Bro you are just a communist, in my humble opinion. There is nothing to do here. When you go to McDonald's in Denmark Ms Teen America takes your order with a smile and a wink. When I went to Starbucks to ask 'hey, how do you feel about this recent news' you give me interminable wordwall and the wage-slave gives me blank face
Edit: To illustrate my point there is a 'strung out old gal' working the counter at a gas station down the street from the Starbucks in question that I frequent. We're genuinely actual friends. She had my number. The other day her power went out and I went over to deliver a shitty old freezer box I had sitting around in my garage. That's neighbors.
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
That would track with my instinct to not engage breezily. If you are Darwin buddy, hope you’re well
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
In the spirit of frank and open discussion, what is your political ideology?
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
Then just smile and ask me if I'm planning to order something or not. Like don't go full NPC drone corpo 'I have nothing to say about that' and act inhuman. What happened to being neighborly. Perhaps I am old man yelling at clouds
Edit: But no I'm not. Just give me a cup of water. That's a new one for me, to be told they're not allowed to give out water.
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
Oh my god dude she could have just said 'I'm not allowed to talk about it' or 'I'm really just here to do my job' but all your words words words don't erase the inhumanity of the fact that two 'normal' people can't talk anymore about current events because of...all the stuff you just said
Edit: I live down the street. I did put 'neighbor' in scare quotes because I anticipated pushback but this stung-out poor old gal works two or fewer miles away from my home. We're neighbors. Or at least we're 'supposed' to be.
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
Yeah, I should have just gotten a small black coffee and asked absentmindedly. I didn't do that because I didn't want to give Starbucks money, but that's what I should've done. Thumbs up
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
I don't necessarily reject any of your assertions prima facie but this is an absurd way to organize society. I was happy to buy a coffee and buy one for the employee, or one of her colleagues, for their candid take on current events. I am their neighbor, at least, on paper. This entire conversation is satanic.
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
LMAO how should she have treated me if not 'professionally'? If that was more than I had any right to expect, what should have been expected?
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
I appreciate that I was just some pain in the ass she didn't want to deal with so she could go on with her day. We are all so used to that now that we don't even blink when someone is like 'hey, no, I'm really just curious and I'm happy to buy a coffee and buy you one too. I just have a few minutes to kill here," and the other party reacts like it's an obvious scam or (like that other intelligent fella said, @DradisPing) I was a corporate spy
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
There are two sides to this one:
-
Last time a 'placeholder' pope was picked to kick the (pizza)ball to the next conclave, it was John 23 who called Vatican 2 and was perhaps the most consequential pope of the last 500 or so years
-
Last time a 'young' pope was picked to try to Shephard the Church it was John Paul II which, like, does anyone really complain about him? Point in favor of Pizzaballa
NB I am rooting for Pizzaballa, I don't even quite know why, just what I'm feeling called to
VinoVeritas
2mo ago
The Church has existed for 2000 years. Can you name anything else that has 'bumbled along, with zero internal consistency' for so many 'centuries and centuries'?
VinoVeritas
3mo ago
Although I have been pessimistic about American race relations since President Obama held a press conference on national television to insert himself into an otherwise unnewsworthy local crime by informing the country that 'if [he] had a son, he would look at lot like Trayvon' - it seems to be a good bit worse than I had feared. There's a truly open and unabashed fervor behind the death of white people, which I had in some ways previously chalked up to still being just a bit of 'those kids on tumblr'.
Read some of the comments in the last few hours from Karmelo Anthony's givesendgo fundraiser. Karmelo is suspected of stabbing a young white boy to death. His family has already raised more than half a million dollars with no end in sight.
VinoVeritas
4mo ago
I don't mean to 'words words words' you but I tried a few Suno's the other day (Good Lord, all these names, the fubos, the sunos, the tubis, the groks) and what came out with my totally uneducated prompting was better than anything I hear on the radio these days. Low bar? yeah, but still
VinoVeritas
4mo ago
It was leaked on purpose to show European 'powers' that the administration is not just publicly making noise about big needed changes but genuinely dissatisfied
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
The reports of DOGE's demise may have been premature. Things apparently move at lightning speed now, so the easiest thing is a timeline of what happened this morning to resurrect DOGE before the weekend.
-
Elon posts a poll asking if the fired DOGE employee should be rehired: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902
-
JD Vance quotes the poll, giving his support to the fired employee: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633
-
In the press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Trump is asked about his opinion. He says 'I don't know...I'm with the Vice President': https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1887950091937530324
-
Elon says 'he will be brought back': https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887957783783391423
It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.
I had made a comment earlier today after Elon posted the poll about how the ideal scenario would be to quickly hire him back before the Super Bowl/whatever new developments break on Monday. Beyond that, I don't want to write too much about my own personal opinion because it's fairly scattered as I'm more than a little giddy from surprise at the moment. But, I am interested in your thoughts as this seems positively seismic.
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
Beyond my wildest optimistic dreams - what is happening
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
I understand the dynamic you're describing and it all rings true except for I'm not convinced Elon's preferred outcome was having the poll come out in favor of the fella. Short of not hiring him in the first place, I think he would've preferred it just went away. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how we were regressing to the days of freely handing the enemy scalps and I think Elon maybe put the poll up as a result of the umbrage.
Although that's sort of just a little idle Kremlinology, sorry. Thanks for your thoughts, interested to see how it plays out
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
Immediately thought of this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk
Seeing that '17 years ago' next to the view count was a real 'Holy shit' moment because it does feel like yesterday
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
Is it just 'his own fans' now on twitter? I'm really asking, I'm still under the impression that none of the spinoffs took off enough to really change that 'everyone' was still on twitter.
Also, Musk is not the King, Trump is. Musk might be the sovereign of his own domain, but in the White House he is himself a courtier. One doesn't have to descend into Kremlinology to see that Elon was probably getting data to cover his ass. Or he might have just been genuinely curious, he does seem to do polls a lot for this kind of thing.
To your last question does anyone know how many employees DOGE actually has now? The memes took off so fast that this image of half a dozen guys reporting directly to Elon is already seared in my mind. Like my instinct is to say Elon personally let this guy go and the decision to hire him back is also his
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
They can't get entrenched on this specific battle
This is true of 'both sides' (sorry, convenient shorthand) - but all they have to do is hire him back and go about their business. If anyone wants to blow up about it (which I imagine they would, biblically) then they're the ones getting entrenched, to their disadvantage. Presumably, new giant things will keep coming along for them to continue blowing up about.
Or, ideally they'd just do it this afternoon with an intentionally quiet announcement and everybody would forget about it by Monday after the Super Bowl.
Look at me, being all optimistic - feels good man
VinoVeritas
5mo ago
Elon Musk just posted a poll: "Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?" (It's yes/no, pretty steady at about 80/20)
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902
It didn't occur to me this was even an option, but bringing him back would be even better than not firing him in the first place (in my opinion).
VinoVeritas
8mo ago
"The debt isn't a bad thing." Okay, what would you call being personally 20 million dollars in debt if not a bad thing? Because apparently you're unaware they changed the rules so that candidate personally assumes the debt of the campaign
VinoVeritas
9mo ago
As a guy who would prefer to live in a stable republic, it drives me up the wall that there's anyone with the power to try this kind of thing in an election season. That it happens to be my candidate benefitting doesn't make it drive up my blood pressure any less, not unlike all these people dying without water and power from the hurricane.
VinoVeritas
9mo ago
I imagine many here would be much more sympathetic to extremely highly-paid software engineering or finance jobs getting axed and replaced by AI.
Meanwhile I'm over here like "give me the nuclear codes"
I feel heard. So, thank you. Without obsequiousness that's just a genuine sigh of relief.
Are we talking about the same thing? I was uncouth, ungallant, imperious by imposing myself on that poor, unsuspecting Starbucks employee. I might as well have taken my shirt off and started swinging it around like 'Call me George, George of the jungle'.
But I'm not as exasperated with people or the Motte (although, gosh, I do feel like this used to be the place to get the news) as I am with the reality that the whole exchange was so...whatever it was. Gosh. Now I do feel bad for being so anthropologically autistic even if she wouldn't give me a cup of water
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