crushedoranges
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User ID: 111
crushedoranges
9mo ago
You don't need to believe in democracy, only give sacrifice to the civic gods. The Roman analogy is apt. I'm not asking you to sacrifice a fatted calf or a firstborn child: I'm asking you to stand in a line for two hours in some public place. It doesn't matter what you believe or what you think is true, only that the proper forms are observed.
crushedoranges
9mo ago
Let me make an analogy.
One prays to God, not out of a naive desire for divine intervention to manifest one's wishes, but as an affirmative call to one's own virtuous goals. Whether or not it comes to good or ill is divided into two parts: the mortal - which is in our control - and in the divine - which is ineffable.
Which is to say, go vote, because it is good for the soul, and then do the necessary things in your community anyway.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
Get away from me, Kaathe!
The age of dark is not yet here!
crushedoranges
1yr ago
This makes even more economic sense: we'd save the price of a firing squad and the bullet too. All of the residents of the Tenderloin should be recollected to wherever those German tourists went in Death Valley a few years ago.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
It's not laziness: it's restoring man to the state of nature where if he does not think of his morrows, of his shelter and sustenance, he will die. There is no ambushers lying in wait on the outside of corporate layoffs. Police forces around the world have a list of 'individuals known to authority', who commit the pareto majority of homeless nuisance. Let us kill them all: swallow your liberal indignation about the rights and dignity of man and other such nonsense, and I'll let you embark on whatever reformist scheme in the aftermath that you please.
That's my counterproposal!
crushedoranges
1yr ago
Imagine that an insane genius who hates end users, who constantly schemes up ways to make things worse, whose design ethos is 'whatever our customers will hate most and is maximally inconvienent' and you wouldn't be too far off as to why.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
Time has not diminished the Jewish desire for Zionism. If we are to give credit to the Palestinians, they seem equally determined. Would you give them two thousand years to get over it?
To paraphrase the Kingdom of Heaven, as Saladin speaks to Balian: 'Jerusalem is nothing and everything!'
crushedoranges
1yr ago
I didn't call him a neocon, I called him a Trotskyite larping as one. Big difference! Brown on the outside, red on the inside.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
I just wanted to make the distinction that being a contrarian is merely being against the prevailing wisdom. It doesn't imply action, only disagreement.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
It's a slightly gamified version of D&D 5e. An accurate representation of the roleplaying game, but it diminishes how fun it is. (The lack of simulataneous turns is the real killer.)
crushedoranges
1yr ago
I can only comment on its aesthetic qualities but it very much feels like a raising, a visual bump in the text that is not as grating as italics or bold but still noticable. Kind of like braille.
crushedoranges
25d ago
The American economy is not dependent on imports from China, and neither does it rely on exports to it. All it needs to do to blockade China is block the straits of Malacca and Tiran.
crushedoranges
6mo ago
That may indeed be possible but I try and keep personal motivations out of analysis as much as I can. Not that he can't be morally disgusted (and indeed, most people should be) but since it is impossible to debate the personal beliefs of someone I do not personally know, I don't usually comment on it.
I am aware that assigning political motivations to things that public figures do can come off as conspiratorial and uncharitable at times. I didn't mean to imply that he was some sort of Machiavellian figure. I'm just attempting to analyze it through a realpolitik lens - which, indeed, diminishes the personal.
crushedoranges
7mo ago
I would attribute that to the population getting older in general. City life, and its progressive paeans, are more attractive to the young who seek opportunity and change. They are willing to tolerate things like noisy neighbors and the homeless because they are willing to bear that burden, even if it annoys them privately. The old and those with families wish for the reverse and move away to where they can get away from that within their financial means.
It very well may be that the blues diminish because their societal bedrocks self-select and become redder in the bargain.
crushedoranges
8mo ago
A child, when introduced to the concept of probability, gives equal weight to the possible outcomes. Two choices means 50/50 (a coin flip.) A pollster that isn't better than a coin flip is useless. You might as well ask a child. (I believe the children's election - 52/48 in favor of Harris - being +2 D, while being wrong, was more accurate than any of the left-leaning pollsters could muster.)
crushedoranges
9mo ago
And for most people, that borderline is a wake-up call, yes.
I personally suffer from depression. Being fat didn't help with that. But for some people they look in a mirror and they think to themselves "I'm already fat, I might as well let myself go all the way" and that leads to all the pathologies of personality I just mentioned.
Right now, I'm going through a water fast, and it's difficult and uncomfortable. Losing weight is, in general, difficult and uncomfortable. The avoidance of discomfort and the pursuit of pleasure is the Western zeitgeist and I'd be damned if I let down my ubermenschian will to power by obeying the fickle whims of a decadent body.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
Then what, exactly, is all of this western aid paying for?
What is the length of commitment necessary from the West for Ukraine to win the war?
I think the average American is happy to support Ukraine, less happy, if it proves to be a Afghanistan-level commitment. Open-ended conflicts with no clear objective is the kind of foreign entanglement I do not like.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
There is signalling value in taking 850 dollars of money and burning it to show your commitment to a candidate. The prospect of winning money is just a bonus.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
You're making me blush.
More of how drugs turn normal people into monsters that seek to replicate their misery. They superficially resemble the person they once were, but something new and horrible blossoms inside of them.
And yeah, you could try and cure it. But that only solves it on the individual level. The alien queen is still alive, and there are fools who advocate for her to get corporate citizenship. What's the point in spending half a million dollars trying to get a addict clean (and failing more than half the time) when a drug dealer can get a new victim hooked for the price of a happy meal?
crushedoranges
1yr ago
I don't know who Rufo is, and I'm deep, as it were, in the shit.
Something new you learn every day.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
The very credibility of the LIO and the West in general is at stake. If Ukraine loses, then it's a green light to all with revanchist ambitions. Too much national honor has been put on the line by feckless politicians, who have entangled their political fates to this insignificant front. There's no room for pragmatism.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
Date two attractive people at the same time, then your life will get super exciting. I think part of the appeal of adultery is that the elaborate double life is thrilling. Since you've got more income, you can go on twice the dates! Repeat until you're a bog-standard rationalist polygamist.
crushedoranges
1yr ago
If you don't want to be called the L-word you must turn in the janitor badge. Anyone based enough to have cool opinions would never consider the job of internet moderator.
Well, of course it is.
But your non-participation only entitles and empowers a potential Caesar, who similarly believes that the systems and institutions are a corrupt sham and shell. And when you go to hide behind said institutions, suddenly made aware of its values, it will collapse upon itself. You will be left naked and trembling before a new, populist God.
Unless, of course, that is your desired end goal.
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