birb_cromble
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User ID: 3236
There's a difference between aggressiveness and suicidality.
In my small college town, cyclists regularly jump off the sidewalk and cross two lanes of traffic with no indication that they are going to do so. They regularly run red lights, either by suddenly deciding that they're pedestrians and swerving into the crosswalk, or by ignoring the light all together. They regularly drive on the center line of a two lane one-way street, but lack the control to stay there, and end up clipping motorists' mirrors. This is all despite the area having extensive bike lanes that are usually more convenient and direct than the local roadways.
That's not even getting started on the narcissistic fuck-show that calls itself "critical mass".
I frequently debate whether they're really that stupid or it's just an insurance scam.
birb_cromble
5d ago
I like to check out aquariums and aviaries, personally. Fish aren't known for a history of racism and colonization.
birb_cromble
8d ago
So feel free to assume it was .22 caliber and make jokes accordingly.
In all seriousness, skulls are incredibly tough. I remember a slaughtering day when I was young where my great uncle put an entire cylinder of .357 rounds into a hog's head before he went down. The first couple of shots knocked it to the ground, but he got up and just kind of shook it off.
When we skinned the head, you could actually see two of the rounds embedded in the bone.
Human skulls aren't as robust as pig skulls, but you'd be surprised at the beatings they can take.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Isn't this a similar mechanism to how prions work?
birb_cromble
9d ago
and then meanwhile, there's this giant elephant in the room.
C'mon man, she's family. You don't have to name call like that.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Auto correct is a hell of a drug
birb_cromble
10d ago
If you support Trump, just unfriend me now," she posted once. "Because if I see anyone post anything supporting him, I will block you."
I personally noticed this trend starting in 2013, and it reached its apex in the aftermath of the 2016 election.
On some level, I think there's a personality that craves power and control, but is also loathe to admit it through crass displays of naked force.
That internal conflict seems to result in escalating and increasingly nonsensical demands for "common decency" from everyone around them. It's a win for the person making the demands because they can bend weak people to their will, and also because they aren't the ones making the demands; they're just being the better person. They didn't do it, and the target deserved it.
The most interesting thing to me is that there are very similar behaviors in domestic abusers. Seeing DARVO fully generalized as a cultural norm is peculiar, to say the least.
birb_cromble
10d ago
But now you have zoomer progressive who genuinely believe all this without even a hint of irony.
As I mentioned down thread, I live near a university. I frequently encounter protests for or against the ${CURRENT_THING} whenever I have to go into town.
One of the most fascinating protest signs that I ever saw simply said LIBERALS GET THE BULLET TOO in all-caps sharpie. To this day, I'm not even sure they were protesting.
This is the new game? Is it because Trump is in the White House again, so academia has to go back to pretending to be "politically neutral?" "We're all good classical liberals, boss, honest! No radicals here, no sir.
I live near a university, and what I'm seeing among the faculty is that some of them, at least, look enough like Kulaks and traitors to Glorious Revolution that they're starting to get a little afraid.
Once it happens, it seems like they go one of two directions.
The first is they quadruple down on all the various shibboleths that show they're One Of The Good Ones - their Tesla sports a new "I bought it before Elon went nuts" bumper sticker. Their yard grows another "In this house we believe sign". The pride flag flaps in the wind year round. Each step gets more ostentatious and, to me, increasingly nervous.
The second is that they start doing more "right wing" things and integrate with those who they once called enemies when conversing with their former peers. They hit the range. They go to church. They visit the redneck bar and say "I don't know if I like Trump but this shit they're doing at my kid's school is getting out of hand." Like a prisoner hoping the Nazi biker gang will keep the Crips from raping him straight into the hospital, they observe just enough of the norms to keep them in the good graces of their new group.
Watching the dichotomy is interesting, and I can usually predict which way a given staff or faculty member is going to land.
birb_cromble
14d ago
Conservatives are more likely to anger intelligence agencies these days
birb_cromble
15d ago
Somehow, it's only senior management who doesn't realize the impact.
Most of the pessimism I've seen has been quite different than this.
Rather than fear that the AI will work, the fear seems to be that management will buy into the hype and fire everyone, regardless of whether it works or not.
If it does work, you're out of a job because the whole industry has been displaced. If it doesn't work, you're out of a job because management was greedy and they all follow each other like lemmings, so it's going to be a nightmare to find a new job at a company that isn't infected with the same mindset.
birb_cromble
18d ago
Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
birb_cromble
23d ago
I know exactly one person who "died of COVID". He was a morbidly obese, diabetic cancer survivor in his 70s with emphysema and COPD who had to regularly undergo dialysis to stay alive. When he passed away, it was shortly after going to the ER for chest pain.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
Good news: my bass body arrived early.
Bad news: the neck pocket is cut to the wrong spec, and it's out of spec even if it were the correct one.
I have contacted the seller. We'll see what happens.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
The tariff's hurt China too. For reasons I can only speculate, all I've ever heard about tariffs are that they are stupid when the US does it, and brilliant when other countries (especially China) do them to us to protect their industrial base.
I factored that in to my prediction when I made it. Do you think the situation over there is so dire that they can't even afford to try and save face?
birb_cromble
1mo ago
US and China slash tariffs as trade war cools
It looks like we will experience a de-escalation of the tariff battle between the US and China.
The U.S. will cut Trump’s recent tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent, while the Chinese side will drop measures from 125 percent to 10 percent. The suspension is temporary for now, lasting 90 days, allowing time for further negotiations.
How does this line up with your personal predictions for how this was going to proceed?
My belief was that both sides would maintain 100+% tariffs but exempt essentially everything that matters. This development shows that I was wrong and I don't understand something about the events that have occurred. Does anybody have any ideas on what I missed?
birb_cromble
1mo ago
that aren't about the destination, but the journey
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is great for this. It's a window into a worldview that's very specific to 1960s and 1970s America, dressed in absurdist storytelling.
badass scenes every few pages
The Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. It started out when someone claimed that you needed a good idea to write an engaging story. Butcher disagreed, and the person making the claim bet him that he could offer up an idea so stupid that no one could make it work. The idea in question was "the lost Roman legion meets Pokemon".
Butcher took the bet and played it completely straight.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
The train system is usually OK in my experience.
I watched a woman stand up and beat the ever-loving shit out of an old man on the bus near Columbia heights, though.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
I've used transit systems in New York, DC, and Chicago various times in the last 25 years, and my experience was no different, though it's been a while so this may have change
Pittsburgh is one of the better ones I've ridden. The worst I've dealt with there is a serial urinator on the north shore, but that's the north shore. I think inappropriate pissing is some kind of regional pastime up there.
DC, Philly, Richmond, Baltimore, and Knoxville are all pretty ugly these days.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
Violent crime is an issue at a 45 degree angle to public transit
Four of the last seven times I tried to ride a city bus, a fight broke out.
Are you going to try and tell me that my distaste for riding a bus is unrelated to that violent crime?
birb_cromble
1mo ago
Are you talking about the show or the game here?
birb_cromble
1mo ago
Personally, I don't intend any self policing. It mostly came to mind when comparing this to the pundit commentary around the "kidnapping plot" against Gretchen Whitmer, and I wanted some opinions.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
"Big, beautiful X" is used to good effect in a lot of comedy impersonations.
birb_cromble
1mo ago
At that point does it even qualify under the commonly held definition of stochastic terrorism?
Stochastic terrorism is a form of political violence instigated by hostile public rhetoric directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished with indirect, vague or coded language, which grants the instigator plausible deniability for any associated violence.
Do you reject the concept entirely? That's part of why I started this thread. A lot of people claiming their opponents are using the technique seem to act as if it's not real.
I worked on an orchard as a teenager and I was the only legal citizen there. They made me do all the shit jobs.
I got pretty good at smoking bees, though, so I've got that going for me.
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