domain:epistle.us
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8hr ago
The only time I see The Apprentice referenced online is when the film version of Trump gives his sigma speech about tactics and Trump supporters go 'based!' see here for an example. They reappropriate the work of others: https://x.com/PierceKeaton/status/1865222291157598458
I mean, did they really think they were attacking Trump by making their fictional version of him spell out his strategy in a coherent way that makes it sound like he knows how to play the media for maximum effect?
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
The children of Asian and Hispanic immigrants seem to integrate just fine. Like sure there's activist exceptions but by and large second and third gen Hispanics and Orientals are just... Americans.
jkf
8hr ago
Wouldn't the next step be to actually do this? We've "made fusion power" quite some time ago, it's just not significantly energy positive, so not super-useful as a generating station.
There's no such requirement if it's a method of making gold -- it doesn't even need to be net-positive in terms of gold value for it to be an interesting thing to try in the lab.
So I'm a bit suspicious that it's not actually that easy to do -- although maybe they are kicking off Project Rumplestiltskin at Livermore Labs as we speak, who knows.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
8hr ago
I really appreciate this comment, because it reveals that I have put too much trust in commentators who are either extrapolating from incomplete information, or simply grasping at straws. I should have used more humility before speaking confidently regarding a topic about which I lacked sufficient direct knowledge!
Lazuli
8hr ago
The biggest driver was just being able to sneak in games while work was slow.
Play Balatro instead. It's the perfect mobile game.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
I see he's banned now lol.
For two weeks. He'll be back and probably get another chance before a permaban.
But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here.
For this specific problem? Almost certainly graft by left-wing NGO's is the culprit in the eyes of most posters.
OliveTapenade
8hr ago
Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey.
Well, sure, but who on earth says that saying the name 'George Floyd' or that saying the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' (in reference to a movement and organisation called Black Lives Matter) constitutes endorsing anything? I don't see the concern here.
I can understand not wanting to use certain phrases because they frame an issue in a way you disagree with. For instance, I avoid saying the phrase 'marriage equality' because I think it is a gross mischaracterisation of the issue, and if I used it I think I would be accepting a strawman. Likewise there's a tic among some activists where they refuse to use the phrase 'pro-life' in any circumstances; they instead refer to pro-life activists as 'anti-abortion activists'.
But 'George Floyd' is just a name, and saying it implies nothing about whether one supports or opposes any political issue related to him. Likewise BLM is the name of an organisation. I don't think that saying it in that context constitutes a kind of endorsement.
Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. (And, by extension, the Celtic and North Germanic peoples of Continental Europe.) Gondor as a rough analogue for Roman-Celtic Britain, Rohan as the horse-obsessed Anglo-Saxons, Elves as the remnants of the pre-Aryan Neolithic peoples, etc.
This is expressly incorrect.
If you open up your copy of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes in the appendices that the Rohirrim do not resemble the Anglo-Saxons:
This linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances: a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain.
He represents the language of Rohan as old English in order to express its linguistic relationship to the common speech spoken by the hobbits, which he represents as modern English, but he says clearly that the folk of Rohan do not especially resemble the ancient English otherwise.
Likewise for Gondor, note Tolkien's Letter #294, where he is responding to and criticising the draft of an interview of him for the Daily Telegraph:
[Journalist:] Middle-earth .... corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe.
Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to 'Middle-earth'. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely 'Nordic' area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.
Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil. The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic'.
Tolkien analogises the return of the king to Gondor to the re-establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, with its capital in Rome. It seems to me that this would make Gondor or Minas Tirith the proper analogue to Rome itself, or Italy more generally. This seems supported by his intention that Gondor is, in terms of latitude, somewhere roughly between northern Italy and Greece or western Turkey.
I agree that The Rings of Power is garbage and that, in general, actors should be cast who plausibly resemble the characters they are intended to portray, but I want to nitpick that your claim about Tolkien's intentions here is just false.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8hr ago
+1. "Better graphics", undoubtedly, but that doesn't make a better video game.
FoundViaTwitter
8hr ago
We do have much better video games now, though.
Very debatable, especially if you include the early 2000s.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
8hr ago
The parallel comments already said about as much, but Iranian media does not represent the standard of communication that I would wish for this community to aspire to.
You may consider your rationale as being analogous to "my outgroup shoots at me, so I would be stupid to unilaterally disarm and not shoot at them", but perhaps it is more akin to "my outgroup has bad hygiene, so I would be stupid to unilaterally disarm and take a shower".
Y'know, your comment helped me clarify a thought I've had. It seems that there are several different beliefs that often get confused for one another because they are only subtly different.
- Liberalism: reject tribalism, embrace equality and "color-blindness," let's put aside our differences to get rich and live and in peace (classical /old-school liberals)
- Identitarianism: embrace tribalism, take from others and give to your own, by hook or by crook (e.g. ethnocentric immigrants, Black nationalists):
- Anti-White Identitarianism: Same as above, except your tribe prioritizes taking from whites first (mostly because it's easy pickin's, but also something something oppression). There's the Progressive variant that adds the rest of the intersectional totem pole under whites
so far, do familiar. But then
- Pro-Republic Liberal Identitarianism (there has to be a better name): embrace tribalism, (but reluctantly and only as a means to RETVRN to limited liberalism, not as an end in itself) because liberalism can only function as a fine-tuning knob on a cohesive society, not as a combat arena for rival incompatible cultures duking it out for supremacy.
Did I miss any?
oats_son
8hr ago
Sorry for the late reply, but I think the founding principles of America vs Japan are way different. America has a ton of stuff about equality and freedom in its founding document. The natural outcome there is the liberation of the slaves. Japan had no such thing. Also, Japan, like the rest of the Old World, was a way older thing, so the historical standard is stronger.
phailyoor
9hr ago
I was never a huge aldi shopper but it seems to be a direct copy of euro aldi, in a way that is quite strange to see for my American brain.
The thing I most noticed is the coin thing with the shopping carts and the cash boxes.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
9hr ago
The stuff being stolen most nowadays is high value-to-volume non-perishable packaged goods which are easy to fence. Razor blades are a classic example, but if you look at places where shoplifted goods are being sold online or at what gets locked up in stores, laundry detergent is probably the number one target.
Poors shoplifting for personal consumption happens (particularly for booze) but isn't what is closing grocery stores.
Tiber727
9hr ago
Eh, I agree with you that Trump keeps bringing this back up when he should shut up. I occasionally look at /r/conservative because it's interesting to me to see which news circulates and which doesn't circulate in different bubbles. This one does have staying power in denting Trump's popularity among conservatives. But beyond remaining a sore spot and blemish in Trump's record, I don't think it amounts to anything concrete. Trump can't run again anyway, and it's not like they're going to start voting Democrat. Republicans in Congress are mostly shutting up and either doing nothing because Trump is doing everything via EOs, or quietly passing a few things here and there but not talking about it. Democrats are trying to keep this alive as long as possible because it's the only thing they've managed to hit him with that has had any effect at all.
gattsuru
9hr ago
I'm a big fan of noticing that he's against most books. The man's a distillation of every criticism of 'elite human capital' that isn't.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
9hr ago
I wouldn't describe the immigrants I know as being "given" much beyond the opportunity to immigrate to the U.S. That's significant!, but they worked their ass off to climb from their poor neighborhoods to Fairfax County. I also don't think my family is perceived as the "outgroup" in any meaningful sense that affects our well-being.
It's great that you don't feel any ill effects from this because you can apparently afford to live in NOVA. I briefly considered moving back to NOVA to send my kids to a very specific and unique school I once attended, but real estate is so outrageous that even with my pretty decent tech salary we would be mortgage-poor if we tried. I visited my old neighborhood -- a nice middle to upper middle class neighborhood -- and it is now apparently entirely Indian/Pakistani/Arab, each driveway has a bunch of cars so presumably the houses are packed with people, and our local grocery store now looks like a halal bazaar. Even if I could afford to live there, I don't think I would, because I don't think me and my (nonwhite!) American family would fit in anymore.
If we hadn't had have massive immigration, there would be less pressure on real estate and housing (fewer people, lower cultural acceptance of people packing in like sardines and paying insane rent/mortgages) and thus a higher standard of living for existing Americans, and my neighborhood would still be recognizably American instead of some Indian/Middle Eastern colony. It's easy to be shielded from this sort of thing when you apparently make enough money to live comfortably in NOVA -- you're probably surrounded by other very affluent people who have integrated well.
FoundViaTwitter
9hr ago
You can pave over a lot of problems with prosperity and wealth, but when times are hard those attitudes will come to the fore.
It's not that I disagree, but how do you think these attitudes would manifest to hurt my family?
naraburns
nihil supernum
9hr ago
Sorry, I was thinking in the other direction--I think young people are the ones who may have better reason to feel this is all constraining their liberty. The 1990s seem to have been "peak America" in several ways--probably the best "Free Speech" era, certainly an economic dream time, cost disease in education had begun but was years from spiraling out of control, etc.
We do have much better video games now, though.
Crowstep
9hr ago
It's worth mentioning that the Pink Tax probably doesn't exist.
Unsurprisingly, feminist academics who look into whether women are arbitrarily charged more because of sexism tend not to be the most dispassionate researchers.
anon_
9hr ago
I don't think one should change one's opinion on the object level based on popular sentiment.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
10hr ago
Oh, thanks for outing yourself. I already banned you for two weeks because you keep making shitty comments, but since you just admitted to being a very specific ban evader, I will make it permanent.
I don't get why you think this makes you clever, but whatever.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
10hr ago
What kind of an incel would be school shooter keeps a diary?
One who is also transgender -- Audrey Hale, whose "manifesto" was more like a diary -- though that wouldn't fit the narrative. Also I don't know if Hale was an incel.
Meat shoplifting is 100% a thing and way worse for the store's bottom line than stealing rice or tomatoes. Mostly not for personal consumption(although it does sometimes happen), but for resale- meat is expensive unless your cost to acquire rounds to 0.
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