domain:shapesinthefog.substack.com
Jiro
7m ago
Manchin is actually quoted as saying he's doing this "not as a Democrat", and I think this counts as saying that the Tsar is poorly advised:
Manchin said he is a proud Democrat, having been raised with the values of “always reaching out, trying to help others have a better quality of life and help themselves” and taking care of those who cannot help themselves.
But he said sometimes his party’s priorities in Washington are “out of balance with … how we do business in West Virginia.”
Sanders is claiming that Obama isn't left wing enough, which is a 50 Stalins criticism. And it's not actually hard to find conservatives criticizing Trump.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
8m ago
I'm not comparing with the Bidens, though. To me that's too much selection bias, of a sort, but there's more than that besides. We should compare Trump's progeny to other business magnates - the original claim from faceh was that Trump is underappreciated for having well-adjusted progeny, and I reply that no no, he's merely doing par for the course. Billionaire kids, near as I can tell, aren't poorly-adjusted all that often. Politician kids, which were lumped in the same category, are not the same category. They are in fact on the spectrum that leads toward celebrity kids, which is definitely not the same category, despite conflation in that same comment! Trump is a businessman who, in the twilight of his life, decided to be a politician (and some think didn't even fully intend to, alleging he expected to lose). That's a very different thing than a political dynasty family. And even then... you know, children of major politicians being an embarrassment is probably still the exception rather than the rule.
WhiningCoil
9m ago
So I finally took profit on COIN and decided to get my driveway redone with some of the windfall. It's a fucking disaster, washed out, weeds coming through, you name it. Thinking of going with tar & chip to the house, and then recycled asphalt back to my workshop. It's about 400+ ft of driveway total and my first quote is about $11,000. I guess we'll see how this goes.
No_one
16m ago
Has anyone ever described the motivation for watching fights, or what people get out of it ? I greatly respect anyone who is crazy enough to get into such a fight, unless they're obviously crazy and unprepared.
But watching the fight itself is completely different to being in a fight, which to me is a very exhilarating experience judging by serious grade school fights or some kinetic sparring I've done a few times.. but that's sadly too risky and I generally prefer to avoid doing it- especially the 'real' fights with hot blood. There's just nothing there, sure it's somewhat more interesting than the fake fights in films, but it's only a very 'academic' interest.
Clearly, that's not other people's attitude so I'm wondering what's going on.
If people healed like in computer games, I'd probably be very much into MMA, but we sadly don't.
Iamme
17m ago
Despite rules about writing as if everyone is reading and you want them to be included, I often see posts like these which assume no female readers. That’s one of the many reasons I mostly lurk.
But this:
Women are more hostile to COVID vaccination, perhaps reflecting a female urge to make politics revolve around their bodies.
You could just ask us. This has an answer. Or at least, I have an answer as to why I have mostly soured on the COVID vaccine and I will not be subjecting my children to it. Hint: It’s not because I want politics to revolve around my body. At least no more than men want to make politics revolve around their bodies.
It’s because ever since I “trusted the experts” and eagerly took the vaccine back in 2021, my life has been miserable for a few days out of every month. As an outcry of women rose up, the news happily reported that this was a “rare” side effect and would go away in a couple months. They basically told us to shut up about it and to stop getting in the way of the solution to COVID. It has been more than four years and I am still suffering the same as when I first got the vaccine. And I know of others in the same boat.
I don’t know of any who are speaking out publicly. That “shut up” command got through loud and clear. However, considering what it has done to some of us, I am not surprised that women tend to be more “hostile” to COVID vaccination.
MonkeyWithAMachinegun
Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones
26m ago
On the other hand, the amount of times I have been muzzle swept by old boomer fudds at the range who cant remeber the 4 rules of gun safety much less their blood pressure medication is way too damn high, and I am all for not letting them have guns.
I've said before that the quickest way to lose your 2A absolutist beliefs is to work the gun counter at your LGS for a weekend.
Poultice
26m ago
This is a bizarre statement to me, Trump's cultists are not "mainstream" in any meaning of the word.
I'm old enough to remember the dozens of covers of actual mainstream newspapers and magazines with pictures of Obama with the Presidential seal positioned just so behind his head to give the appearance of a halo.
Do I need to provide links to the "Lightworker" articles or the newsweek "god of all things" Shiva cover? This is either absurd revisionism or you're very young.
sun_the_second
26m ago
I think a cult of personality is when a statesman is treated not merely as a statesman who did a great job, but an exceptional, well, personality. It's when sycophants say "Stalin raised this country from its knees (and no one else could)", not "we raised this country from its knees under Stalin (he was a great help)".
No_one
27m ago
Yeah, pretty much. But there's no peak nor end to cinephilia or any other arena of art-snobbery. I'm sure among cinephiles you'd find those who look down on people who think Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia' isn't actually self-indulgent artsy trash and a true person of taste and discernment likes some more obscure indeciphrable film with better cinematography.
HereAndGone
34m ago
I think if, in your very own acceptance speech, you are already writing your place in the history books of tomorrow about future generations recognising the great job you did, that counts as "establishing a cult of personality".
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
36m ago
The “third term” thing has always been crazy to me. The guy is 78 now, if he wins a third term, he’ll be 82 at the start and 86 at the end. I don’t think anyone could do the job at that advanced age. I’m not sure about Eric Trump in any case, but he’s much more logical than Trump term 3.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
37m ago
We are three generations into the liberal experiment of the emancipation of women and the resulting sexual revolution and birth rates are already in the terminal phase.
The birth rate declining to replacement already happened 150-100 years ago- women were emancipated at the very tail end of that period. And note that that was when countries were far more rural than they are now, which skews the results significantly... if we assume 50% rural and those families are all having 3 kids, then 50% of the country is only having one kid.
Industrialization caused a significant decline in [real or perceived] socioeconomic opportunity per capita compared to the 1800s, which is why SK's birthrates are as bad as they were in the [urban] US in the 20s and 30s [combined with them being a country where the benefits of industrialization were more captured at the top; Japan is a case with a similar culture where that was less true and they're doing a bit better as a result]- it's just that, because the US won WW2, it got a temporary reprieve from having to solve the actual issue for a while. But we never solved the issue, and now it rears its ugly head again.
HereAndGone
37m ago
Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities.
By comparison with Hunter Biden, though they may not be perfect, they're not as messy. Even The Onion can only mock Eric and Don Jr. for being childish idiots, whereas they had to go from 'Biden won't pardon Hunter' to 'Biden pardoned Hunter'.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
43m ago
The oceans stopped rising?
...one of your examples of a cult of personality around Obama is a misphrased version of his own speech?
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.
This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
This was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
He's exhorting the troops ('if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it'), and he's not even saying that the oceans stopped rising but that the rise begins to slow.
Meanwhile, a considerable share of American Protestants believe(d) that Trump is anointed by God to be the President, and the share is not insignificant even if there's a comparison question regarding whether all Presidents are anointed by God.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump, it was taken up ironically because hell, yeah it was funny and cool at the same time.
I'm not sure what the satire part is in reference to. Probably the first memes I saw about Trump (his campaign didn't instantly take off in the online crowd so it ook a bit of time for them to start accumulating in places where I'd spot them) were God-Emperor memes, presented in a ha-ha-only-serious tone.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
47m ago
while they have some tricks those will be impenetrable to patients.
I know that if the ending of the name is the queen of the fae, it's going to be really fucking expensive.
ABigGuy4U
48m ago
One especially funny detail from that era is that you saw a lot of people nostalgically pining for their idyllic childhoods back in the Nineties... the 1890s.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
49m ago
They should go back to the old-fashioned "Dr. Billings' Soothing Syrup" type names.
Not even close. If the argument was merely "some people really like Trump" vs "some people really liked Obama", sure, but it's not. It is that you cannot criticize Trump and be a member of the GOP in good standing. Musk tried and very rapidly learned that if you tried to break ranks you were going to be whipped into line.
There's no Obama equivalent to cabinet secretaries beginning meetings by verbally fellating Trump. The degree of personal devotion demand and received by Trump from his followers is pretty much without parallel.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump
If you mean literal GEoM memes, perhaps yes. If you mean artwork where Trump is portrayed as a heroic and/or borderline deific figure (often in comical contrast to his actual appearance), no. Maybe it was started by some internet troll, but his base picked it up and ran with it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
52m ago
Can you actually point to any societies that collapsed as a result of, say, not exerting "sufficient intrasocietal controls on male avarice and female caprice"?
I think you can point to a lot of societies that absolutely failed to flourish because they didn't do this. I remembering reading the goofy book "Sex at Dawn" some years ago. It purported to show that monogamy and marriage was unnatural and that, akshually, tons of totally fine societies had practiced various forms of poly-like relationships.
Except all of its examples were undeveloped hunter-gatherer tribes that are still mostly existing in the stone age. Lots of sub-saharan examples and even a few from Papua New Guinea, aka the actual murder capital of the world.
When life is a constant battle against starvation, you don't have the luxury of resources to have to think long term. You live that beautiful, simple, horrifyingly savage life of "one day at a time." Once you figure our larger scale agriculture, you start to have more stuff and then you upgrade to the perennial problem of how to organize society. Every society that's flourished has settled on long-term pair bonding and marriage-til-death. Some have carve outs for lawful divorce, but the intent is clear.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
53m ago
To Rightists with daughters reading this: are you concerned that they might encounter "natural family planning" on the internet and really f*** up their life?
No, they are going to learn it as part of the puberty talk and will have a Tempdrop to warn them when their period is about to start.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
55m ago
From the right of the party and from the left of the party. (Of course Sanders is technically not a Democrat, but in practice, he was and is.)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
59m ago
To name a few:
- Pushback from conservative Democrats on ACA. Nowadays, it's popular to blame the GOP for the ACA being the watered down version that finally passed, but it faced significant opposition from conservative Democratic senators (most notoriously Lieberman, but he took a lot of the heat for a larger body of centrist Dems).
- Left-wing critiques of Obama foreign policy (and before you suggest it, no, this is not '50 Stalins' criticism), especially re: drone strikes
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership was opposed by both progressive Democrats and more traditional labor Dems
- Joe Manchin openly set himself up in opposition to Obama's policies, especially on the environmental front.
The cult of personality around Obama didn't hold a candle to Trump's.
Thrills up the leg? The Light Worker? The oceans stopped rising?
Granted, all that was his first term, the gloss had worn off by the time the second one came around.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump, it was taken up ironically because hell, yeah it was funny and cool at the same time.
Not to mention having the instincts that let him react like this in the immediate wake of the assassination attempt, leading to what you have to admit is an iconic image.
Yeah, they're not even subtle about it.
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