A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr ago
he was not an American, but actually Burmese
Finally an explanation for orange man! Not orange, Oriental!
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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."
11hr 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
11hr 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
11hr 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
☕️
11hr ago
He made it a public issue that Israel was withholding evangelical visas and then visited the church that Israel shelled (killing three Catholics)
yunyun333
11hr ago
Despise is a strong word. Sure the Babylonians annihilated Jerusalem, but the Israelites did foolishly try to rebel, and moving around conquered populations was a common tactic. Cyrus the Great famously let the exiles return and rebuild their temple. They did get into conflict with the Greeks and Romans over their unique heno/monotheistic thing.
I have another criticism of them in the link here if you would like to respond. Cowboy Bebop does not only have a substandard plot; it lacks any semblance of worldbuilding and logical consistency.
Honky Tonk Women, the episode I singled out as one of the worst of the early episodes in this regard? The entire plot relies on Spike going to that specific casino, at the same time the trade is happening, sitting down at the right table, looking very similar to the guy who is supposed to make the deal, deciding to keep one chip, bumping into the guy who was meant to make the deal and then accidentally swapping chips with him. What really gets me about this is not just the insane coincidence, it's also the fact that later in the episode Gordon offers to pay Spike for the chip and they make an attempt at swapping it again, but this time they don't faff around with any of that casino bullshit; they decide to stand on the surface of a spaceship to make the swap. It's unclear why they didn't just choose to do this in the first place, since it seems much easier to not be noticed all the way out in the wasteland of space and you don't have to cover up the transaction in a crowded venue under layers upon layers of byzantine obfuscation.
There's also the question of why they even got Faye in to facilitate this transaction as well, seeing that she's an outsider. Supposedly this is because of her quasi-mystical skill at cards, but... the guy wasn't even meant to bet the chip in the first place, he was just meant to tip her with it, so the skill that supposedly makes her a good fit for this job is not actually very useful. Then at the end Spike and Jet decide the tech hidden in the poker chip is too dangerous and decide to lose it by betting it on roulette at another casino, when it would just have been much easier and far safer to, I dunno, throw it into the sun? Smash it with a hammer? Would it not be trivially easy to destroy?
I found myself zoning out during the episodes as a result; I did so because the plot makes about the same amount of sense regardless of whether you actually pay attention or not. In addition, characters are often shallow, and the episode-to-episode emotional beats feel completely unearned because they are often trying to rush out a dramatic emotional conclusion without the appropriate space to do so. It's just very much carried by its aesthetic and style, and to me, that's not quite enough to make a show entertaining.
Then there's GitS. There's a lot of talking in that film, but I find it barely even has enough to chew on to discuss at length - the overarching plot is that an AI called the Puppet Master has been created by Section 6, it becomes sentient and demands political asylum while posing a small number of very ill-defined philosophical musings about what constitutes a mind even, and then spontaneously decides for itself that the purpose of any living organism is to reproduce and hybridise itself with other lifeforms. It's not clear why it would want this or how it has arrived at that judgement. It tries to make a poor analogy to the merits of sexual reproduction in biology by stating that a single computer virus could destroy all of its copies, but that doesn't work here; all of its copies would be modifiable and endlessly updatable in a way that the human brain currently isn't. There's also a serious lack of legibility in how the Puppet Master even thinks; you never get a good model of how its cognition works. It just comes up with wants and needs on the fly without any foreshadowing, which means the plot gets unpredictably dragged all over the place by some inscrutable god.
I was left with a profound feeling of "okay, I guess" after the film ended.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
11hr ago
Many movements don't have leaders, or if they do most of their own members probably couldn't identify them. Was GamerGate a movement? Tea Party? 99%ers? BLM? Are all of those words useless and should be dispensed with?
I mean, all of these are deeply different examples of movements that can't really be compared, apples-to-apples:
- GamerGate - grew out of relatively minor scandal, capitalized on a specific set of disillusioned individuals; may or may not have been significantly bankrolled and astroturfed by figures like Steve Bannon
- Tea Party - Anti-establishment movement within the Republican party, lots of younger blood; perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to Obama. Definitely had a lot of centralized planning and coordinated efforts, but paled in comparison to what the democrats were doing at the time and what Trump is doing now.
- 99%ers - response to a specific economic event, fizzled out as soon as the engine started running again
- BLM - initially a grassroots movement as a reaction to some very publicized injustice; later co-opted by a specific organization that seemed quite a bit like a grift, which probably contributed to it fizzling out.
The reason I bring those up is that I do judge those "movements" based on more than just "what they're about". The actual structure of the movement is just as important. That's why we care about grassroots movements more than ones bankrolled by PACs - we at least believe that the former represents the will of the electorate, where as the latter is just astroturfing.
It seems to be the consultants, focus groups, and corporate America that are guiding these decisions - not some National Wokism political action committee.
In other words, college-educated people.
Is the implication here that anyone with a college education is woke? I have a laundry list of counterexamples... My point is that profit-driven individuals and organizations probably overcalibrated to what they thought would sell to their target demographics, rather than some conspiratorial effort to inject woke ideology into our economy. I mean, the opposite probably happened in the 20th century where a certain concept of masculinity was sold to the masses, and we ended up with a John Wayne generation despite all evidence pointing to John Wayne being a pretty poor role model no matter your political tendencies.
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.
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