully I find it pretty believable.
Edit: Posted this and immediately noticed there was another comment already asking for a link... whoops. I'd like to see it too though, fwiw.
TheDemonRazgriz
28d ago
I wonder how effective / causally important this really is. I suppose it would be quite difficult to study empirically even if one wanted to. But, for example, to my knowledge there are places like Albuquerque which have a reputation for violently drugged-out homeless people and also permissive gun laws; on the other hand here in Boston, which has famously draconian gun laws -- up until a few years ago you couldn't even carry pepper spray, although that was eventually repealed on the (annoyingly identitarian but frankly correct) grounds that it was bad for women (as a small aside, I have known two separate women here who regularly carry knives, which is still quite illegal) -- the bums are not that bad, in the grand scheme of bums, and the bad ones tend to stay localized to known bad areas.
To be clear, I broadly support gun rights, and certainly if I lived in a city known for having violent addicts on the streets I would want to be able to carry a gun. However, while this would certainly have a benefit for the safety of the individual gun owners I am not convinced it would actually have any meaningful impact on the broad behavior of the homeless population -- I would expect the fear effect to be minimal on strung-out junkies who have already largely taken leave of their senses, and I would expect the, shall we say, culling effect to be negligible.
Thanks for the detailed response -- to be honest, I hadn't even seriously considered the used market. And you are correct that my TV speakers are "merely inadequate" rather than "bad". I had been drawn to soundbars because of the convenient form factor (it would fit perfectly below the TV, where I'd have to do a little rearranging to fit two speakers + a subwoofer... admittedly not much though) and the idea that it would Just Work through the HDMI ARC port. I'll never use "modern" features like bluetooth connection (when I'm playing music over the TV speakers I just use spotify or youtube on my PS5) so there's no downside to an "older" setup anyway. Again, I really hadn't given more conventional stereo systems a chance -- I'll definitely look into it.
Is there any benefit to [soundbar + subwoofer] compared to [2x stereo speakers + subwoofer]? Or is it all looking cool/marketing hype? I was under the impression that in the lower-end price range I'd get more value from the soundbar, but I'm realizing I didn't have any actual rationale behind that, lol.
TheDemonRazgriz
30d ago
Does anyone have any recommendations for a soundbar? Not looking to break the bank or go crazy on features, but don't want to totally cheap out either, willing to go for anything in the <$200 range. Just something fairly simple, to make movies/music/games sound better (especially bass) than through my TV speakers.
After a very cursory search, the Sony S100F (which goes for only about $100) seems like basically what I'm looking for... but I'm curious if any of the tech-y people here have some personal recommendations. I'm not afraid to spend a little more money if the product is worth it.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
you can tell that by the end of a long day and work it's devolving into something you can interpret as an ECG
Ha! Yeah, give it a few years and I bet you'll be illegibly scribbling with the best of your field.
I'm an engineer but I've noticed my own handwriting deteriorate a bit compared to when I was in school, just from having to write fast to take notes during meetings and site visits. I have to consciously change how I write if I expect someone else to read it now.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I trust Biden with the nuclear football infinitely more than Hegseth, Trump, Vance, or any of the people in that group chat.
Are you being sincere about this or exaggerating for effect? Biden was fully senile at the end, and it’s really not clear when in his term he crossed that line. I’m not so sure he was aware of his limitations, either. Trusting him over Trump I frankly can understand, Trump is erratic and underinformed and is himself clearly losing his sharpness with age (although I wouldn’t call him fully senile, yet). But Vance, for example, doesn’t seem any less competent than any other run-of-the-mill politician, he’s not even a hawk. I would absolutely trust him above Biden to make decisions in a crisis. Unless you mean you’d trust Biden’s advisors to steer him the right way when the shit hits the fan?
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I don't think it's worth it if you already consider yourself to have an "addictive personality", so to speak. It definitely feels good, but once you start getting cravings that pretty much cancels it out, in my opinion. My now-fiancée and I both got into vaping for a couple years or so during college and, honestly, only decided to quit when our state banned all the non-tobacco flavors of vape cartridges and it became too much of a pain to support the habit. I found it surprisingly easy to quit given the reputation (it was kind of unpleasant for a week or so but then I felt back to normal) but she had an absolute bitch of a time, with physical withdrawal symptoms that went on for months. I'll still take a hit off a friend's vape or share a cigarette at a party once in a blue moon -- again it really is a nice feeling, especially in a party environment where you're talking to people and already a little tipsy -- but she's convinced (probably rightly) that if she tried it again at all it would kickstart the addiction all over again. So if you already think you're susceptible to that kind of thing, I think it's pretty much a guarantee that you'll end up with a proper addiction/dependency -- which in my view makes the juice very much not worth the squeeze.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
My dad is a doctor, and his signature is allegedly his initials but is really just a sort of loopy squiggle that he can write quickly. It's distinctive so it's not like it needs to have legible letters I suppose; my own signature is also pretty much just a squiggly line with a passing resemblance to my name (to me, anyway: according to my fiancée nobody would ever identify the letter parts of the squiggle without me explaining what they are). When I was younger it more closely resembled actual letters but has smoothed/devolved over time. It's probably more consistent now than it ever was when I was trying to actually "write" it versus "drawing" it, if that distinction makes sense. I rather like it, personally. It's satisfying to quickly swoosh it out on a restaurant bill or the like.
How's your handwriting in general? I have never met a practicing doctor with good handwriting -- as best as I can tell that stereotype is very much based in fact. I suspect many doctors begin with a recognizable signature and then it devolves as they get used to writing it faster and faster, the same as their handwriting seems to inevitably deteriorate over time.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
there may be another Jeffrey Goldberg [or (JG) generic user icon] who Waltz meant to invite, perhaps someone with top secret clearance in an intel agency who wasn’t expected to weigh in, but was supposed to stay informed
Yeah, I think this is plausible. I recall seeing that there is, in fact, a reasonably-high-up intelligence official with initials JG who could perhaps have been an intended invitee, although I can't remember the name off my head. Even so, that's still a very stupid/sloppy mistake to make given the subject matter.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
This situation is comically stupid, even by the established standards of the Trump admin. I don't even really see much of a problem with them using Signal for sensitive communication, in theory (it's not like they were using Telegram); yes, the government should have its own internal secure platform for something like this but I would not be surprised if, in practice, that secure platform is just "email" which would be such a pain in the ass as to make me sympathetic to the signal-using officials. But, good lord, literally inviting a journalist into your government chat? What??? How did none of them notice he was in the chat? Clown world indeed.
Honestly, I don't buy the theories that this leak was intentional (or at least that the leak was intentional on the part of the Trump admin as an entity, it could've been intentional with the goal of embarrassing them) -- what would they stand to gain? They just look like a bunch of idiots. And the "intentional leak to embarrass the cabinet" theory doesn't make sense either since the invite came from the goddamn National Security Advisor. Therefore I have to conclude that this comes from simple gross incompetence. Defenses of this from sympathetic right-wingers are pretty weak as well, just compare it to the (justified) furor about the Hillary Clinton email server... this might not be worse in terms of practical effect, but that's mostly because the journalist himself chose not to do anything with the information he received until after the strikes took place. I'm a little surprised there isn't even more outcry from Democrats but I guess they don't tend to get riled up about national security the way Republicans do.
If I were President in this situation I would, honestly, fire the guy who invited the journalist on the spot. Everyone else involved here is breaching protocol, yes, and they really should have noticed that "hey, one of these guys isn't a government official", and sure, it's just one simple mistake -- but fat-fingering the invite for a group chat such that you leak the details of an upcoming military operation to the press seems to me to be so profoundly dumb (and utterly oblivious to any notion of OPSEC) as to disqualify you outright from serving in any sensitive position. If he had done it intentionally, this would arguably be treason.
If nothing else, it's terrible PR for the administration. I will be surprised if Waltz keeps his job longer than the next few days, especially given Trump's reputation for turnover.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
A strike that doesn't kill the people it's aimed at doesn't make a point (or at least, it doesn't make the point you'd want to make by launching it).
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I think the proposition that the US and allies secretly used a tactical nuke in combat (on a mostly-civilian target, in the 21st century, with no outcry from the UN, Russia, China, watchdog NGOs, or anyone else) falls firmly in the realm of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” So, let’s see it. Because on its face this claim is ludicrously implausible, to put it mildly.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
No, not really, but I think that's heavily influenced by how they present themselves (hair, fashion, etc). I do think if they married white Americans the resultant children would be more-or-less indistinguishable from other white Americans (especially if you're including e.g. Italians in your "white American" bucket).
I thought the last Daniel Craig film, No Time to Die, was surprisingly quite good. Not amazing or anything but very solid, some memorable chase scenes and action, good actors, good enough plot. Some people hated it becauseBond dies at the end but I thought it was a good send-off for the Craig series of movies.
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