Friday
Awarenesss
1yr ago
What are your unique date ideas? I keep a repository and am always looking for more. Here are a few of my top ideas:
Fake Sick Day
Call in sick to work and go spend a day on the town. Activities may include (shout out to LA for half of these):
- Dress undercover and drive by offices for the thrill
- Nature-y park for reading and charcuterie board
- Dinner at a nice restaurant
- Anything from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
- Anything where it's normally super crowded on a weekend
Long Night Out
Book the cheapest round-trip flight you can find that leaves on Friday night and returns Saturday (or Saturday-Sunday). Go live up the destination city as hard as possible for those 24 hours. No sleep, no accommodations. Better bring a portable phone charger. Good city destinations include Chicago, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Atlanta. And yes, you'll be flying Frontier or Spirit.
Conditions:
- Only fanny packs (men) or purses (women) allowed
- You cannot book a hotel
- Renting a car is fine
Fashion Week
Create your own [city you live in] fashion week outfit. There are three paths:
- Find inspiration from New York or Paris fashion week outfits, then order online accordingly
- Head to the nearest thrift store and make do with what they have there
- Combination (preferred): Get inspiration, then go to the nearest thrift store
Imposing a spending limit is a good idea because it keeps pressure low and forces creativity. You can dress up similarly to your partner or completely different. Double date (or more) recommended.
Blind Dinner
Option 1 is to find a place intentionally serving a blind dinner where all guests are blinded. These generally cost a pretty penny.
Option 2 is to call ahead to a place and explain to them your intention, ask them to choose a few items for you, then show up and put the blindfolds on. This requires significant trust and ability to withstand social judgment.
Option 3 is unilateral: one partner makes the meal while the other is blindfolded.
Scavenger Hunt
- Choose a part within or walkable area of the city
- Hide a couple of fun things throughout: food (candy), drink (shooters, beers, small bottles of wine), toys (Chinese finger traps, water guns, Nerf guns)
- Create a poem, map, or list of hints for where to find the items:
- Go hunting!
Adult Prom
- Make dinner reservations at a nice restaurant, preferably Italian
- Get dressed up in prom attire. Women wear long dresses and men wear suits or tuxedos.
- Take pictures at scenic spot
- Take an Uber Black to the restaurant
- Eat, drink, and be merry
- Go dancing (bonus points for dancing in the restaurant)
Food Crawl Trying different offerings of the same dish is fun. Different restaurants offer different takes on the same entree and provide different atmospheres to enjoy them in.
- Choose a food that both people like and is easily shareable. Good options include:
- Burgers
- Sushi
- Pizza
- Tacos
- Dessert (smaller portions required)
- Find a place within the city that is easily walkable
- Find multiple (two or three) restaurants that are within the area
- Make reservations (as needed and available) at each
- One hour or slightly less per restaurant is good
- Eat at place1, walk to place2, eat at place2, etc.
- Alternate who chooses the option at each place or agree together
gattsuru
1yr ago
A state judge in Illinois ruled Wednesday that former President Donald J. Trump had engaged in insurrection and was ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.
The decision by Judge Tracie R. Porter of the State Circuit Court in Cook County was stayed until Friday. Judge Porter, a Democrat, said the State Board of Elections had erred in rejecting an attempt to remove Mr. Trump and said the board “shall remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed. ”
Emphasis mine, and fuck.
cjet79
1yr ago
Last Friday I was on the hunt for a Shooter game, and I had some not fully nailed down requirements for what I was looking for.
Thanks to everyone that left recommendations.
I did eventually find what I was looking for. I realized I was interested in more longer range engagements. I ended up searching the "military sim" genre on steam, and got https://store.steampowered.com/app/460930/Tom_Clancys_Ghost_Recon_Wildlands/.
It definitely has more of the long ranged engagements I was looking for, and the weapons aren't gimped to the point of uselessness for the sake of close range engagements. My average kill distance in the game is 68m, and my furthest kill is 360m.
It reminds me a lot of Metal Gear Solid V, but a little less cheesy. You also aren't a lone person. You have a squad. 3npcs on single player, but I think the multiplayer allows other people to hop in and join. It makes for an interesting set of mechanics, because you can be shot and go down easier without turning the game into a total grind. Because your squadmates can revive you.
Fun game so far, would recommend it if it goes on sale again (I got it 80% discounted).
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Friday Not Fun - My calf (or peroneal tendon, I'm not sure) is injured and I can't run currently.
Friday Fun - Zwift remains a fantastic option for anyone that has a few bucks for a bike trainer and the space to set it up. It may still be winter in Wisconsin, but riding a bike and watching basketball isn't that bad anyway.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1yr ago
I made a mistake in this Wellness post. I forgot how highly smart people value their intelligence, and so my claim that I no longer felt stupid here is all anyone can focus on and has caused great injury.
You've missed the point of why people are upset with you and I honestly can't tell if you genuinely don't see it, or if you're trolling. People aren't annoyed because you said that the posts here are getting less intelligent. They are annoyed because you are using people's good-faith responses to your Friday Fun post as some kind of gotcha.
Your actions here, simply put, come across like you were setting out to pick on people from the beginning. Of course nobody likes that. If you simply had posted about how you felt like the posts here have gone downhill (and left the movie thread out of it entirely), nobody would be upset.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1yr ago
It was the Friday fun thread. I don't want anyone to feel bad in the Friday fun thread. This is not a speak plainly issue because the joke was only, in my eyes, a clear cut example of the issue of surface level engagement. It was in itself not a big deal, but it both made me think of a problem I had seen more and more and appeared to be a perfect example of it.
I made a mistake in this Wellness post. I forgot how highly smart people value their intelligence, and so my claim that I no longer felt stupid here is all anyone can focus on and has caused great injury. I am sorry. You should probably mod me. Threatening to shut down analogies and metaphors on the speak plainly rule is absurd.
Lewis2
1yr ago
I think that would be an excellent thread, maybe in one of the Friday Fun Threads. I feel like that’s come up before, though, either here or on DSL (or maybe even on SSC). If someone could find an earlier discussion, that would provide a great starting point.
If I was the Catholic Church or [insert non-Catholic denominational leadership], I would be funding such groups as hard as possible and conditioning my political donations on candidates plugging the idea in their stump speeches.
Yeah, big winner there. "Let's all be lukewarm vaguely-Protestant non-churchgoers who just want to be respectable and go along with whatever is currently the Zeitgeist". Not that this hasn't happened; a lot of "go to Mass on Sunday" Catholics happily fell away when the social force of conformism round that disappeared (look at the vocations crisis).
You want people to sign up to a church-that's-not-a-church, but why would they do that? If they want to join something, they'll join a sports club or hobby group or something that gives them a sense of enjoyment in return for participation and effort, not "out of your limited after work free time, go to this meeting to agree over how there should be more litter bins on the streets".
Also the Ten Commandments are being edited down to fit in with social mores; no of course we don't approve of murder, but abortion is not murder. Euthanasia is just mercy and death with dignity. No adultery? Well me and Mrs. Jones have a thing going on, we both know it's wrong, but it's much too strong to let it go now. Anyway, divorce is now legal and why are you trying to force me to stay in a dead marriage? Lying? Oh come on, everyone tells fibs. Don't steal? Shoplifting is a victimless crime, that's what insurance is for. No taking the name of the Lord in vain? Jesus H. Christ on a fucking crutch and the bicycle he rode in on, what kind of language police crap is this? The New Commandments are pretty much Racism Bad, Phobes Bad, Capitalism Bad. (Orange Man Bad optional).
EDIT: Isn't there already Christian Atheism in America, in the guise of the Civic Religion? Fourth of July is the sacred holiday, Washington and Lincoln the blessed saints, anecdotes like Washington and the cherry tree being the new Golden Legend (and indeed nearly deliberately created to be so), we are the shining city on a hill, exceptionalism, the Heavenly Father (carefully not getting any more denominational than that) has blessed us, God (of your own personal choice or value system) bless America, hail the flag our sacred relic and emblem!
But that sort of patriotism is now bad and wicked and evil, isn't it? I think the new civic religion is growing up to be Pride Month our sacred holy days, Pride Flags in all their novel iterations the sacred emblems, Happy Holidays the festivals and feast days where we worship at the altars of Mammon, the shopping malls and online stores (Black Friday and Cyber Monday as Lenten/Advent replacements) etc. People make jokes about the blessed martyr St. Floyd but I think that's truer than you know. You have Secular Religion Christian Atheism already, you just don't recognise that yet.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1yr ago
I think you're in the right. You pre-discussed valentine's day and 'did it' on the Saturday. Then she wanted it again on the Wednesday in spite of your earlier agreement and got upset when you didn't do it twice. You're somehow in the wrong because you should have known that any deals about valentines day are completely void because of how important it is to her. I don't know how taking her to dinner and a symphony of all things is half assing it.
I applaud you for talking it out and fixing it, but I think your wife has been immature and this sort of thing is likely to happen again unless she works on herself. I kind of get it because my long time girlfriend will negotiate doing something for her birthday on the weekend before it happens because we have more free time. Then she will 'spontaneously' want to do something on her weekday birthday evening even though I'm tired from work. Then she will try triple dipping and ask to do something on the Friday night post birthday because we couldn't do 'enough' on her birthday. I was lucky that when I calmly talked her through what had happened and said 'its enough, we've already done all this stuff so you can't have a "Birthday Week" where I'm at your beck and call' she pulled her head in. I think this is because she knows I'm not a doormat and that I'm willing to weather emotional storms. Ironically because I'm willing to endure fights, they don't happen and we manage to talk things out before they ever get that far.
Its this last part that's important. While its ideal to 'never go to bed angry' and resolve fights on the day they happen, I think its more important to show your partner that you can set proper boundaries when you are actually in the right. If she can't help feeling upset and self regulate, well that's something you need to learn to tolerate until she finally gets over it. Be willing to extend an olive branch, but don't apologize. If you can't self regulate and push through when your wife is unhappy with you (even though she is in the wrong), well I'd say try to work on that.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1yr ago
Does anyone know what happened to “The Hock” guy? Did he die or what?
Was there a Deadpool on him? I demand answers.
Before anyone objects that this doesn’t belong in Friday fun, this is certainly fun for me, as ghoulish as it may be.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I'm going to make a different critique than most people, here :
It means that if people like you, and you’re doing well, then you can commit lots of mild misdeeds and journalists will never bother you. But if you become unpopular, or seem weird, or take a stand against something widely believed, then investigative journalists will dig up all your decades-old mistakes and ruin your reputation.
This is hilariously naive. It's not just or even mostly journalists, in the same way that a pressure wave isn't just or even mostly any one particle.
There's a poster on tumblr named brazenautomaton, who's a bit of a mad artist in all of the best ways. One of those are his rants -- and I use the term as a compliment -- on popularity. I can't find the best one of the top of my head, but as a good example:
It’s not self-hatred at all. It’s popularity. These “woke” white men who can’t shut up about how evil white people are tend to be attractive, well-off, upper-middle-class, and most important of all, popular. Inherently popular. Other people instinctively align themselves with their goals and desires, because they are popular. Because they are popular, their goals and desires are “Punish unpopular people”.
If you are well-off, attractive, upper-middle-class, and popular, you have very very little to fear from social punishment, because people will not WANT to punish you. They want to punish unpopular people. One of the best ways you can find unpopular people so you can punish them, is to just start trying to punish everyone in your zone of perception – the other popular people will remain unpunished, the middling people will suffer a bit but you don’t care, and the unpopular people will be revealed by how much punishment rains upon them because they do not have popularity and thus are unable to stop it from happening. Then, once you have located the unpopular people by seeing who actually gets punished from your omnidirectional punishment attempts, you can continue to punish them. Forever and ever and ever, because it will never end, and they will not stop, and they will not be stopped.
Yes, this is clinical depression, though see Scott re: Malcolm Muggeridge. It's also non-falsifiable: anyone who can be punished can't be popular, and anyone who is popular can't be punished. But it's also a pattern that exists.
Scott knows this, more intimately than most. It's not like that's even a one-off! But I can play examples of the confessed rapist you could not even discuss the 'allegations' of over at RPGnet, until they annoyed someone enough to get booted, and then the deluge. I can give examples as severe as alleged grooming and as minor as 'appropriated her own culture' in the furry fandom. Nor is it specific to online or the left: the pastor everyone loves until, posthumously, it turns out everyone had a horror story about is trope with a lot of recently-live examples. Nor it is about big stuff: the Friday Fun thread conversation about Palworld has some steelmen, but it's almost certainly downstream of some popular people wanting to start wars over AIgen.
You and I will do it too. It's hard to care for what's real, rather than what's talked about and what the people around you find important.
Maybe Scott doesn't think it necessary to say, maybe he knows that one of the big rules for being on the Inside is that you don't mention that there's an Inside.
But it's not just the journalists doing this, and I'm increasingly convinced that they're neither driving the stampede nor surfing the crowd.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
And in that, I am very much American. How much does the average Democrat care about Republicans? How much does the average Republican care about Democrats?
Little, if asked in those specific terms. A lot, if not asked in those specific terms. If you ask Republican Richard what he thinks about Democrats, he might give you a pretty negative answer, but if you ask him whether he cares about his neighbor, Democrat Dave, he will frequently say that he cares a lot. Dave and Richard disagree about quite a few things, like gay marriage, and how much the rich should pay in taxes, and what the best way to handle medical funding is, but Dave and Richard both fly American flags, they both have pickups trucks, they cheer for the same football team, they've lived in the same community for decades, and they have a beer on the porch together on Friday nights.
Note that Richard and Dave above are two real people that I know, just renamed for alliteration. They're common and ordinary, particularly in rural areas. Adding Rhajiv and Juan that don't give a shit about the United States makes things worse for Rich and Dave in the long run, even if Rhajiv is a decent software developer and Juan will do construction cheaply.
Any US-dwelling right-wing Motte poster who feels more affinity to some foreign writer who agrees politically with him than he does to some SJW leftist who was born and bred in the US is just the same as I am.
Many of my neighbors are what I would call "shitlibs". They're also very nice people and fantastic neighbors. I feel much more affinity for them than some political fellow traveler thousands of leagues away.
Frequent_Anybody2984
1yr ago
Do you have that same energy for the US congressman Brian Mast who wore his IDF uniform to Congress and said
“As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” Mast wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, alongside several photos of him wearing the uniform Friday.
and then:
“Tlaib’s got her flag. I got my uniform,” Mast wrote. “’Global Day of Rage’ my ass.”
Someone like this, along with the Israel lobby, is much more likely to hurt the US and get it into stupid foreign entanglements because of hi dual loyalty than anyone in the Squad.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
I wouldn't argue that drinking all that soup is a healthy idea, but I don't eat ramen all that much, like maybe once every two or three months, so I enjoy it when I have it. I am in Kansai and generally people here are a bit swarthy (There's a nice stereotype for you.)
Edit: Speaking of Domino's we had the "New Yorker" last Friday with some Iberico bacon and spinach pizza. I usually make pizzas myself, but if you get them hot, and can swallow the steep price, those were both pretty good.
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Master and his Emissary, slow progress. This book has a way of making one reflect on things he's heard or seen in the past.
The right temporal region appears to be essential for the integration of two seemingly unrelated concepts into a meaningful metaphoric expression. Fascinatingly, however, cliched metaphorical or non-literal expressions are dealt with in the left hemisphere...
I recall George Orwell's (I think?) quip that people were forgetting how to make their own metaphors, and were just using ones that don't have any relation in themselves to the topic at hand or to each other.
Edit: There's a good book thread in the Fun Thread.
Interesting. If I went to a friend’s after school it was always assumed I was staying for dinner and would be picked up afterwards at 8 or 9 (after my parents had eaten), not before.
There were three kids in our house and it was very normal to have 1-2 (or more on Fridays) friends of mine or my siblings over for dinner pretty much every weekday.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
Well, not thread, but the usual post in the Friday Fun Thread about reading habits.
Anyway the point is we should call it Le Motte Juste.
Nice. Someone can correct me, but I think it would have to be La Motte Juste.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1yr ago
Thirdly, the Friday deadline is probably China's last warning; there was a last Wednesday deadline that's come and gone too. While this assuredly represents a decline in the federal state capacity, that's the bigger story than border posturing.
The funny thing about calling it China's last warning is that the PRC is assuredly watching for signs of chaos in the USA.
yofuckreddit
1yr ago
Um, this is the Friday fun thread, sir. I dunno about work stories.
I work in software consulting, and if I regaled everyone here with dumb shit my clients (and, occasionally, my consultants) do, there is a bottomless supply of "laugh so you don't cry".
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
The due diligence question is obviously is this actually a fundamental aspect of science as stated or is it misrepresenting a more nuanced principle?
Politically, this is the instrumentalization of Chesterton's Fence (and the related concept I've taken to calling "Chesterton's Ruins"). The status quo bias presumes the wisdom of the past, in a Panglossian logic, isn't so bad, so you need to justify any changes. It's the conservatism of the comfortable.
I just watched this happen at a local courthouse. A new young judge was just seated. He wants everyone to think well of him, he wants to be seen to be energetic not lazy, he looks at his schedule and his first trial isn't until the end of next month! So he calls the two lawyers in the case and says, can you do Friday? They, of course, say yes, because judges never reschedule anything unless it is really important and they don't want to piss off the new guy.
But now those two lawyers are calling everyone else they're working with and rescheduling things to make Friday work, and the ripple effects are felt throughout the courthouse. And all the other judges are mad at the new judge, for fucking with the system. But he had no idea, he just saw an opportunity to do something and did it.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
So, some thoughts-
First, Greg Abbott does not take stupid risks. He has thought through, gamed out, and verified his assumptions about every aspect of this scenario, and he has a backup plan in case he turns out to be wrong. That backup plan is probably not "defect to Russia", and it's also probably thoroughly planned with assets in place to activate at a moment's notice. My first thought is "the shooting starts and we take over the pantex plant", but that seems overly dramatic. It seems very plausible that he has a plan to crash the grid in much of the country by cutting off natural gas shipments, and that would explain his timing this for January when late summer gives him political cover. It also seems implausible that support from other republican governors wasn't arranged before releasing a letter essentially claiming the federal government has lost the mandate of Heaven and so Texas doesn't have to listen to the supreme court; the twitter DR is claiming responsibility for convincing them all to throw in with him, but just think about that until you realize why it's probably not the case. At the very least, Stitt, Desantis, and Youngkin were probably in on it. I would not be surprised if there was a pre-planned border patrol mutiny or a few colonels able and willing to do something high-profile and panic-generating.
Second, Greg Abbott backing down is not going to happen unless he can cast it as a win somehow. It's unreasonable to assume the federal government will make large concessions, and the rally around the flag effect in Texas isn't proven but it's intuitively obvious. The most likely scenario to me is a high stakes standoff that goes nowhere. Federal troops shooting at state troops or arresting a sitting governor is the sort of thing that crashes the stock market when Biden's trying to treat it like so many frightened horses, so I don't expect much past posturing and defiance on either side.
Thirdly, the Friday deadline is probably China's last warning; there was a last Wednesday deadline that's come and gone too. While this assuredly represents a decline in the federal state capacity, that's the bigger story than border posturing.
Fourthly, Abbott has endorsed a series of primary challengers to accused rinos in the Texas legislature in the upcoming primary. Given that he became governor by being a constitutional lawyer with a winning record at the supreme court, he knew he was going to lose in court. The rally around the flag effect might be a benefit to him here if he's trying to get rid of enough moderates to solidify one party control over the legislature.
Further context here- https://www.themotte.org/post/824/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/178887?context=8#context
kopperfish
1yr ago
I disagree that
all of our art sucks
There's plenty of good music.
For starters, The Beatles are boring. Maybe it's my zoomer ass not having grown up with them, but it's 4/4 pop-rock with uninteresting lyrics.
Little darlin', I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darlin', it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say, it's alright
Which is...fine. It's easy listening music, maybe the production was impressive back then, but I don't feel it's stood the test of time.
The 21st century has brought a lot of innovative, unique, or masterfully composed music releasing.
Deathspell Omega's "The Furnaces of Palingenesia" is possibly the only sober depiction of the platonically ideal fascist society in humanity's art output. From a composition perspective, it's masterful, but I suspect people more schooled in music could explain why better than I could, so I'll just excerpt a couple lyrics.
From the song "The Fires of Frustration"
We will burn and not explain, and this will feel ecstatic
This exact mentality is present everywhere and I've never seen it summed up quite this succinctly. You see it in a Twitter mob ruining a life, a riot burning down a small business owner's life savings, a primitive tribe butchering its foes purely on instinct, a mass shooter waging war against the universe - encapsulated in a short statement that makes perfect sense, underpinned by echoing, growled vocals, a wall-of-sound guitar mass that has tantalizingly discernible melodies amidst the chaos, and impossibly frenetic drumming. It's art in its purest form, raw human reality given form.
Another quote from the song "Ad Arma", which I feel needs no accompanying commentary:
The perfectibility of human nature is infinite: we shall therefore nurture infinite dreams with infinite amounts of blood. Failures are therefore successes and mere steps on the triumphant march towards bliss
If this doesn't resonate with a Motteposter I don't know what will.
On the topic of violence, give Mili's "Dandelion Boys, Dandelion Girls" a listen.
At 1:53, the vocalist whispers
Whose child was I dreaming to pierce through the unworn tip of my bayonet?
As her voice grows in strength she sings, almost triumphantly,
Whose life had I decided was less worthy of respect?
Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Temptations, with Fortunate Son and War respectively, probably win the anti-war songs competition just through the test of time, but I would contend that Dandelion Boys, Dandelion Girls comes damn close in artistic merit, even if it falls far short in raw popularity.
Alright, that's a heavy topic, so let's go to more "fun" music. For now let's stay in the land of the rising sun with a Japanese electronic music producer:
Camellia's "Berserkerz' Warfare 345" is proof that music is still innovating. Nothing like this was even being conceived of in the days you speak of, but here it is now. It's purely digital, it's way too fast for your grandparents, your parents, or even your older siblings, and in the 60s drums were not doing this nonsense. We can debate quality or artistic merit, but it's certainly innovative, and it gets my blood pumping faster than anything released before this millennium. See also Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" EP, which spawned an entire genre of purely computer-generated piss-off-your-dad music, and was tremendously popular to boot. Electronic music existed well before this, but it wasn't anywhere near as belligerent, chaotic, or willing to subvert genre trends.
Oh dear. I've mostly gone off into niche genres. Even Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" (the most popular song off the EP of the same name), only has 195 million plays on Spotify, a pale shadow of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" with over a billion, or Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper", a personal favorite of mine, with half a billion.
So let's talk popular music. Lil Nas X dropped "Old Town Road", which was catchy enough to get almost 1.5 billion plays on Spotify, and innovative enough to damn near spark a race war between rap and country fans. He then released "Industry Baby", which has more plays than Old Town Road, and is similarly earworm-y. I think it's a fascinating cultural artifact, because the music video (NSFW warning) is almost downright pornographic in an extremely morally degenerate manner. It features homoerotic black nudity in the context of "prison bitch" culture and a touch of Satanic imagery just for kicks, and somehow spawned next to no controversy. Debate its quality all you like, it's a useful cultural landmark - much like The Beatles.
I take issue with the statement
Then of course that was probably the peak of black culture with incredible artistic output that they will probably never reach again.
"End It" is a black-fronted punk/hardcore band that is blowing any traditionally white bands in the scene out of the water, in my opinion. "New Wage Slavery" transcends the entire discography of Knocked Loose or The Acacia Strain, both traditionally popular bands in those genre circles. And if you haven't heard of a little band called Death Grips, watch "I've Seen Footage" performed live and realize that black-fronted punk bands can captivate a majority-white audience of angry kids better than almost any white musician right now. These are my niche examples and entirely disregard the fact that black rappers can pull white crowds big enough that literal deaths occur.
Beyond music,
I don't watch many movies, so I can't speak to a 21st-century equivalent to Monty Python or Clockwork Orange. Despite that, I'll take a stab at movies that subvert expectations. In "The Departed", the finale where (spoilers) basically every major character dies is masterfully executed, and also subverted the shit out of my expectations. "You Were Never Really Here" is a movie about a mercenary with PTSD, and its inaugural fight scene presents itself like it's going to be a John Wick style one-man-army movie, only to cut to security cameras showing the protagonist vomiting at the doorway before muted, off-camera, implied, or out of focus violence occurs to all the nameless security guards. Subversive and brilliant.
I started compiling a list of literature like Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and John Scalzi's "Old Man's War", and then some YouTube content that has more or less supplanted things like SNL in my eyes like Almost Friday TV's sketch comedy, but it occurred to me that I'm not sure I've touched on your central argument.
Is any of this a peak in art?
That's a more fascinating question, and one I'm substantially less qualified to answer. Other posters, I think, have made reasoned arguments for whether a peak is occurring, will occur, or can occur due to technology fragmenting fandoms, and I don't wish to rehash their arguments here. But I take major issue with the statement
all our art sucks
because from my perspective it's simply not true. There's more and better art available to us than at any point in human history. We just can't tell what of it will stand the test of time yet.
There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.
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The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.
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A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.
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Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.
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Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).
This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.
This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.
Edit: Trump weighs in
This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.
Eetan
1yr ago
In The Philippines, highly devout Roman Catholics will literally nail themselves to crosses during Good Friday to absolve themselves of sin and demonstrate their true devotion to the faith.
Does there exist a secular analogue to this tradition? Where can I be publicly crucified to profess my undying love for the prevailing secular orthodoxy?
Numerous atheist/secular/nonreligious people sacrificed their lives for causes they believed in.
For some current non-lethal example of extreme dedication, see, for example, various performative environmentalist actions.
A lot of these ideas are good, and Iappreciate you sharing them.
Let me offer an opposite but not opposing perspective here.
Short dates can be really good for the early part of a relationship. A lot of people still default to the dinner date framework; (maybe) drinks, followed by a full dinner with conversation that can range all over the place, and then either more drinks after (danger, Will Robinson!) or maybe some sort of planned not planned stroll. Your median western guy is going to try to get a kiss out of it to solidify physical attraction and setup a next date.
This isn't bad, per se, but it's the dating version of a multi-part SSC post. I can't read that shit on my phone while i'm taking a ... nevermind, you get it.
Short dates give more bang for your buck. One of the best discoveries I stumbled upon back in my gaming days was a lunch date on a weekend. Pressure on both parties is far reduced, you time bound it up front, single location, conversation is generally less deeply personal (you talk more about third part stuff, general observations, etc.) and more flirty-fun. If anything physical does happen, it's also similarly "breezy."
The outcome is a feeling of just pure fun. That's a big win early for a lot of folks, especially women, who are used to prepping for dates like they're depositions, and then doing an after action report with their girlfriends. Furthermore, if it's a totally no-match, you have Friday / Saturday night still open to do whatever you want to get that bad taste out of your mouth, instead of doing the awkward post-bad-date shuffle back to your place and watch shitty netflix while the frozen burrito reheats and rotates.
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