WhiningCoil
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
5mo ago
To me the most fascinating thing about US AID being terminated as an independent organization, is the sheer and complete panic among leftist. "Independent" media I used to respect has apparently been spun into a full blown panic over it. They appear to be operating under the delusion that the "AID" is USAID is actual help, of which a tiny minority might be, and not a deep state slush fund for unaccountable NGO, corruption and graft.
Like Bill Krystol, neocon never Trumper, came out swinging. Then it was quickly discovered the foundation he draws an income from is funded by USAID. Which, to me, immediately made something clear. You are constantly subjected to a series of talking heads who are wrong about everything if you pay attention to the mainstream media. And they are always introduced as working at some important sounding institute, like that lends them credibility. How many of those assholes are just psyop puppets funded entirely by USAID to influence public opinion on policy at home?
That aside, I'm noticing the talking points getting distilled, and they are every bit as nonsensical as you can imagine, some more than others.
"It's a coup!" I mean where to even begin on this. Was it a coup when Clinton fired all the federal attorneys? Was it a coup when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers? Was it a coup when Gerald Ford fired a bunch of security state apparatchiks, including Kissinger? No, it's the duly elected Executive executing their lawful authority to implement their agenda. It's preposterous that a branch of the executive should believe it's some sort of independent entity completely outside the executive's authority. Come back when the military has dissolved congress and arrested the supreme court.
"It's a smash and grab!" To which I just heard the cohost go "There is no grab." There is this heavy implication that Elon Musk is somehow pocketing the money. Nobody ever comes out and states it directly. But the weasel words are there. "Musk has conflict of interest!" "He's looting the nation!" "The worlds richest man is just getting richer!" A baseless bullshit smear, which is why they just darkly hint at it.
"Nobody voted for this!" I mean this is the most insane one, and if they somehow big-lie it into sticking, it will erase all the faith in humanity I gained over the last few months. All I fucking see from people who voted for and supported Trump is euphoric glee that he's doing exactly what he said he would do. After being lied to and lead along by controlled opposition our entire lifetimes, and maybe the entire lifetimes of our parents too, a guy is actually making good on all the promises he, and the Republican party broadly, has made for decades.
There is some serious galaxy brained mushy reasoning going on here, like Trump never promised to shut down (or roll into the State Department) USAID specifically, therefore nobody voted for it. But he ran on draining the swamp, stopping foreign aid as long as there are still unmet challenges at home, shrinking the federal government, stopping waste and corruption. It's like if a guy ran on starting a war with Cuba, and then when Havana get's bombed, normies start shouting "Nobody voted to bomb Havana!" I mean, alright, but they voted for the guy who's #1 issue was starting a war with the country Havana is in. Pretty reasonable to think that was on the table and a high likelihood. Nobody ever votes on day to day tactical decisions of a strategic campaign promise.
WhiningCoil
5mo ago
Maybe I'm overly black pilled, but what law?
Virtually the only aspect of the bill rights in tact is the provision against quartering troops in people's homes. We've discovered in the last decade mass government surveillance, illegal search and seizure (civil forfeiture), a cabal of misleadingly named NGOs funded by the government trying to end run around the 1st amendment, the federal government in naked dereliction of duty enforcing it's obligation to protect our borders, local and state governments in collaboration with school systems to systematically violate parental rights, etc. Literally not one of the rights I'm supposed to be lucky to have because I live in America that I learned about in middle school actually exist anymore.
None of those things were a "constitutional crisis", despite the Bill of Rights being part of the constitution. And yet Trump unilaterally firing many of the people responsible for those violations of the constitution somehow is. Because of some process minutia lawyers are arguing over.
I simply cannot possibly be made to care anymore. When it comes to my rights as outlined in the constitution and the Bill of Rights, nothing seems to be a "constitutional crisis". When it comes to arguing over who exactly has the authority to illegally surveil me (or other unconstitutional abuse of my personal rights), suddenly it matters exactly how congress delegated this illegal authority, and the separation of powers that has haphazardly allowed said illegal authority to continue, and Trump can't just shut down illegal programs or terminate state actors that have systematically abused my civil liberties! They have rights!
And my god, think of what would happen if Trump was able to abuse all the programs they had been abusing over the last several decades? What if he spied on his political opponents, and then used parallel construction or process crimes to disqualify them from office? Only we are supposed to be able to do that, because we're special!
It's pretty well known trans kid is the topic I'm most radicalized over. In my state we voted as hard as we could to stop it. It just doesn't matter. No matter how hard we vote, the schools refuse to stop. No matter what judges say, the schools refuse to stop. Now we have the president telling them to stop... and they refuse to stop. They tax the fuck out of us, and then use that money to fight us in court forever until they run the clock out and a different administration drops the cases or changes policy. This has been radicalizing for me beyond belief. Voting nor the law is solving this life or death issue.
And while that is going on in my state, in my county, I'm supposed to care that Trump might illegally be taking a fire axe to the DOE and lawfaring said schools? That those actions are the bridge too far and a constitutional crisis?
I just can't possibly be made to care anymore. Trump could wipe his ass with the shreds of the Constitution his predecessors have left behind. Most of it's down the toilet already. Just because Trump uses the last of the roll doesn't mean he's chiefly responsible for using it all. He's only responsible for replacing it.
Yeah, children's books are fucking terrifying these days. Our local library, that our daughter's school occasionally takes the older kids too, had a bit of a kerfuffle with them pushing inappropriate books on kids, Gender Queer chief among them. There were protest, the usual mealy mouthed euphemisms about "book burning" to dodge the issue of graphic novels with graphic depictions of gay sex being recommended to children. Instead of removing the books or putting them in an "adult only" section, they created some fake "New Adult" section, which really changes nothing? Because their terminal goal seems to be showing pornographic material to children.
Turns out the library was being run by an NGO despite being funded 75% by the county. The conservative county has now forced a conservative board onto it by threatening to withhold funds. So I guess sometimes you can vote your way out of problems. At least until the state or the feds decide to steal the institution away from you, or some interloper in a black robe decides "Actually, making pornography available to children is mandatory".
I could swear having LGBTQ themes is now mandatory in children's publishing. I made the mistake of wondering into a random bookstore with my daughter in my state capital, and virtually every book was queer. A curious girl falls in love and kisses a mermaid. A curious girl falls in love and kisses another girl. A curious girl pony falls in love with another girl pony and they kiss. Some lesbian unicorns, etc, etc. Basically there was a book for every type of little girl with the subtext of "Have you considered being gay?" With rainbows and sparkles, and god damnit the mermaid one really caught her attention because she loves mermaids. It was virtually every book prominently displayed cover out instead of spine out. That and some picture books proselytizing about Taylor Swift. Weirdest fucking shit I ever saw. Had to distract my daughter with something shiny behind her and then make an excuse about needing to be somewhere.
My wife, who does more of the shopping and the picking out of books notices this shit a lot more than I do, and virtually every day she comes home with tales of what she saw in a kid's section today.
Just, what the fuck? It's exhausting all the directions this shit keeps flying at us from. And then some parent you've been friendly with the last few years of your daughters school invites you to see a "family friendly drag show" and you wonder if all the people in your life have been replaced by pod people. There was a before time right? Like.... 5 years ago? 10 years ago? I'm not imagining it, am I?
Edit: Upon further research, the library in my anecdote chose to have their funding cut rather than accept a more conservative board of directors from the county, and ceasing showing pornography to children. I guess some thing you actually can't vote your way out of, and these.... people get to destroy one of the oldest libraries in my state. Alas.
WhiningCoil
7mo ago
I keep seeing progessives like Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulisnki and Jon Stewart parroting the new party line that "Kamala never ran on trans issues, so it's unfair to say she lost the election because of trans issues." They keep repeating the same "debunk" that Kamala never uttered the word trans in the last 3 months of her campaign or whatever.
However nearly everyone lived through the last 4 years of the Democrats expending massive amount of political capital pushing trans issues. The Biden admin "reinterpreting" Title IX to mandate how all publicly funded schools handle trans kid, which means penises in girls locker rooms, biological men in girls sports, and violating parental rights with secret transitions in schools. The Biden admin leaned on WPATH, already an organization with few guardrails due to their ideological biases, and had them remove all age guidelines on child transition. They appointed a trans pediatrician who's top priority as Assistant Secretary for Health seemed to be transitioning children, and even gave her a phony rank in the armed forces to have some fake historic "first".
And Kamala Harris said she would do nothing different than the Biden administration.
James Carville came out recently, to much derision from progressives, for claiming in his folksy way that if you govern a certain way, even if you don't run on it, the other sides gets to beat you upside the head with your record. And the Biden/Harris regime had a record of one of the worst crimes against humanity in history in promoting the sterilization and mutilation of children.
WhiningCoil
8mo ago
I've long since lost the reference, but probably 6 years ago I saw some segment on The Hill about a study done by a trans advocacy group. And basically it was a policy document pointing out that putting penises in women only spaces, especially women only spaces with minors, is about the most unpopular policy you can possibly run on. So what needs to happen is that trans friendly politicians need to lie, and then quietly do it anyways. Don't worry, trans friendly advocates in media, and trust and safety teams on social media will cover for you.
No matter what mouth sounds Democrats make, I will never trust them on this subject ever again. And unfortunately for them, until all my children are over 18, it's literally my number one priority. We already live in a world where Democrats sanctioned the state taking kids away from parents, and putting them on a path towards mutilation and sterilization. You don't just get to walk away from that and hope nobody brings up all those children you sterilized.
WhiningCoil
22d ago
Small changes in daily lived experiences can have an outsized impact. The crime rate can hardly budge on paper, but things that might poll as "crime" can increase exponentially in your daily life. Where I used to live was fine on paper. I lived there for about 15 years. Then things started getting really weird. Some things would show up on paper as "crime". Gas station on the corner kept getting robbed repeatedly. There was a shooting and a shooter on the loose in my townhouse parking lot after we had our first child. Women were getting dragged off the trails and raped in attacks so lurid and on the nose you'd think they were made up had there not been so much physical evidence and they caught the guy. Turns out sometimes, just sometimes, rapist do wait in the bushes to ambush women jogging on a trail in broad daylight. Same trail we'd walk our infant daughter on in her stroller.
There were plenty of non-"crime" stuff that just added to the overall ambiance of chaos. People suddenly started stopping me in my car on the street and screaming at me for money. There were more loitering gangs of kids smoking and shouting obscenities at my wife as we walked by. Often on the playgrounds we'd go to take our daughter to... and then think better of it. More stores started locking things up. But if you complained about it, some shithead was always there to remind you "Town USA's crime rate is actually below average per capita! And year and year crime has barely budged!" I don't know how to reconcile those insistences with the stark change in my daily life.
So I left. And in the last 5 years I haven't caught a wif of a crime or "crime" anywhere in my proximity. No stores I shop at have gotten robbed, I haven't driven by a house with a squad of police cars trying to disarm a hostage situation (I forgot to mention that one in my old locale). There are no strong "civilization is at the edge of chaos" vibes like I used to get on a daily basis, per capita be damned.
WhiningCoil
3mo ago
I remember even 15 years ago, when all this seemed like a fever dream, the activist claims that "If a child decides they want to, they can just resume a normal puberty" seemed insane to me. My mind automatically went to all the wrestlers I knew in highschool who's growth was stunted from constantly having to make weight for 4 years. There was no catching up on that growth after they quit wrestling. The chip on their shoulder manlet former wrestler stereotype exist for a reason. They were tricked by their coaches into peaking at 15, and sacrificed the stature of an adult and the romantic successes that come with it.
I doubt your typical highschool female athletic encounters this, but I know with Olympic level female gymnast (and other sports) who've been lifers, they often struggle with fertility, though I think it's an open and debated question how much of that is permanent. There does seem to be some risk of permanence if the condition occurs at the wrong time or for a long duration.
So I mean, in the context of these pre-trans examples around how important healthy puberty is, and how you don't get a do-over, it was shocking to me that anyone believed the activist lie that it was "fully reversible".
WhiningCoil
4mo ago
I would be happy to have you, but not 10 million of you.
Every so often I see these horror stories from Canadians complaining about how a flood of Indians has absolutely raped the commons. Their beaches flooded with creepy leering men, people shitting in public, massive nepotism and scams, services falling off a cliff as they get staffed up by Indians. It made me wonder what would happen if 50% of the extant population in my county was supplemented with Indians like Canada has seen.
There is this cute little nature preserve down the road from me. In the summer kids like to play in the river at a shallow. There is only parking for like 8 cars, enforcement is nonexistent, and it's honor system to clean up after yourself and not destroy the commons. It's hard to imagine that surviving. If the stories of off the boat Indians shitting in bodies of water like it's just what you do are true, it's fucked. To say nothing of the more disturbing and obnoxious light sex pestery. Akaash Singh had this great bit about what it's like being leered at by a hundred Indian men on a train in India that I can't find now, but his predominantly Indian-American crowd was laughing their asses off at how much they recognized it, so I assume it was based in some kernel of truth. The "You can't make me go back! Anything but that!" attitude of second generation Indian-Americans is profound. But it's not the weather or the land they want to be away from. It's other Indians.
The kid's parks here have these great little "take a book, leave a book" bins that my daughter has loved, and they've done a lot to get her excited about exploring books. It's hard to imagine these not being stripped bare or otherwise ruined given the stories of almost purposeless pillaging for the sake of pillaging the commons that I've heard out of Indian over run areas of Canada. Taking for the sake of taking just becomes expected. Maybe it has less to do with Indians specifically and more the low trust aspects of multiculturalism. I don't know. I only know it happens.
And then there is the shameless nepotism and scamming. It's more or less known that if you make the mistake of putting an Indian in charge of hiring, suddenly your company is hiring only Indians. That most resumes from Indians and credentials from institutions that service mostly Indians are completely fake and can't be trusted. I've seen repeated stories out of Canada that local education institutions which have leaned into servicing Indians have become so overrun with fraud, employers have begun just chucking applications from those institutions in the garbage. Been burned too many times.
Everyone has dealt with the completely detached from the outcome attitude of Indian call centers. When we lived in a major city, we had similar experiences with Indian doctors we visited. There is just this overwhelming sense they don't care. They don't have any duty to service. Any investment in outcomes. There is a script, they get paid, what more do you want? My wife constantly struggled with lingering issues that several Indian doctors (why were they so dominant?) just made scattershot prescriptions for, before finally getting in with an Asian American doctor who was actually invested in solving her problems.
Now my wife constantly has to work the phones because of my daughter's health issues and the vagaries of our insurance. Luckily, she's usually talking to actual employees at the local doctors office, lab office, insurance company, etc. It's already a frustrating, opaque process where the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, and often neither of them know anything. But generally the people want to be helpful, and so even though the system is fucked up and frustrating and a pain in the ass, it ends up being a moderately collaborative effort and even though it takes my wife 4 hours of working the phones and being on hold constantly, things get accomplished. Now I'm not going to say something dramatic like my daughter would be dead if all these people were replaced by Indians, her issues aren't that serious. But somebody's probably would be if past experience is any indicator. I've never had an experience where an Indian went one millimeter outside of the minimum of their job description to service a customer.
I've complained before about my own experiences working with Indians. The Vivek's of the world speak in broad terms that these Indian workers are just better than me. They work harder, longer, for less pay, and they're probably smarter than me to boot. People here, when I've complained about the fecklessness and passive aggression I'm met with when trying to get an Indian to actually complete their task, respond with things along the lines of "They're just being smart, avoiding work and getting paid all the same." Seems like some sort of merited impossible to me. It's not happening, and also when it does it somehow still proves they're better than me.
I often struggle with notions of where I will flee to when America is ruined. My way of life is disappearing, my culture is being squeezed out, my history is being erased, my co-ethnics aren't reproducing. But where would even have me? Could I even blame them for not letting me in, for fear of Americans ruining their country the way we ruined our own? Sometimes you see Japan pop up as an option. A lot of embarrassing weebs think they know what Japan is like because they've digested a lot of Japanese media. Sometimes they even move to Japan and get on...ok. I remember watching this old video by Super Bunnyhop before every video he did was somehow SJ adjacent. He was talking about how these Americans were setting up bars where you could play a library of old games on consoles. In theory, this should be legal in Japan. But they were sued by the companies that owned the rights to those games all the same. They decided to fight this in courts, as is their right. But the native Japanese viewed this with scorn, it's just not what you do. Damned Americans and getting all legal about shit. Whatever it is about Japan that makes it so attractive to American's, I'm 99% certain we'd ruin if even 1m of us moved there. Especially if we just formed insular expat communities or overran certain areas. I can only imagine how obnoxious an American ghetto would be in Japan.
I've seen very little self awareness from Indians about what they are really fleeing from, or what makes them different. And to whatever degree self_made_human thinks he "knows" America and wants to live here, it just seems like an embarrassing strain of weebism to me. He imagines there is some mechanism by which he could come here, but that very same mechanism wouldn't play a part in destroying America, just the same way I'm certain 1m Americans would seriously fuck up Japan. There is almost no mechanism you could devise that would filter the "bad" Americans out of Japan, because our culture will ruin theirs. You let in the top 1m Americans, and they'll just serve as the vanguard for the next 10m even worse Americans because they'll be sympathetic for, and even long for, the shitty culture they fled from.
It's probably all inevitable. Civilizations rise and fall. It's just such an existential horror to know yours is falling and may not even survive your posterity.
WhiningCoil
1mo ago
We're All Sitcom Characters Now
If you've ever watched a successful long running sitcom, you've seen it happen. The characters start out mostly normal with a quirk or two. Maybe a little neurotic, or slow, or promiscuous. Four seasons in and the characters have all become deranged parodies of themselves. All their most entertaining qualities have been heightened, everything relatable or normal has been squeezed out. The character that was a little slow is now a straight up drooling retard. The promiscuous character obsessively fucks everything that moves. The neurotic character is only a step removed from Howard Hughes in his final days. You watch the last episode and the first episode of a sitcom, and you'll barely recognize the characters.
It's obvious why it happens though. The writers and actors give the audiences what they want. Sitcoms are (or were?) a cuttroat business. There was little room for artistic integrity, vision, or any other high minded concepts. Give the audiences what they want, or they'll change the channel and the show will be cancelled. Just shut up and do it!
I regret to inform you that we are all on a sitcom now. Everyone is enmeshed with an attention economy. Be it farming engagement on twitter, or upvotes on a reddit clone. And unlike actors who only have to inhabit their roles for hours a day, for a shooting schedule that might be weeks or months out of a year, those enmeshed in the attention economy must be in character 24/7. On social media, on streaming, on podcast, on youtube, all at once, all the time.
Some have whole heartedly embraced this. Twitter is full of people being characters, allowing the algorithm or engagement to tweak the dials on their personality. Like a second subconscious that lives in the cloud. Catgirl Kulak comes to mind. He's out there using an AI catgirl as an avatar, staying more and more in character as some sort of neo pagan feral/trad nordic catgirl with hot takes. It's a dangerous game he's playing, existing more and more in a fictional role. But there are others. The preposterous performative pro-Elon or pro-Trump nonsense I saw and tried to avoid on twitter this last week was really something. Twitter super users who've built their brand on being staunch partisans like Catturd out there acting like absolute charicatures of themselves. They're just sitcom characters anymore, and rapidly approaching the braindeath of the latter seasons. Others I don't think fully understand what was happening to them. I wonder how much upvote driven personality disorders had to do with certain flameouts here.
Because eventually every sitcom hits the wall. The characters have been intellectually and emotionally abused and lobotomized to such a point where there is no humanity left in them to ritualistically beat out for the amusement of the audience. It gets it's final season where the writers attempt to rehabilitate them just enough to send them off into the sunset.
There are no writers to rehabilitate you when the algorithm is done with you, and you've lived inside a cartoonish and horrifying version of yourself for attention for years on end.
WhiningCoil
11mo ago
Here I come with my big fat black pill again. Choke it down. I'm just hoping I'm as wrong about this as I was about Biden staying in the race.
Before Kamala was crowned in corrupt undemocratic backroom deals, I was feeling good. I fully bought into the zeitgeist that the MSM was powerless, and rapidly losing control of The Narrative. Alas, looking back that appears to have been a coordinated effort to starve Biden out of the race, because as soon as he was gone, they turned it right back on again. All I see, even in otherwise critical independent media, is that Kamala's popularity is through the fucking roof. Panoramic photos of some rally she gave lately that easily gives a Trump rally a run for it's money. It's inexplicable to me. Everything we knew about this woman in the 2020 Primary, in her appearances as VP, say this should be impossible. And yet here we are. They've managed to invert reality once again. Apparently she's even trending on TikTok for reasons I'm sure are not suspicious at all. Leftist are euphoric, conservatives are manufacturing cope. I bet I'm gonna get an earful the next time my in laws are over about how amazing Kamala is, for no reason they can articulate at all.
WhiningCoil
7mo ago
The most amazing thing about it, was that after the universities were filled to the brim with so many fake degrees, they couldn't employ them anymore, suddenly every company began funding DEI departments. I still can't believe what a coup of a grift that was. And decades of saying "They're just college kids, they'll grow out of it when they get in the real world" was proven wrong to disastrous consequences. Nearly every entertainment property? Ruined. Institutional competence/faith in institutions? Ruined. It's so bad, our President Elect was convicted of 34 felonies, and our nation collectively went "We all know that shit ain't real" and elected him President anyways.
WhiningCoil
8mo ago
That's the wild part. Our entire election system is apparently governed by the honor system where nobody would ever lie so we never need to check. And then people have the gall to state that voter fraud is rare. If this were any other institution arguing about why they should never be audited or have any oversight what so ever, we'd all be calling bullshit.
WhiningCoil
9mo ago
I mean, I'm on Starlink, and depending on usage, my upload varies from 10 Mbps to 20-ish Mbps. Right now it's 17.90 Mbps. I've never noticed. It's been life changing. Satellite is the only thing available where I am, and the competition is dog shit. 700 ms latency versus 20 ms, maybe enough bandwidth for SD video content versus the 320 Mbps down I just measured. It was straight up impossible for me to do Zoom meetings from home half the time. I don't know how the FCC arrived at 20 Mbps up being the litmus test, but I think it largely fails to capture the enormous improvement Starlink is over all the competition. I live in an area where subsidies have been promised for rural broadband for over a decade, and absolutely fucking zero has ever come of it. The money goes somewhere, and nobody ever gets internet.
I'm not shocked Starlink got cut out, they threaten to end someone else's corrupt grift. I can draw no other conclusion.
WhiningCoil
3mo ago
That last line is, frankly, insane to me given the circumstances. "Yea we knew at the time we deported the guy to El Salvador that it was illegal for us to do it, but it was in good faith!" What is the government's response to having illegally deported someone? Too bad! The government makes a few arguments but here I want to zoom in on a particular one: redressability. Ordinarily in order for a U.S. Federal court to have jurisdiction to hear a case the Plaintiff (that would be Abrego-Garcia, his wife, and his 5 year old son in this case) bears the burden of establishing that an order of the court would redress their claimed injury. This cannot be met here, according to the government, in part because they no longer have custody of Abrego-Garcia and so there is no order the Court can issue as to the United States Government that will reddress their injury. The appropriate entity to be enjoined is the government of El Salvador, over which a U.S. federal court obviously has no jurisdiction.
It's possible in a 2016-2020 Trump Admin, this is an argument I would have cared about. But I literally just lived through an administration that forced me to take an experimental vaccine. Luckily my only side effect (so far) is permanent tinnitus. But the manufacturer is shielded from liability, and so is the government which forced it on me. I mean I guess the supreme court struck down that mandate... but they did so after the deadline by which I would have immediately lost my job, so thanks for nothing. I wouldn't mind some redress. What's my inability to fall asleep because of the ringing in my ears worth?
We just lived through an illegal eviction moratorium. After the Supreme Court decided it was illegal, were any of the people harmed by that offered any compensation? Were the landlords compensated for being forced to house squaters? Or did Blackrock roll up their foreclosed homes?
What about all these federal programs to relocate, house and feed migrants of questionable immigration status, and all the crime and destruction of institutions it caused? Do any of the communities that had hoards of barbarians air dropped on them by the feds get any sort of redress? What about the victims of unquestionably illegal immigrants? People who lost family or were otherwise horribly victimized because the Biden administration just ignored immigration law? Where were all these arguments about "If congress passes a law funding blah blah blah the executive must enforce those laws"? Where were the nationwide injunctions, or the concerns about redress for the victims of illegal alien crime? How was it not a constitutional crisis that uncounted millions of illegal and questionably legal aliens were allowed to invade over 4 years?
This might be bad. But I just can't possibly be made to care. I don't want to hear about "redress" given the profound damage the last administration did completely scot-free. Until I see Fauci behind bars, I'm happy letting ICE run completely amok and plead "qualified immunity" to all of it. Let Trump give them all preemptive pardons. Have them show up at people's doors with those instead of warrants. I don't care anymore. I already saw from 2020-2024 that the law doesn't matter. I'm certainly not going to let arguments about principle matter to me now. This is power politics now baby.
WhiningCoil
10mo ago
I'm reminded of this deep dive video into wrestling. It covers a lot of ground, but the relevant part is the WWE tried hard to make Roman Reigns a thing for a time, and the fans revolted. The WWE kept writing fights that tried to make him look cool, and the fans in the audience would chant back "THIS STILL SUCKS". But it took a long time to get there, and even once it was there, the WWE never broke kayfabe and acknowledged it.
This feels like the DNC right now to me. They've written the script for this election to make Kamala look awesome. They've moved past the sale, and are carefully curating all her appearances to create the illusion that she's the hottest thing since Obama. I'm not shocked it works on "low engagement voters" or other euphemisms for NPCs.
I have a friend who's all in for Kamala. But he generally uncritically loved whatever advertising tells him to. He loves all the new Star Wars stuff, Star Trek, the big gay diverse Forgotten Realms. He even still loves every Final Fantasy that comes out. He didn't shut up about how awesome FF13 was for months. He's the ultimate slop consumer, and he's all in for the DNC.
As much as I want to rage at the dying of the west, the loss of our rights, prosperity and heritage, a part of me also can't help but think we deserve this. I just wish I wasn't being dragged down with them.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
It would help if we weren't constantly gaslit about the nature of what's happening.
For example, the relentless bait and switch around Title IX "interpretations". Obama's DOE famously published that "Dear Colleagues" letter, and all the colleges wrung their hands and went purposely insane under the premise that if they didn't, the DOE might withhold their funding. Trump's DOE rescinds that guidance, and those same colleges turn around and sue him in court. Biden's DOE does an even more expansive Title IX "interpretation" making it so there can be no local discretion in how the school system handles trans issues. You need to flee the country if you want to live in a school district that can't secretly trans your kid. The schools "begrudgingly" comply, none sue. Now many states sue, but the schools, suspiciously mum about it. Trump rolls in, rescinds the guidance, even forcefully reverses it, schools sue again.
It's a constant shell game. When a Democrat DOE is top down forcing local schools hand it's "Oh, elections have consequences, don't want this to happen vote harder next time." You win that game and suddenly the locus of control shifts to the local level "Oh, you have to win at the local level too, too bad, so sad". You can't win both in perpetuity, and somehow things never ratchet back in your direction no matter what you do.
The truth is, public schools, pedagogy, teacher training, the unions, etc have all been deeply captured institutions. It doesn't matter what battles you win against them, they are hostile to your interest, and will never comply. No matter where or how you win, they just gaslight you that the "real" battle was over here. In reality, they are just doing what they wanted to do the entire time, and coordinating with where ever they can to launder legitimacy on their immoral actions.
WhiningCoil
7mo ago
Spiderman is a vigilante because he seeks out crime to stop. Penny is a guy who had an assault nearly happen in front of his eyes. He finds himself in this situation again I'll have questions. But we can't just expand the definition of vigilante to "Anybody who's not a police officer who makes a criminals life harder in any way, shape or form." And it's especially egregious in a self defense situation. Makes it sound like you are obligated to allow yourself to be victimized, which I know the tribal "restorative justice" types actually believe, but all the same, no.
WhiningCoil
11mo ago
This has been a goal of mine forever. Ever since I started board gaming probably 15 years ago, and I saw Geek Chic's tables, I wanted one. Of course, I was moving from one bedroom apartment to one bedroom apartment at the time, and they were bonkers expensive, and then Geek Chic went bankrupt. So that never happened. But it's always been on my bucket list.
Well, it's finally happened! I've settled down, I own a home, I have my nerd cave, and it's time for the table. But having a family and responsibilities, it's hard to justify dropping between $3000 to $6000 on a table for gaming. So instead I spent $450 on some 4 quarters and 5 quarters rustic walnut, $50 on a sheet of plywood, $50 on some cork, and probably another $100 on assorted glues, finishes, hardware and fabric. And lets not forget about 3 months of my precious free time, as well as perhaps some not so free time. My wife is starting to want me to be done with this so she can have her husband back for things she wants done. Like another chicken coop, or redoing more of the kitchen.
It starts with the plan, rather dog eared and torn at this point, but you'll have to forgive me. The idea is that I can bring it into my basement in pieces: legs, armrest/apron, bottom play surface, supports, and toppers, then assemble it. Because getting a whole ass hardwood table into my basement simply isn't going to happen, much less back out if I ever move. Now normally this would be done with some simple leg/apron hardware like this, but my problem with most hardware I saw was it would interfere or look really ugly with the recessed playing area. So instead I made things difficult for myself and went with a dovetail slot design, along with an inner and outer table apron. To add another plane of rigidity, I also decided to use some dowels for the arm rest to both keep them level with one another since they are separate parts, but I also kept them perpendicular to the direction of the wood despite being along a 45 degree miter joint. This also has the added benefit of making assembly somewhat easier. I tested all this joinery out on some scraps of maple I had lying around, and then went to work on my walnut.
First I made the legs. These are about 3 inches thick, and instead of gluing up a solid 3x3 chunk of walnut, I decided to go with miter locks. They glue up super strong, and conform into place effortlessly, plus you get an attractive face grain on every side. I did have to go over the corners with a burnishing rod to close up some gaps however. Still, they came out super nice.
After that I picked out the boards for the aprons, and then marked the boards for the arm rests and toppers. I'm still learning how to pick out lumber, so there were a lot of really gnarly knots I had to work around in figuring out my rough cuts. Some couldn't be avoided, but the ugliest defects became interior surfaces. It's a fun process, like reverse tetris. The aprons milled up nicely, then I shellaced the legs. I made a jig to assist in routing out the dovetails and it worked amazingly well once I had it dialed in. After a test fit, and laying the arm rest on loosely, I was very proud of myself. Each individual dovetail slot had a little play in it, but collectively there was none, and the table doesn't wobble a millimeter when nudged or even hit. But now began the laborious process of getting the finish done.
First I filled the voids with some sawdust and wood glue. The results were OK but I think next time I might try sawdust and CA glue. I also had to route the rabbet the toppers will sit inside along the armrest. I wasn't 100% confident in my ability to have perfectly flat toppers, so I decided to use felt along the rabbet to compensate for a small about of unevenness. The last thing I wanted was any rattle in the toppers as people use the table. It worked fantastic. Then I shellacked and waxed the apron, along with the underside of the arm rest. Visible surfaces got 3 coats of shellac and hard wax, interior surfaces got a single seal coat of shellac. I've seen conflicting reports about how smart this is. Some people swear you must evenly coat every surface or the humidity will unevenly effect the wood, resulting in cupping or cracking. But every piece of furniture I've ever seen, even really nice hardwood furniture, skimps on the interior or underside. So I'm going to assume it'll be OK.
One thing I've learned is I definitely prefer finishing surfaces before assembly versus attempting to finish inside corners. I'm terrible at inside corners, and always leave really obnoxious marks where the coats on one surface run into the other. Adds more steps to the process, but the results are way better with my skill level.
Along the way I glued up all the panels for the toppers. Each panel is approximately a foot wide and and three feet long, with some rabbets along the sides to slot into the table armrest or each other. I also had to make a Home Depot trip for plywood, which I have a helpful carrier for. Full sheets of plywood are so much cheaper than project panels. I also didn't want the bottom play surface to have any seams. And this was super easy to break down to the proper dimensions thanks to a rip cut guide I got. Because I still can't freehand very straight with a circular saw, and track saws are more expensive than they have any right to be. Needed some notches taken out for the leg corners which intrude about a 1/2 inch into the play area, but I did that with a small hand saw.
The aprons got joined to the arm rest using a fuck ton of pocket hole screws. I also did some mortise and tenon joinery for the support planks that will hold up the playing surface. They are a little loose, but I judged that to be acceptable since I won't be gluing them and they are going to be held in on both sides by the rest of the table joinery.
Another test fit, checking the plywood, and onto attaching the cork. This was just accomplished with a 3M adhesive spray, and cutting the excess off with a utility knife. Super easy.
I attempted to use a ghetto shooting board and my carbide sanding block to clean up the angles on the armrest miters. It made them better but only slightly. I think I just need to invest in an actual hand plane and a proper shooting board.
Next it came time to do the pocket hole screws, and after getting everything situated and clamped it came together quickly and easily. I shellacked the rabbet on the topper pieces and then applied the felt. The result was a very nice and very flat top surface. After much sanding to get out a few of the uneven areas, it was time to take it all apart and get it ready to be finished.
There were some finishing details I needed to attend to. I made these support pieces to help hold up the play surface and spread them around the edge of the inner apron. I also had my wife help me attach the upholstery velvet to the plywood and cork with more 3M adhesive spray, then pulled it back and stapled it to the bottom. I think it came out great in the end.
Much sanding, shellacing and waxing later, it was ready for reassembly. It went back together way harder than it came apart. I allowed some room between the plywood and the apron for the velvet to rap around, but not quite enough. It was a tight fit that took some moderate man handling to line back up. Upside, the bottom is in there nice and snug and won't move around on you. And here we are with the final product, covered and uncovered. It feels really good having made something beautiful to put in my home, and I'm looking forward to my daughter making lots of memories of family game nights around it.
Side note, should I ever do this again, I think I'll use loose tenon joinery instead of dowels. The dowels just had too much wiggle in them to really keep those sections level to my satisfaction. Also, as good as the finish came out, I think I need to start thinning my shellac and doing more, thinner coats. It was probably my best, most even application to date, but in the wrong lighting at the wrong angle if you look closely you can still see some unevenness. Alas. Lastly, one of the boards that makes up half a topper has a network of cracks radiating through it parallel to the face gain. I first noticed it in the milling process, but it didn't look that bad, I thought cutting off the last inch or two would get rid of it. Also, I had no spares to replace it with. I kept going, and every step of the way in, it spread even more. I kept attempting to stabilize it by filling it in with glue, but that didn't seem to work as I could only address the exposed portion of the crack which was retreating deeper and deeper into the wood unseen. It resulted in one of the toppers having a distinct hollow feeling in a few spots. If it gets even worse than it already is, I guess I'll just make a replacement. Because I have that option. In the future, cracked boards get thrown out, no matter how far along the process I am.
I was once asked if my adventurers in woodworking and the money I've spent has been "worth it". It was hard to quantify when I was making little experimental practice projects, or unique one off's like an oak computer case or a bookshelf for old PC game manuals. When I made the cabinets for the kitchen I probably saved about $300. This table however, I probably saved myself enough money building it myself versus buying one that it pays for all of my tools and then some. If I had the means to make more tables and reliably sell them, I'd be almost tempted to.
Next up, a set of 4 chairs, mostly with the off cuts from the table. Gotta stretch that $450 I spent on lumber as far as it'll go.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
Link one: Don't avoid romance says more people are single nowadays and unhappier nowadays because more people have avoidant attachment styles in the past, with some (mostly circumstantial) evidence that the amount of avoidant attachment is increasing. Ends with an exhortation to not be avoidant but doesn't examine the question I would have thought would be of interest, which is why more and more people don't have healthy attachment styles. (Aftereffects of higher divorce rate? Internet usage? Weaker community institutions? Microplastics? I'm just spitballing ideas but wouldn't a marked societal-leve change in people's psychology be something you'd want to investigate the causes of?)
Your achive link isn't the full article. This one seems better?
Once again, it's remarkable all the hoops the article, or the researchers, jump through to avoid the obvious answer. People have avoidant attachment styles because our culture almost universally portrays marriage and family as an existential horror. Women fear being "trapped" in a marriage. Women's media my entire life has bent over backwards feeding women's neuroticism that every marriage is a "bad" marriage.
And on men's side, every single man has witnessed half their friends and family cut in half by divorce. Lost the house, turned into an every other weekend "dad", and a court ordered pay pig. Probably seen friends, family and coworkers spend a weekend in jail on some trumped up charges. I had a coworker arrested because his ex said he broke into her place. On a night he was on security cameras working late in the office.
Marriage has been turned into something horrific unless you literally trust the other person with your life. A gun pointed at your head 24/7, trusting the other person not to pull the trigger, and everyone has seen it. They know someone who's been shot. Probably a lot of people. And one wonders why kids who've watched this happen to their parents (or lost a parent to it) have developed an "avoidant attachment style".
I think it's largely that the proto-male feminist hears feminist talking about all the myriad ways in which men are just the absolute scum of the earth, and the proto-male feminist takes a deep look inside themselves and sees that it's all true (for them), and thus a convert is born.
In much the same way I've heard it said that church is for sinners, feminism is for sex pest. They probably need that message about what a piece of shit they are more than the typical male. But in much the same way we all fall short of our moral aspirations, a sex pest is going to sex pest.
It probably doesn't help that they find themselves surrounded by vulnerable, hollowed out by abuse, p-zombies that will agree to anything. You read that original article about the nanny, and the thing I'm most struck by is her absolute inability to articulate a single thought she had. It's all her echoing things people thought she should feel. Gaiman, Gaiman's ex-wife, her friend/therapist. This is a person so completely disassociated from themselves though some alluded to past trauma, it brings into question if they are even capable of consent, in much the same way we understand an animal, a child, or a person with severe mental disabilities isn't capable.
Edit: Once upon a time, the jannies here explained what rule you broke, and how you broke it. I see now they just take things out on people without explanation or comment and interpret you not getting it as more evidence that you are participating in bad faith. How is anything I said here worse than the prompt, or any of the other comments?
I'd take fear mongering around Tate a lot more seriously if they didn't condemn in the same breath Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Trump, and virtually every man who displays any masculinity what so ever. The only form of masculinity that the average redditor on /r/parenting is probably comfortable with is one totally subservient to Wonderful Women. A demoralized abuse victim in waiting.
As for the drinking and drugs, well, drinking is what it is. Young men risk profound bodily injury when they get too drunk, young women risk making very poor decisions (at best) about young men. Maybe you just need to see a friend make a life changing mistake due to alcohol to earn a healthy respect for it. And with fentanyl poisoning everything, drugs are a whole different ballgame than when we were kids.
That said, we've all got our red lines. I'm profoundly sensitive to demoralization and trans propaganda in children's programming. We basically have a rule in our house that our daughter doesn't read or watch anything newer than 2000, with older generally being better. She's still little, I don't know how well this will hold up. She's starting to ask if we can get Paw Patrol like all the other kids at school. We've heard through the grapevine from other parents with concerns like ours that "the first few seasons" are fine. But we aren't interested in playing whack-a-mole with a franchise our daughter grows to love trying to sneak bullshit past us. We know this isn't sustainable forever, but god damn. The media put out there for children just keeps getting worse and worse.
Sometimes I think back to my own childhood watching G.I. Joe and Transformers, wondering if there were sneaky bit of propaganda snuck into them. I do remember some pretty on the nose storylines from G.I. Joe about the drug war, the government defunding G.I. Joe because some senators were working for Cobra, run of the mill American Exceptionalism, etc. That said, I'm not exactly against a cartoon talking up our national values... or at least our national values circa the 80's and 90's. I guess now that our "national values" are that children should choose their own gender, and if you disagree the government should take them from you and facilitate them sterilizing and mutilating themselves I feel significantly differently about it. But then again, that takes for granted the illusion of consensus control of the institutions granted trans activist. All the same...
I donno. Once upon a time in highschool I met a girl who's family didn't have a TV. I almost couldn't wrap my mind around it, but she was the smartest most original girl I ever met back in school. So presumably it's not impossible.
Yes.
What's remarkable about all these admissions coming out after the fact about how Harris' internal polling never showed her winning, is how shameless they lied during the campaign. I mean, obviously you aren't ever going to admit your team has no chance. I wasn't expecting that. But to go even further, mocking Trump's internal polls (which agree with yours) that say he has the election almost in the bag, like that's a sign of how deranged he and his followers are. To frame Trump saying the public polls are fake, which you and he both know are fake, as Trump attacking democracy and preparing his following for another "insurgency". Things like that cross over from "The lies you are expected to tell" to "This is just evil" IMHO. Denying the truth is one thing. Going one over, and creating this narrative that everyone who believes the truth is insane and evil is political malpractice of the highest order.
Edit: I shit, I almost forgot how much Rasmussen polls were maligned! They were one of the only accurate public polls, and they were routinely excluded or down weighted by polling aggregates because they were considered "low quality". This despite both campaigns knowing, from their internal polls, that they were actually the most accurate!
Of course, the best arrow the Harris campaign and her spokespeople had against Rasmussen is that they are ardent 2020 "election deniers", and routinely tweet about the many ongoing lawsuits from 2020 that are continuing to this day. Funny how the most accurate polling company just can't manage to believe the 2020 election was "The most secure election ever." I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
WhiningCoil
8mo ago
I first noticed Indians about 15 years ago. Every single one I worked with was an H1B that almost certainly lied to get the job. In fact, I have never had a satisfactory experience working with an Indian in any position. I keep running into the same failure pattern where it's like they simply don't understand language, they just make convincing mouth sounds to get people to leave them alone. I've never successfully communicated a technical problem to an Indian in a way they've understood, no matter how hard I try. Other colleagues understand what I'm trying to communicate immediately.
My entire region was over ran by them. They all drove Honda Odysseys and basically didn't follow any traffic laws what so ever. At some point my then girlfriend, now wife with a confusing ethnic sounding last name got an interview at an American company that had been completely taken over by Indians. She was told point blank that they weren't going to hire her because she was white and they only hire other Indians. To this day she carries a grudge against Indians for being so nakedly discriminated against.
Later when she was venting to her father about the incident, he asked which company, and recognized the name. Said they were notorious for just blatantly lying on every contract bid they made, and basically doing no competent work what so ever.
I wouldn't say I'm shocked if people notice misbehavior that blatant and stereotypical.
WhiningCoil
8mo ago
Hey, another "You can't post that, it's boo outgroup". Employees of the current party in power did that thing they do again, where they openly express their hatred and willingness to hurt people like me.
EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs
A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire.
I know, it's not the smoking gun that the whole FEMA effort in Appalachia was slow walked because those people vote wrong. But it's yet another data point that, no, seriously, these people hate you and will do anything in their petty bureaucratic power to make your life worse because you vote wrong.
Believing this requires significant sane-washing of the last 8 years of media. I mean, to pick a random example off the top of my head that Youtube reminded me, Joe Biden's mental decline. The behavior of those in the media is completely unhinged and totally detached from reality, not to mention nakedly self serving. They've gaslit all of the country on an industrial scale about innumerable topics, or instituted a bizarre form of cognitive mutilation where you are only permitted to think of fact in ways they have told you that you are permitted to think of them. Impossible tangles of double-think abound for sex, gender, crime, equality, equity, you name it.
I would hope Elon has better sources of information than I have. But, to pick at Zelensky's 4% approval rating Hanania leads with, is it even possible to know what the real number might be? Also, I'm supposed to be assessing these "debunks" in a media environment where all the election polling around our own election was purposeful lying. Trump's internal polls showed him winning. Biden and then Kamala's internal polls showed him winning. At no time during the entire election cycle did anyone's internal polls show anyone but Trump winning. Public polls on the other hand, with the exception "low quality" pollsters like Rasmussen, all showed Harris winning. The Harris campaign even went so far as to gaslight the nation claiming Trump was lying about his internal polls as a pretext for election denial.
So why should anyone believe anything these people say about Zelensky's poll numbers? How can they possibly claim to be more credible than just making shit up? If Trump and Elon want to parade around some fake numbers the IC gave them that serve their agenda, they are in good company. Well, maybe not good company, but you know what I mean. Don't pretend this is a deviation.
I mean, this is just naked revisionist history and sane washing right here.
What past is he talking about? "Misgendering" was a ban on sight offense on every social media platform. Books about it were banned, at least temporarily. Liberals didn't calmly argue with conservatives about where to get news from, they banned it. It's pure imagination that anyone, anywhere, was calmly debating what sources of information were preferable to seek the truth. It was a boot stomping on a human face thinking the roles would never be reversed.
Furthermore, I keep going through Hanania's supporting evidence, like "Editor-in-chief of The Federalist joins others in repeating repeating the completely made up lie about Zelensky meeting with Democrats beforehand." except, oh wait, here is a Democrat tweeting about meeting Zelensky before the Trump meeting. Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine. . Did the original rumor name the wrong Democrats? Yes. Is it a made up lie that Zelensky met with Democrats beforehand? Absolutely not.
Frankly it's barely worth the effort to continue to pick apart these sour grapes that Hanania isn't making the living on Twitter that he used to or expected to. Though I am especially tickled he cites Elon being on the wrong side of an argument with Sam Harris about how bad COVID was going to be. The same Sam Harris who has horribly beclowned himself with extremely motivated reasoning about the measures that he still believes were justified to deal with it. Elon might have been wrong about the numbers, but he was directionally correct about how serious to take it. Especially in retrospect, and especially compared to Sam Harris.
More options
Context Copy link