domain:npr.org
netstack
Texas is freedom land
44m ago
Okay, but Yasuke kicks ass. He’s a semi-mythical figure from one of Japan’s most famous historical periods. As a result, I’ve seen callouts to him in some weird places.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
40m ago
If they’d released AC2 in current year, the same people would be complaining that beating up the Pope was an attack on Western civilization.
I agree that they should just play better games, though.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Maybe it’s down to maintenance?
How long does the conventional rental serve before getting sold off as a used car? I know when I was car shopping, you could pretty low-mileage examples which had that history.
The insurance for rentals has already got to be crazy, so I could see fuel/maint costs making the difference.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
There are lots of reasons to oppose Russia/push back on (perceived) Russia partisans even if one thinks Ukraine is doomed. But you may be right if I’m typical-minding.
Interesting that you blame corruption. My intuition at the start was Russia rolling in and destroying major C&C. Maybe not on Desert Storm level, but something relatively fast. In that case, the industry of either side wouldn’t matter too much. Frankly, I assume that’s what Russia expected, too. If they’d known how much money and experience they’d lose to get this far, I would like to think it wouldn’t have happened.
But given that Ukraine didn’t shatter, and instead got this awful slog—now the production is key. And they sure can’t do it on their own dime. As critics have observed, we dumped most of our old and cheap munitions, and are struggling to spin up new production. So is this failure because of corrupt or incompetent procurement? Or were we just not expecting it to come to this?
I realize this sounds like I’m saying “nah, we’d totally win if we weren’t holding back.” Hubristic, right? But there really is a lack of political will. Our politicians even fought over sending the old stuff to this small, faraway, non-NATO country. If that level of intervention was unpopular, is it so surprising that we haven’t kept up in shell production?
SkoomaDentist
8hr ago
jannies are treated as valued curators of harmony, not power tripping egoists.
That applies to almost all jannies here. Alas, there is always that one or two who end up power tripping and should be forbidden from any janny duties that aren't just obvious spam removal. This has been the case since almost the beginning back on reddit.
georgioz
9hr ago
No, it does not involve any of that even if you talk about papal infallibility doctrine that was so far used twice in history. Catholics do not have to listen to whatever pope says in some interview. So far Catholic Church is against gay marriages in line with Persona Humana doctrine. Just couple of excerpts:
At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.
But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.[18] This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
2rafa
13hr ago
Women being more likely to have a partner doesn’t make them more promiscuous. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like you’re reading the statistics correctly.
SteveKirk
1m ago
People really need to study the rise of the crits in academia. On the CRT wiki page it's of course described as a "right wing maga conspiracy theory", but if you go to Derrick Bell's bio it explains how his fringe group used threats and backstabbing to take over departments and get their allies hired, their enemies fired, and infinite money for their programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Bell
Liberalism can't beat leninist vanguard party organizing. And Conservatism can't beat it without nuking the whole battlefield.
jeroboam
5m ago
Meta question, and one I'm a little undecided about personally.
How much should Trump get even, if he is elected? Either choice he makes seems pretty fraught.
Option 1) Play the bigger man. Pardon himself, obviously, and a few limited other people. Beyond that do nothing. This will prevent a wider conflagration in the culture war. Downside: without a tit-for-tat, the left will be emboldened for much greater tats in the future.
Option 2) Do unto him as he hath done unto me. Pursue corruption investigations against his pursuers (many of whom quite deserve them). Go after voter fraud and ballot harvesting. Turn the executive branch against the left in the same ways it has been turned against the right thus far. Upside: When both sides are armed, the chance for peace is higher than when only one side is armed. Downside: The system will probably resist him, and it could provoke a bigger backlash.
If I were Trump, I'd go with option 1. In reality, I expect him to just do whatever he wakes up feeling like he should do that day with little follow through.
RegularlyExpressed
8m ago
I'm less cynical; I think it's likelier that the people who came up with the story are true believers in the progressive cause. Insofar as it's about optics I would imagine it's more about looking good to the professional media class than it is about pre-emptively shielding themselves from public criticism. I don't know how effective it would be against criticism anyway, mechanically it'll probably be fine, and things like micro-transactions are hated by the left as well so accusations of racism won't do much to defend them in their eyes.
hanikrummihundursvin
12m ago
The west comes in and does whatever it wants. They're paying for everything after all.
SkoomaDentist
21m ago
Well, the last-last one did just get banned...
SkoomaDentist
26m ago
SkoomaDentist
26m ago
SkoomaDentist
26m ago
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
33m ago
I've seriously considered voting for him, should he be on the ballot in my state. (Is he going to be on all the ballots or just some of them?)
His voice is bizarre. And the brain worms thing is genuinely concerning. But I feel like we're at a point where the big two options in this election are so clearly and obviously not good for the job that I'm desperate for something I can do to signal my total displeasure at the direction of my country.
I'm a pretty conservative guy, and have become more conservative over the past few years. But I've also never voted for Trump. I have seriously, seriously considered it, not because I think Trump has magically become a better candidate, but because the ways in which lawfare has been invoked in an attempt to limit his influence is totally shameful, an insult to the democratic process, an obvious refusal to follow democratic norms on behalf of a party which continually claims its opposition has abandoned democratic norms.
It's the fact that this hasn't worked, and even backfired, that has made me back off from my initial intention to vote for Trump. Even him winning 45% -- which I think he's likely to do -- would be a solid and profound rebuke of the attempts to use weird lawsuits and criminal trials to bring down a major political candidate. But I am still much more incensed by the Democratic party's use of overblown criminal trials, especially the "hush money" one that seems like nonsense upon stilts, than I am by anything Trump has ever done. The Democratic party is the real threat to democracy in this country, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm also angry about the OSHA vaccine mandate, and Biden's general inability -- especially before the election year -- to actually assert control over the executive branch. He promised he wouldn't mandate the vaccine and he did it. People I know were forced to receive a medical procedure of limited benefit to them, on the basis of shoddy (or outright nonexistent) evidence, pursued by an authority that had no true right to make such a sweeping regulation, and required to continually present evidence of receiving this procedure, which has had utterly no value for at least the past couple of years, in order to maintain employment.
It's clear to me that Biden doesn't control his party, his party controls him. And I'm certain that has always been the case, even before he became senile. And however moderate Biden may have presented himself, his party is anything but moderate or restrained.
And what's worse is they're not even radical in the areas where the country desperately needs radical change. I agree with the tankies: the Democratic party is a party of woke capitalists. They'll talk every single day about "equity" and "diversity" and "racial justice" and "sexism," but when it comes to making real change in the real country, and doing things that help real people on the ground instead of boosting the status of various NGO officials -- they're a fucking joke. When's the last time you heard mainstream Democrats actually taking about real healthcare reform? Or making changes to employee benefits? Or consumer protection? Probably just a few times in the past few months, as the Biden administration has rushed to do a few things at the administrative level in an election year. But it's too little, too late. They burned their political capital on woke signalling and not actual policy, and the country has suffered for it.
Say whatever you will about him. But RFK seems to actually care about the direction of the country. I watched a speech he gave about our lack of direction, how medical debt and economic disparity has damaged our country. I heard him talk about how our young people lack direction and our society gives them no reason to have any. His message resonated with me. He's probably farther left than me, but I don't care -- he's passionate, he seems to my eyes to care about ordinary Americans regardless of their spot in the oppression olympics. He looks like the adult in the room to me, the guy who looks at the state of the country and cries out in the wilderness: something needs to change. I look at all the candidates, and the one who actually seems to care about Making America Great Again is RFK.
I think some of the extremes of his vaccine skepticism are kooky. But I admire the fact that he still seems to care about the crazy stuff we did during the pandemic. He hasn't allowed the mainstream to let him forget about all of our grave moral errors during COVID. I myself was infuriated that the red wave never materialized in 2022, after two years of injustice based on false facts. And I'm infuriated that our politics has devolved into culture warring, or whining on both sides about foreign wars, or paranoia about China, when it's clear to me that this country is facing a demographic implosion, a massive and unprecedented loss of meaning, and a rapid, unstoppable loss of national identity and values. We're re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic and pointing to explosions on far-off iceburgs, when the ship is sinking, taking on the water of anomie, while our young men and young women are sharpening their knives ready to maime each other. We need transformational leadership, and a positive identity.
And I'm not sure RFK will give us that. But I'm damn sure Trump or Biden won't.
RegularlyExpressed
38m ago
One angle I'm somewhat surprised hasn't been brought up much is that this set-up will almost certainly lead to the "problematic" optics of a non-Japanese person running around slaughtering a bunch of Japanese people.
It won't matter in any appreciable way. Some leftists might not like it, but the people who really drive the energies of the progressive movement will, in any conflict between protected groups, come down 100% on the side higher in the progressive stack. This was clear to see during the affirmative action debate, where suddenly children of Asian immigrants were white-adjacent/part of the privileged class.
roystgnr
1hr ago
women are spooked if you don't have an Instagram profile
Instagram specifically, these days?
But I get the spooking. I set up a Facebook account when it first came out, didn't find it interesting, and didn't think about it in connection to dating because I was in an LTR at the time; a few years later another (somewhat younger) girl I dated found that abandoned profile and seemed genuinely weirded out by my not having Friended every person in my life, like I had the profile of a serial killer. I hadn't realized that Facebook had succeeded in growing from "More pretentious Myspace ripoff" to "Indispensable credential of social proof" in just a few years. Back in the before times we had to wait for a new SO to introduce us to friends and family, but apparently now if a man doesn't at least have a sort of "pre-introductory portfolio" in that regard girls worry that they might get the "it puts the lotion on its skin" treatment.
I eventually met my wife on OkCupid, back when dating sites were new and weird, but also deep and suggestive of a more positive future. Then Match bought it out, and swiping-without-depth apps beat it out, and now if you start to type "dating las vegas" into Google then autocomplete will helpfully suggest "dating last chopper out of nam" instead.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
God.
Paxton represents everything I dislike about this state. Setting aside his little scandal, he’s a shameless partisan who grandstands whenever he gets the chance. Every AG statement just drips with condescension and/or righteous anger at the opposition. I suppose, given our political climate, that makes him a savvy political operator.
While we have various stupid and offensive laws, I can’t really blame him for enforcing them. But I do not look forward to seeing how he operates with a more deadlocked legislature. Especially if Trump is looking for opportunities to get even.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1hr ago
Fact is that most boomers enjoy working around the house. Fixing up odds and ends and getting a perfect green lawn are hobbies not chores.
Part of this may be an age thing. I'm not sure why, but my attitude in the last few years has flipped from "ugh, housework" to "maintaining a nice home for myself and my family is worthwhile in itself." I think it's an age and maturity thing.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
1hr ago
They recruited a couple untrustworthy people and I spent years scratching my head why we didn't kick the guy who would reply not instantly, like every other scout, but with a 300 ms delay. I didn't trust him from the start because of that and eventually that was proven right a couple years later.
Can you speak more about this feature? Is it some indication of psychopathology?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Too general.
Communists also have a ‘product’ they want to sell to ‘everybody.’ After decades with half the planet locked behind their ideology, has this co-opted MBAs into a fifth column? No, because there is a competing ideology, and it has a much more credible route to MBA-approved outcomes, like actually having markets or not getting purged.
I actually agree that social justice gains in corporations involve the motives you describe. They’re viewed as money on the sidewalk, better image with little to no downside. I argued such when the Bud Light business demonstrated the downside and when people were reading Super Bowl ads like tea leaves.
The interesting question isn’t “why do MBAs adopt social justice?” It’s “why doesn’t social justice have a credible competitor?”
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
1hr ago
The Garrick, a drinking and dining den tucked away on a side street in London, has long been a haunt of Britain's top politicians, actors and lawyers. Women have not been allowed to join — until now.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
1hr ago
Have you not played Ghost of Tsushima?
From the point of view of an average progressive normie playing as a black samurai is awesome and fun, and you're the one who is injecting politics.
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