domain:mattlakeman.org
2rafa
12hr ago
What’s your view on it? There are French rightists online who believe it (and who appear to be the source of the whole thing).
erwgv3g34
12hr ago
The hell is this, the Terrible Take Tuesday thread? Cowboy Bebop and GitS are not just good, they are excellent.
Seconded.
The plot in Cowboy Bebop isn't that special (though that isn't what it's about), but overall both are great series.
The overarching plot of Cowboy Bebop is mediocre. The individual mini-plots that make up each episode are great.
guajalote
12hr ago
I think Owens' defense will be that she genuinely believed (and believes) her claims to be true. In the US, to prevail on defamation against a public figure, you have to show actual malice. I don't think she meets that standard. I really do think she believes it.
gattsuru
12hr ago
In the short term, there's no shortage of other locales selling games, including adult-themed games, and other ways to make a living making games... though all are likely to get hit by the same pressures over time and sometimes already have the same sort of motions toward content provider rules.
Maybe that short term is shorter than I thought:
Several people on the forums report not being able to access games that they'd already bought. I haven't yet seen a good list of what titles were hit.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
13hr ago
Yazidi or Armenians or Copts because they were successfully extinguished as viable populations
All 3 currently exist. There are millions of the latter 2.
Quantumfreakonomics
13hr ago
To be fair to Israel, there is a truly massive amount of resources flowing from United States evangelical organizations to Christian missionaries in Israel. It’s not much of a secret that the purpose of these missionaries is to convert Jews into Christians. I’m surprised it took them this long to remember they have borders.
DirtyWaterHotDog
13hr ago
aristocracy
Weren't fascist movements a reaction to erstwhile aristocracy ? They're started by revolutionaries who borrow their power from military and/or church. Both institutions reject blood relations in favor of loyalty to the cause.
Disagreeable people with public platforms are the first go. This guy would've whacked on day 2.
Is there an example of a near-fascist state with significant ethnic diversity that's succeeded ?
P.S: OP deleted their comment, so I'm going off the quote.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
13hr ago
2000 year old grievances
There was no conflict until, at the earliest, 140 years ago. Praytell, what "2000 year old grievances" do the Palestinians harbor and wage war over?
Ha, Mononoke is one of the Ghibli movies I think is just okay. Different strokes I suppose.
I did watch Death Note too, which you recommended in the original anime thread; I didn't like that either (granted, I did prefer it to Bebop and GitS). Not because of the reasons offered up that it was "too disturbing and amoral", far from it, I quite like things that lean in that direction, rather it felt like there was a lot of missed potential with the characters.
This is true for Light in particular. He was painted as a hubristic megalomaniac who was in large part motivated by a desire to acquire power; it would have been much more entertaining had he been given a legible and consistent moral code which just happened to conflict with that of L. As it was, Light felt one-dimensional and it seemed more like you were supposed to be disgusted by him more than you were supposed to understand him. Which isn't good, considering how much time you spend with this character throughout the show's runtime. I even felt it cheapened the dynamic between him and L, which could have been so much more dynamic and interesting had their differing philosophies and moralities ever been given a chance to clash.
Also, to be blunt, every time Misa Amane appeared on screen I felt like strangling her to death. She was just so aggressively annoying to me.
HereAndGone
13hr ago
Oh, way way back when the first shoots of trans right activism were budding, and it was still possible to have civilised conversations around the topic, I was part of a discussion elsewhere where we were assured up, down and sideways that any qualms were just slippery slope conspiracy thinking. No boy or man would incur the stigma of dressing like a woman or claiming to really be a girl in order to get into locker rooms or bathrooms, we were told.
And then events eventuated, and turns out "I am a girl even though all I've done is grow out my hair and change my name" is plenty okay enough to be worth it. For a while, at least, seems Lia Thomas is not having the career promised after all.
Turniper
13hr ago
This is a very pro-anomie sort of take. If my video game playing was eclipsing all my other recreation time, or my porn watching was impacting my sex life, or arguing with people on the internet was filling me with bile, I'd want the people in my life to bring that shit up. It's 2025. 'Just a boyfriend' isn't a thing. The title doesn't mean they're family, but it is definitely not a sign they're not serious and heading in the direction of either a lifelong relationship or proper marriage.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
13hr ago
I hit 15k in MathAcademy today. It feels nice, beyond that, not much. I am trying to stick to a schedule so that I can do my sabbatical well. Life's not ideal, I am still grateful to be where I am, as long as I get the work ethic I desire, I do not have much to complain about. I am nearly a quarter of the way through with object oriented python which is my first intermediate programming book. If I can do it by next week, I will be super happy!
No_one
13hr ago
The narrative about Assad the evil eye doctor using nerve gas to make it clear how evil he is compared to the moderate democratic Al-Qaeda affiliates he was fighting is complicated bc the munitions supposedly used to dispense the nerve gas being very short-ranged garage made contraptions that would have required a truck convoy to get within 1-2 km of the targets. The state department map shows that the only place where these could have been safe was Western Ghouta, were funnily enough basically no actual sarin residue was found.. All the places with actual evidence of nerve gas were fairly deep into the area where government did not have solid presence in.
Those who want to see it in painful detail, aerodynamic calculations were made and published.
Turniper
13hr ago
Try getting really good at cooking and the slightest bit hurt whenever you slave away over some delicious medium calorie dish and she only grazes at it?
I'm not being facetious. This is how several cultures handle forcing people to eat more. Shame is a powerful tool, and there are far more effective forms of it than shaming people for their personal failings. Handling cooking for a home grants one a great deal of power over the health of the family, for good or ill.
HereAndGone
13hr ago
he was not an American, but actually Burmese
Finally an explanation for orange man! Not orange, Oriental!
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
13hr ago
various DEI labor requirements
As far as I'm aware, most of these are (1) self-imposed by HR departments and not actual regulation and (2) falling out of favor. The regulation that I'm most aware of actually pisses everyone off, which is "Woman-owned businesses", where everyone just registers their wife as the proprietor of their business and simply acts as a hurdle for building more housing.
hate speech laws
I've not heard this specifically referred to as "woke" yet, because "hate speech laws" go back at least a century in the West, and "woke" only goes back to ~2012 at the earliest. Speech laws in general are abused by both leftwing and rightwing movements (in my personal opinion, I guess).
HereAndGone
13hr ago
This is also part of it. I can't understand how Owens transitioned (heh!) from "well-regarded conservative commentator" to whatever the heck she's doing now.
He called Israel unwelcoming to Christian organizations and then met with the Palestinian authority yesterday.
Letter from him qua ambassador: https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/07/IMG_0737-merged.pdf
HereAndGone
13hr ago
They shouldn't even need a medical test, just hospital records of the birth of her kids. So, yeah: I think the ridiculousness of the claims undercuts the Macrons' case. Had Owens been claiming that Mme. Macron was a cougar who had sex with then-15 year old Emmanuel when he was a student in her class, then sure, go ahead with the defamation case. But "she's saying I'm really a man! who stole someone else's identity! and then married my blood-related literally young enough to be my son husband so we're in a gay incestuous underage relationship!" is so extreme, the standard of "would a reasonable person be led to believe this?" can't be proven. And Michelle Obama hasn't sued anybody for similar claims, so it makes the Macrons look even more thin-skinned and, dare I say it, Trumpian?
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
13hr ago
The ideal body has higher than average amounts of proportional muscle mass alongside slightly lower fat percentage. The same levels of fat look markedly different as muscle mass means less adiposity. Greek sculptures were not super lean. Ditto for women, the ones people find hot have higher muscle mass, allowing them to have way better fat distribution.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13hr ago
Hard agree, I actually got two separate false positives not too terribly long ago when trying to fix up a copy of Civ 3: Complete that I had bought from GOG. The first false positive was because the original Civ 3: Conquests disc that had the missing scenario that I wanted to be able to play had Gamespy on it, which was unsigned code and the second was that I was attempting to install command-line software that would allow me to unpack the .CAB file to grab the single scenario file from the CD that was missing in my install of Civ 3.
GUH.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
13hr ago
This is actually worse because the woke are not a monolithic entity.
I mean I have to say thank you, because this is my point entirely throughout this entire thread.
Ask 40 contemporary social liberals what their top 10 concerns are and you'll get 400 different things that should be addressed.
I'm not saying this as some defense of the movement. If I'm being honest, I'm frustrated by that as well because I don't feel like there's meaningful progress to the things that I think matter most.
It's greatest "strength" is also it's greatest weakness.
HereAndGone
13hr ago
I mean, I find it ridiculous that a 4chan, sorry, I mean "notorious disinformation hub 4chan" meme is being taken this seriously, but then I remember the OK sign. And it seems some French political rag started it, but that's French politics. All the support for Charlie Hebdo printing cartoons of Mohammed (and I mean this quite separately from the attacks and firebombing) should also extend to stupid right-wing satire about the left-wing president's missis. I acknowledge it's not very comfortable for Mme. Macron, but her husband should be thicker-skinned because yeah, politics.
I hate to give Owens anything, but a free-speech defence may be the way to go here: 'if you are happy about re-publishing cartoons mocking a venerated figure for a couple of billion people, then le président can suck it up'. I think "this claim is so bonkers nobody can possibly take it at face value, seeing as how the woman has given birth to three kids, so this is plainly satirical and not meant as serious political commentary much less claims to be factual" is how it'll go.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
13hr ago
He made it a public issue that Israel was withholding evangelical visas and then visited the church that Israel shelled (killing three Catholics)
The most obvious historical analogy is 9/11 and the Global War on Terror. Ironically nobody wants to use that one. Free Palestine types don’t want to because it shows that Israel’s response isn’t particularly unique and that America has glassed half the Middle East in response to terrorism before. Pro-Israel types don’t like it because it’s a reminder that what Israel is doing is probably a terrible idea in the long run.
10 to 25 percent of the Jewish population of Israel has citizenship elsewhere and that’s disproportionately held by the wealthier upper strata of the population. Given western polices toward family migration that could probably expand to 40 percent in a matter of months. About one percent of the country’s Jewish population left the country in 2024.
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