Tollund_Man4
No bio...
User ID: 501
The other stop is 10 feet away (I’m bad with feet, more like 5 metres) but clearly a distinct stop. Think of a bunch of separate queues and a few empty stops in between, like an intercity bus station.
You’re waiting at a bus station and there’s a big queue beside you at the next stop. Your bus pulls up and the big queue realises they’ve been waiting at the wrong stop the whole time and shuffle over.
In this situation are you in the right to take your place at the head of the new queue and reap the rewards for your good judgment or should you respect the misdirected queue and move to the back?
Tollund_Man4
4hr ago
Yep, it's a central bus station so all the stops are beside each other but they go to different towns and cities.
Tollund_Man4
21hr ago
Here's how I see it, your description was true for other countries and the related policies have since become a dogma to export via UN resolutions and American soft power or enforce via EU law. There is no real immigrant voting bloc in Ireland, the biggest left-wing party Sinn Fein has flipped their stances on the hate speech bill and the EU migration pact because the last year has caused division within their base (working class vs woke middle class), there was no 5 figure increase in 3rd world immigration until like 2 years ago. The immediate consequences of this situation (though not so immediate when there's an election coming up) work against the left defined strictly, though of course the woke wings of the centrist parties are pretty happy about it.
The conditions for this situation to arise thoughtlessly on the other hand have been present for a long time. Ireland paved the way for the present immigration situation at a time when we faced little consequences for it, the Irish government got to pass laws that made them look good in the eyes of the EU, UN etc while the actual immigration numbers (excluding EU migrants) were minimal. Immigration was simply not that important an issue until recently and there was no cost to winning over the striving middle class who have always been ashamed to be stuck in a backwards Catholic country. Now that Ireland is actually facing consequences for their eagerness to ape the big important countries the cracks are starting to show.
Ireland
Riot police have been called out to the small town of Newtownmountkennedy (population 2,800) in response to another protest outside a site which is soon to become an asylum centre. It got violent and the riot police charged the protesters after they set fire to a building on the outer portion of the site. It seems like most of the protesters/rioters have been pushed into an adjacent field, but police are still moving through the town and running into more angry locals.
Ballina had a ]far larger peaceful protest](https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1781727303283692017) a few days ago, it would be harder to shut this one down given how big the town is (c. 10,000) and how isolated it is.
Tollund_Man4
2d ago
I don’t think it makes sense to liken them, modern immigration doesn’t involve the state confiscating your land to give to immigrants.
Tollund_Man4
7d ago
Right, there is no 'respectable conservative' establishment to funnel the energy of Irish right wingers through, the two wings of these protests are the more moderate 'We don't want them here (in this particular village)' accompanied by some complaints about how a big increase in population will strain GPs, policing, harm tourism etc, and 'We don't want them here, deport them'. The most respectable opposition you'll get are instances like this fairly satisfying grilling of the Minister for Justice.
I wonder if the Irish politicians will clock on and embrace the Tory policy of talking the talk on migration and then just not doing anything about it (or indeed increasing it further).
Fine Gael are supposed to be the closest thing we have to the Tories, but as long as they continue to call people bigots this is just what leftists say not what right wingers think.
Tollund_Man4
16d ago
Going by surnames they're Irish-Americans.
Raw hostility really is the best way to set boundaries with certain types of people.
Some problems can be brute forced with time even if you don't know what you're doing, more often than not you can figure things out as you go along.
Tollund_Man4
11d ago
The craziest examples aren't from my own life but I learned some lessons observing friends. As far as my experience goes in school I gave people way too much charity to people when they were disrespectful, this is good attitude with good people who don't actually mean any harm but bad for the type that is testing how much they can get away with to climb the social ladder. I've had times when other people stepped in and reminded a guy "do you know he [me] could just beat you up?" and I'd defuse it and ignore the insult. It didn't cause me great trouble but I was pretty surpised at how tit-for-tat escalation quickly sets clear lines with people who would otherwise be long term problems.
I hear the real crazy stuff from a friend who has the organizational talent for making music gigs happen and getting musicians to show up on time (though the bar isn't high in the first place as he complains). There's a lot of competition for not much money and the whole scene involves some very weird people, so there's a big incentive to make accusations that would make a pub owner think twice about letting this guy be involved with anything (and given the weird people on drugs their priors are that bad things happen).
The two I can remember offhand is him being accused of shouting "nigger" in a crowded bar by some other group trying to poach a black singer he was working with and a rumour that he was homophobic because he pushed a guy trying to kiss his neck to the ground. He still gets work from both of those places, the "nigger" was actually shouted by the people accusing him and the homophobia thing was settled with the argument "what if it was me going up to a girl and grabbing her like that?". It's a good thing that his personality is suited to confrontation because you let these rumours go unanswered and you're out of work.
The Lebor Gabála tells of Ireland being settled (or "taken") six times by six groups of people: the people of Cessair, the people of Partholón, the people of Nemed, the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milesians. The first four groups are wiped out or forced to abandon the island; the fifth group represents Ireland's pagan gods, while the final group represents the Irish people (the Gaels).
So basically yes, or at least the previous indigenous people stopped existing as a distinct race in prehistoric times.
Tollund_Man4
21d ago
No one seems happy with the one they have.
I think “mine but 30 years ago” would actually account for a decent number.
Ireland
The National Party leadership dispute, an argument which started over some missing gold bars, has been solved with the launching of Clann Éireann - an explicitly ethnonationalist party lead by the NP's former leader Justin Barret. "Anything other than ethnonationalism is not good enough . . . we can measure who is Irish and who is not by blood".
In somewhat related news Ireland has had its first ethnonationalist murder (first that has nothing to do with the United Kingdom at least). I'll wait for the court case to judge myself but the headline is 'Killed for not speaking English'.
And the Minister of Integration Roderic O'Gorman (also the Minister for 4 other things but this is the relevant one) had masked men putting up 'Close the Borders' signs and protesting outside of his house.
I don’t know, from the Australians I’ve seen this is just more evidence in favour of the Chad physiognomy theory of hospitality.
Tollund_Man4
6d ago
Objectively I’ve gotten the best reading sessions done on desks, but lacking a desk at the moment I just read in bed.
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
Ireland
In an unexpected change of tune Sinn Féin have come out against the controversial hate speech bill, citing their own experience being on the wrong end of censorship and the refusal to include their proposed amendments to the bill. This is especially strange given that they voted in favour of the bill at every stage of the process so far. Leo Varadkar has accused the party of cowardice and falling prey to "an online campaign of misinformation".
They've also come out against the EU migration pact saying that Irish immigration policy should be decided in Ireland. The migration pact seems like it would solve some of the immigration problems the EU is facing so Sinn Féin's opposition isn't a move to the right on the face of it, but they have said they agree with some parts of the agreement so the objection doesn't seem to stem from their being against stemming the flow of migrants.
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
We can, and should, frown on and punish that behavior. But it's not rape.
Reading him as charitably as I can I'd say he's advocating something like what the French had before they brought in age of consent laws a few years ago. You still got sent to prison for having sex with a minor but it wasn't called rape, and you got sent to prison for much longer if your case satisfied the coercive bar needed for a rape conviction.
Tollund_Man4
25d ago
Thinking about it, it makes no sense to ever retort “well did it work for the USSR?” when someone brings up the prospect of communism.
Generally people are advocating for communism for the quality of life it promises, this still seems like an appropriate retort regardless of how the country fared in great power competition.
If it didn’t work well, the USSR could never have been a competitor to America
Wouldn't present day Russia be a competitor to America if it controlled the same territory as the USSR + satellite states?
Tollund_Man4
15d ago
I specify IQ in relation to graciousness and patience because low IQ people really have little concept of delayed gratification and so will want to address any perceived slight immediately instead of stopping to let the incident stew a bit and decide whether confrontation, much less escalation, is necessary.
Not that I know much about IQ but it’s hard to believe that character is circumscribed to this degree by intelligence. ‘Patience is a virtue that can be cultivated’ seems to hold true below the 110IQ cutoff point, even if there are retarded people who can genuinely never grasp it the best predictor of whether someone is patient (above or below that threshold) is simply whether they value patience (whether through religion, personality, experience, and so as not to disagree too much with you - reasoning).
Ireland
Continuing from last week's post on Sinn Féin making a u-turn on the hate speech bill, the Irish Independent has reminded us of one of Sinn Féin's proposed amendments to the bill just one year ago:
The definition of “hate” is laid out in section 10 of the bill and is about preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against people on account of their protected characteristics.
Under the Sinn Féin amendments, migrant status would have become one of these protected characteristics.
The party’s amendments to the laws specified that reference to a person’s migrant status included references “to persons seeking international protection, persons with refugee status, persons with permission to remain and persons with any other regular or irregular migrant status”.
Now given the party's present (probably tactical) lack of clarity on why they are opposing this bill, and the fact the past year has seen the controversy garner worldwide attention, there is still a possibility that Sinn Féin have woken up to the fact that there is political gain to be had in curtailing the most extreme woke tendencies which until recently have gone unopposed amongst all the main parties. This is more plausible in light of the fact that some genuine opposition has arisen within the coalition government, notably Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea accusing the Justice Minister of playing to the "woke gallery". It does seem like every party has simultaneously remembered that elections are still a thing and that they've been doing a lot of very unpopular things recently, but whether that will actually lead to a change in direction seems far less likely.
Still, unless some very clear statements are made that leave no doubt about the party being genuinely opposed to any hate speech bill, I'm going to rule out the scenarios of Sinn Féin remembering that a good portion of their base are the same working class types who have to live beside asylum centres and chalk this down to "left-wingers think left-wing law doesn't go far enough!".
Tollund_Man4
27d ago
If you’re into coffee for the taste this won’t work but usually I’ll switch to tea if I’m trying to cut down on caffeine.
Tollund_Man4
28d ago
There's a video of the incident out there right? Or maybe this isn't that uncommon and I'm remembering someone from some other agency being arrested on the job.
Tollund_Man4
29d ago
Second this. My experience with all dating apps is pretty much the same as far as number of matches go, few and far between, but on Bumble 3 out of 4 are going to turn into an actual date (which suits me because I do much better in person).
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
6 servings of bread a day? Are you fucking with me?
Not basing this observation on any science, but I see far fewer overweight people in France in neighbourhoods with boulangeries and pâtisseries on nearly every corner than I did in Ireland where meat is noticeably cheaper. Bread is very cheap here so presumably people are buying it fairly regularly to keep those businesses going.
Ireland is full of easily accessible processed food (we have delis on the corner serving chicken rolls, breakfast rolls and sausage rolls instead) so maybe just not eating that is the key, but it seems like you can get away with eating a lot of bread - even bread with chocolate and sugar - if you avoid the truly terrible stuff.
Maybe I’m just squeamish but I didn’t find my visit to a slaughterhouse to be very pleasant (though the actual farmers I was with thought it was nasty business too).
The suffering of the worker in doing an extremely bloody and dirty job is something I don’t think we’d lose much in getting rid of, there’s no self-reliance or virtue of the hunt in a series of bolt gun shots.
More options
Context Copy link