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Unfortunately, I really want to talk about all the Bud Light stuff, and I don't want to make a new throwaway for it. So you will have to deal with this short summary of my jury duty instead of the nice effort post I've been cooking up on dog walks: 1) The pool is almost sarcastically diverse, as though someone had intentionally excluded anyone else resembling my 'peers.' 2) If someone shows up it's because they want to serve on a jury, and they find it strange that someone would intentionally decrease their chances of being selected 3) The entire experience can be a colossal waste of time and energy, 50 otherwise productive people spent all day not working because one illegal immigrant made a sexual innuendo to another illegal's girlfriend/stepdaughter. Why not just deport them?
Onto the Bud Light thing, as discussed earlier here yesterday. The short summary would be that someone (also from San Diego, coincidentally) decided about a year ago that they were a woman, and Bud Light decided to make them a special commemorative can, which apparently they drank in a bathtub as part of a marketing campaign. This has made a lot of people (including me) very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. I'm writing this post now because the company just offered its' first official response and it's perfect gpt fuel-on-the-fire. It's short so I won't give highlights, instead, a summary that suggests it pisses off everyone rather than mollifying anyone. I eagerly invite someone to provide a mirror image of 'their tribes' response but I want to share a few thoughts about mine in a few buckets:
1). For most of my adult life, I drank an incredible amount of Bud Light. Occasionally flirting with the limits of 'functional' alcoholism at ~30 a day, occasionally dipping below my typical 10-12, occasionally taking a month off because I'd been getting fat. This amount of consumption is not unusual in my peer group. Just do some napkin math: (minimally) one beer per half hour of time awake and 'off the clock.' Essentially, Bud Light is not a 6 pack that sits in your fridge for weeks, it's bought in 18 packs by people like me on the way home for the night.
2). We drink Bud Light for exactly the reason you (the proverbial 'you', of course) poke fun at it. It's thin, watery, and doesn't have a lot of alcohol. I can drink 30 a day and never get shithouse drunk the way I will after 3 bourbons on an empty stomach. I can drink more than a tiny sip and enjoy the flavor, unlike a double tangerine ipa. I like to sit around and drink beer, and it's a perfect beer for that.
3). I have my friends that drink Bud Light, and my friends that poke fun at me for drinking Bud Light. I love both, but with the later, we usually don't tool around in the garage while drinking. These days with the later it's usually more like visiting the latest pop-up microbrewery which may or may not have food (or anything drinkable). There's a culture, or if that's a bit grandiose, a vibe around a hot sunny day and a big cold box of weak watery beer.
4). Unlike most potential boycotts, I (and my people) have some purchase with this one ('purchase' for the non-english natives among us here meaning 'agency, power, or leverage'). We get a little say. There is a little verve here. This is not nike, something I already didn't buy, or every insurance company known to man, something I can't really avoid buying, this is weak watery beer!
5). Unlike most Allied marketing, this feels like it was meant to hurt. I'm aware Bud Light has done rainbow pride cans before, and I've probably even bought some without thinking about it. But something feels wrong about buying this beer now that I know they intentionally had a AMAB in a bikini drinking their commemorative can celebrating '365 of womanhood.' Not only can I effectively boycott this, but I can't unfeel the desire to boycott this! This one might have legs.
After the non-apology from the brass, Bud Light may have terminally tarnished their brand. Planting a flag and vitally interested to hear your thoughts
This is a really good funny video in my opinion. I advise everyone to watch
this video.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-fl-rep-calls-trans-hearing-witnesses-demons-and-imps
Kind of curious if Dems can even attack this since he’s black. I believe his arguments stand even if your not Christian. I basically agree with him but I’ve been calling tran a mental illness instead of demons.
This is low-effort and boo-outgroup. It barely even relates; this is like responding to a post about Donald Trump with a video about DeSantis and asking about Republicans. If it were just one link inside a broader, higher-effort post, like, okay, but you've been warned about this before.
Banned for a week.
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Taking this guy's metaphor seriously, there's quite a bit of self-own aspect to it, given that X-Men's plot largely centers around the government actually wanting to genocide mutants in the sense of hunting them down and locking them up in camps/killing them. And mutants in X-Men also tend to be shown as superior to non-mutants in some meaningful concrete sense, which is what allows them to be the comic book superheroes they are (though there are plenty of downsides too). Also, he seems to be conflating "mutants" with "aliens" when he talks about mutants from outer space; mutants are definitionally humans with mutated genes.
I think if this clip gets any sort of traction in the progressive left, it will just be fairly standard fodder for "look at what this ignorant hateful bigot is saying about this oppressed minority. This is a truly mask-off moment that shows that our outgroup really is as evil as we say they are and all that talk about just protecting children and whatnot is just camouflage for their true desire to literally murder trans people." The fact that he's black wouldn't really play much into it, since black people (and other minorities) who don't toe the party line have generally not gotten any protection at all from the backlash; if anything, it tends to heighten it due to being perceived as a traitor to the cause. That latter part probably won't play a factor either, though, since blackness and transness, though grouped together under the wide umbrella of "oppressed minority," are still considered fairly distinct. And antipathy between black people and sexual minorities, particularly gay people, has been well known; and the sexual minorities win that oppression Olympics conflict at least 99 times out of 100.
While I agree with his argument. Am I correct that there’s some amusing about the video? Or do I have bad taste.
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