netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Unfortunately, yes.
I picked this name back in the Xbox live days. My mother had seen my existing handle and asked “isn’t that kind of…gay?” Since I’d been playing (and honestly, reading about) the roguelike NetHack, I swapped out the H and damned myself to a career of scrotal comments. How ironic.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
I think you only trust DHS because they’re more obviously polishing Trump’s knob. I think “we had an election” is an excuse, because this is a stupid way to establish trust.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
I do actually think this is true.
It also makes “we had an election” into a fig leaf.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
23hr ago
So the 2024 election counts as a physical change in personnel, and since Trump purged his enemies, you can totally trust DHS.
But the 2016 one didn’t, because…?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
23hr ago
I have noticed a pattern where there is a horrible story that comes out. [Team A] passes around the horrible story…[Team B] waits for the [relevant department’s] X account to post a rebuttal, and then that becomes the [Team B] story.
Isn’t this normal? An official statement makes for an easy rallying cry.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
That…is utterly facile.
Do you think you could explain how that strategy would serve any of Russia’s goals?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I know that feeling. I’m reminded of the mod for D:OS2 which rebalanced combat to make health more relevant. They had to move heaven and earth to let it serve as a valid resource instead of a last resort.
But then, RPGs have always suffered from that tension. Real humans have a nasty habit of dying horribly when they take one bolter round to the face. Not easy to reconcile with slower, attrition-based gameplay.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Yes and yes.
You can have whatever opinion you want. As usual, we’re here to moderate on tone. Sometimes that makes us the fun police.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
However, despite claiming to be a timber farm, this business has never actually sold any timber, and indeed has reported no sales, income, or labor expenses since year 2011.
Correction: it sold about $490K of timber during Murphy’s tenure as forester, which ran until 2008. Without that fact, the operation sounds a lot sketchier!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Kingdom Come: Deliverance but it’s Turin Turambar slumming it with the petty dwarves.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
This is the worst sort of internet drama. Reading Motte-discourse on gender relations already makes me want to contribute to certain male statistics, so I want to take it in an extremely different direction.
Earlier today, I saw the unfamiliar term “ECW” in the TVTropes article for Genre Turning Point. Over the next half-hour, I learned numerous facts about the insanity that is pro wrestling.
- The characters who’ve percolated into the modern consciousness via memes, etc. were working for a diverse set of rival promoters.
- Those promoters competed for talent and viewers alike.
- In the process, performers accrued a mind-bending number of storylines: mostly rivalries and revenge plots, but sometimes weirdly idealistic quests or bizarre crossovers.
- Neither TVTropes nor Wikipedia editors consistently distinguish between the fictional storylines and the real-world beefs. Something as mundane as a contract dispute could end up establishing the CEO as a character.
Which brings us to Chris Benoit. A wildly successful mid-level performer whose wiki page covers his career in agonizing detail, Benoit accrued numerous rivalries. Most notable is the fake affair with a rival’s wife which turned into a real affair, divorce and marriage. When news broke of his 2007 suicide, his promoter canceled existing events for a three-hour tribute. The aforementioned evil CEO broke character to give a normal CEO announcement.
But oh, boy, was there a twist.
Within a day, his promoter learned that Benoit had MURDERED HIS WIFE AND CHILD before committing suicide. He’d strangled first his wife, then his drugged son, and only hanged himself after two days of shambling around the house. The eulogies came to a screeching halt. All mention of Benoit was excised from future broadcasts.
So, why am I bringing this up? Take a look at that last wiki page, mainly the “Events” section. In the aftermath, people insisted that Benoit killed his son for being too small or for a secret disability. They said he’d feuded with his wife after she suspected him of cheating, and that there was life insurance fraud at play. Maybe it was a professional hit. Maybe he’d researched death by hanging before snapping his own neck with a lat pulldown machine. Maybe it was roid rage, or maybe he’d just been hit in the head too much. Anything and everything to milk more drama from an already surreal tragedy.
People demand a better story than a coroner’s report alone can offer. One can add enough maybe and suspected and no evidence against to spin whatever narrative they want. A woman writing a semi-fictional story is boring. A woman driving her ex to despair via a feminist scissor statement? Now that’s entertainment.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
that doesn't go viral by abusing weaponized empathy
How are those going viral, then?
There are ads playing on my local radio about “a Honduran convicted of raping a child” and the like. (I couldn’t find transcripts but i think they’re part of this program.) If that’s not weaponizing empathy, I don’t know what is.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Plausibly true, but not trivially.
Depends on how many potential migrants actually learn about the policy, evaluate their odds correctly, and decide they aren’t that desperate.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
It’s almost funny comparing this to the 2016 narrative. The smart money was wrong, the local insiders were wrong, how could this happen?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
I don’t think Homeland Security’s Twitter feed is the problem.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
surnames
I’ll echo @Skibboleth here. Names were pretty divorced from profession by the founding of the country, let alone the Industrial Revolution.
the reason diversity used to correlate
A reason, sure. There are at least a couple others. Concentration in cities reducing networking costs. Reduced friction from a surplus of labor. The low-hanging fruit of our transition from an agrarian economy. Etc.
[list of contradictions]
I don’t think this part makes a lot of sense. You’re not exactly working with a steelman of “diversity is our strength,” but then, neither were the authors. Quibbling over terminology is beside the point.
second law of thermodynamics
Culture isn’t a closed system.
facilitates idea sharing
Yeah, there’s no contradiction here. Innovation is risky. Idea-sharing is risky. A good government hedges against that instability.
Am I being too pedantic?
No comment.
Do these people even realize…?
Steve Sailer thinks they wrote it for a fig leaf. So…probably.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Where exactly are you getting sold that narrative?
Looking at CNN or WaPo or the NYT, they aren’t selling a Russian collapse or obvious Ukrainian superiority. That’s a sucker’s bet. They’re playing the underdog angle where Ukraine is barely (but admirably!) holding out against the aggressor. Supporting Ukraine as an “ought” rather than an “is.”
I think you’re conflating the armchair generals on Twitter with the broader base of support. It’s like assuming that all Christians are about to deconvert because the Branch Davidians got a prophecy wrong.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I would expect Russian elites to siphon more from annexed Ukrainians than from their own lower class.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I’m not letting it go. Those things are good. There’s just a gap between what is good and what is a responsibility.
Rittenhouse had no responsibility for that building, which is why the OP had to make up scenarios about home and family in the other subthread.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Notice how I didn’t say anything about fascism. No need to quibble over definitions!
I am asking you: what would Trump have to do before you’d say “yes, that’s an unconstitutional power grab.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
There’s no need for moralism when we’ve got tribalism.
The average Ukraine sympathizer sees something like this or this and turns into the staunchest of partisans. No philosophy required.
Honestly, after years of your doomsaying, I still don’t know what you expect to find out. There’s no real equivalent to “saddam has WMDs.” No real wargoal, seeing as we aren’t at war. No American casualties to cover up. So what’s the big reveal? What undermines the premise of “we’ll pay you not to give that guy what he wants?”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Setting aside the possibility of skew, since I had a surprisingly hard time finding median data…Is this the right question?
Maybe I’d prefer being a Russian to being a Ukrainian. But I think I’d prefer either to being a former-Ukrainian. Even if Russia wasn’t at all interested in cleansing language or religion, would Russian wealth somehow trickle down? There’s not much reason to think former-Ukrainians would see any benefits under Russian colonization.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
It blows your mind because you’re looking at a strawman. The Europeans who elected these leaders don’t see it this way. As for the Ukrainian response…
Imagine that your county government gets taken over by—gosh, I know this sounds farfetched—roving gangs of immigrants. Then some keyboard warrior across the pond tells you: “don’t worry! They’re just protecting you from the other scary minorities, the ones who look even less like you. It’s the only way you’ll avoid ethnic cleansing.”
Would you believe them?
Ukrainians aren’t choosing the hard route because they just love the EU. They’re doing it because they hate Russia more. Better to die on one’s feet.
Meaning no diacritics. I’m not gonna be upset if someone drops an umlaut.
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