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
10d ago
Isn't this a similar mechanism to how prions work?
birb_cromble
10d 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
10d 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
11d 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
19d 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
24d 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.
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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