At this rate, it may only be several months before I hit @slartibartfastibast tier and my blog is only understood by a few wise world-travellers and the members of a remote Buddhist monastery high in the mountains of Nepal.
I’m sorry, guys.
< slartibartfastibast reblogged this post >
Though tbh m8, I feel as though what you’re trying to convey is not a bucket of facts per se, but a sort of network of weights about reality, an intuition module, of which the facts are a part. Thus all the callbacks in so many posts both for evidence and tying things to other things, tying each new post into a massive graph. I don’t know how you remember all those posts to go link.
At this rate, it may only be several months before I hit @slartibartfastibast tier and my blog is only understood by a few wise world-travellers and the members of a remote Buddhist monastery high in the mountains of Nepal.
One thing I’m disappointed hasnt come together to realize the potential of uh, Campaign Trumpism, is the alt-right seeing the potential of unions. (mostly)
Like, it’s an article of faith that one of the movement’s biggest vulnerabilities is to censorious bluehairs putting pressure on cucked employers to fire them from their jobs. But “dismissal for improper reasons”, particularly unrelated to job duties, particularly in regards to causes unpopular with the comfortable bourgeoisie, is a CLASSIC cause for labor action and impetus for unionization.
And if the bossman shrugs, points to the contract, “nothing I can do”, what are they gonna do, go after the union? Labor bosses are some of the least cucked guys out there, as you see with police unions lately half their job is to reply to ANY external pressure with “haha get fukt buddy”.
Plus there’s whatever that could do to split the left coalition, which has precedent – the hardhats and war economy workers against young hippies (which led to the Dems basically throwing the ‘72 election to Nixon), the NYC teachers’ strike of ‘68 (splitting the Jewish/labor and black/social activist wings of the city’s social democratic coalition, inspiring the domestic neoconservatism by which logic elites finally gave up on minority rights movements in the 80s-90s)
Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman is taking time off from commercial diving to have his 15 minutes of fame, but he doesn’t betray any insecurity that being the public face of the most aggressive faction of a controversial political movement might make it hard to return to his $6500/mo job. And I have to suspect that might have something to do with Pile Drivers Local 34.
Honestly I think you’re taking them as more rational than they actually are. I joke about the Alt Right becoming Chinese and joining a Han Ethnostate in 2069, but there isn’t going to be an Alt Right in 2032, much less 2069. Having freed themselves to pursue ideologies outside the conservative mainstream, they have nonetheless left themselves ideologically bound.
sad that Britney Spears lives in a world where “Britney Spears” does not exist.
anyone else can say ‘it’s Britney, bitch’ and achieve a certain effect on the listener that Britney herself cannot; she remains isolated, aloof.
in the scenario depicted by …Baby One More Time in which Britney Spears plays a besotted schoolgirl, “Britney Spears” does not exist, otherwise her classmates would immediately stop their synchronised backup dancing and say holy shit, that’s Britney Spears.
this is in stark contrast to I Want It That Way, in which the Backstreet Boys appear to their fans “in character”, trying to collapse the distinction between reality and musical fantasy.
Ocean’s Twelve attempted to have it both ways by having a character played by Julia Roberts pretend to be Julia Roberts, implying that “Julia Roberts” exists in the world portrayed by Ocean’s Twelve. However the movie “Ocean’s Twelve” does not exist in this world, otherwise the characters would say wait, isn’t this just what happened in Ocean’s Twelve?
Mel Brooks went one step further and took advantage of temporal anomalies to place a VHS copy of the movie “Spaceballs” within the movie Spaceballs itself, allowing the characters in the movie to gain insight into their own future, though they remained curiously incurious about the revelation that they were merely figments of the script writer’s imagination.
all of our minds contain a reference to “celebrity performer Britney Spears”, but the mind of Britney Spears does not; we can never be her, and indeed to be her would be to lose her.
I’m probably going to write up my own thoughts about this soon, but I’m curious to see what people think (and also if anyone’s familiar with any literature on the question, because I wasn’t able to find any):
From a utilitarian standpoint, are we ever justified in calling a a voluntary economic interaction “exploitative” if no party is acting to make alternatives to the interaction worse, and there’s no asymmetric access to information that would change one party’s mind about whether the interaction is to their benefit? If so, what are the justifications?
(Someone’s going to say “well, that depends how you choose to define ‘exploitative’” so to be clear: In common usage, calling such an interaction exploitative seems to be basically synonymous with considering it as a wrong done by one party of the interaction against another, and this is the sense I mean. More technical definitions of exploitation exist, but as far as I can tell these are usually used by people who believe that their economic definition coincides with the moral one.)
Let’s say you’re wandering the desert, lost and dying of dehydration. While wandering, you find my oasis. I say “You can drink from my oasis if you give me everything you have, not just what’s on you but your life’s savings.“ Is that exploitative?
I certainly think so, yes. But it’s not completely obvious how to ground that intuition in utilitarian ethics. I think it’s possible to do so –I think there are several different ways in which it is beneficial to have a concept of exploitation which includes scenarios like that one– but I’m still working out how to express what those benefits are, and I was curious to hear what other people thought they were.
I’m driving someone into poverty in this example, I am a little better off, you are a lot worse off. Seems pretty straightforwardly utilitarian.
Kind of. In some sense the purpose of Utilitarianism is to judge outcomes rather than attach moral judgment to specific classes of actions. Once you get away from that, it’s less of a Utilitarianism, and more… something else. But the search for the One True Moral Theory continues regardless, so it’s worth investigating.
Most exploitative relationships are a kind of Utility Vampirism, or else a small difference in the rate of exploitation makes a huge difference in produced utility. In fact, under Utilitarianism, property itself is only contingent.
So you’re saying Act utilitarianism is the the only utilitarianism and vs Rule utilitarian is fake?
You’re hitting on what I was trying to get at though, this was originally about the abstract institution of “property,“ and like you said from an act utilitarian perspective that doesn’t matter. Only the consequences of the act itself matter. So you have to ask what’s the utilitarian framework you’re applying in questions like this.
Honestly though, can’t you just instantiate Act Utilitarianism as Rule Utilitarianism? Rule Utilitarianism seems less fundamentally true, and more “we know you’re going to try to justify being immoral by claiming you are special, you human, so we’re going to have Rules instead”.
I’m probably going to write up my own thoughts about this soon, but I’m curious to see what people think (and also if anyone’s familiar with any literature on the question, because I wasn’t able to find any):
From a utilitarian standpoint, are we ever justified in calling a a voluntary economic interaction “exploitative” if no party is acting to make alternatives to the interaction worse, and there’s no asymmetric access to information that would change one party’s mind about whether the interaction is to their benefit? If so, what are the justifications?
(Someone’s going to say “well, that depends how you choose to define ‘exploitative’” so to be clear: In common usage, calling such an interaction exploitative seems to be basically synonymous with considering it as a wrong done by one party of the interaction against another, and this is the sense I mean. More technical definitions of exploitation exist, but as far as I can tell these are usually used by people who believe that their economic definition coincides with the moral one.)
Let’s say you’re wandering the desert, lost and dying of dehydration. While wandering, you find my oasis. I say “You can drink from my oasis if you give me everything you have, not just what’s on you but your life’s savings.“ Is that exploitative?
I certainly think so, yes. But it’s not completely obvious how to ground that intuition in utilitarian ethics. I think it’s possible to do so –I think there are several different ways in which it is beneficial to have a concept of exploitation which includes scenarios like that one– but I’m still working out how to express what those benefits are, and I was curious to hear what other people thought they were.
I’m driving someone into poverty in this example, I am a little better off, you are a lot worse off. Seems pretty straightforwardly utilitarian.
Kind of. In some sense the purpose of Utilitarianism is to judge outcomes rather than attach moral judgment to specific classes of actions. Once you get away from that, it’s less of a Utilitarianism, and more… something else. But the search for the One True Moral Theory continues regardless, so it’s worth investigating.
Most exploitative relationships are a kind of Utility Vampirism, or else a small difference in the rate of exploitation makes a huge difference in produced utility. In fact, under Utilitarianism, property itself is only contingent.
“every time I see one of these analyses about how Republicans radicalized their base by repeating destructive messages they didn’t ever intend to carry out just to fire people up to support Their Team, and then being surprised when people actually believed the meaning of the words they said and wanted to do the thing those words meant instead of just voting for their team
I think “this is the same exact thing, the same exact thing in every way, the left is doing with all this #killallmen #killallwhitepeople shit.” like every single defense of that, maps with 100% accuracy to a right-wing defense of their garbage media stoking outrage and terror and hatred without regard to long-term consequence. because “we don’t really mean it that way” and “they aren’t supposed to take it like that” and “it’s just venting” and “it’s okay because they won’t really do the things we’re telling them to do”
this is going to happen again from the other side
because nobody ever learns anything”—@brazenautomaton (via mugasofer)
I just saw your thing asking why anti-transhumanists feel that way, and in my case it's because I support Voluntary Human Extinction. And VHE simply doesn't work if older people aren't dying off.
I’ve never seen the point of voluntary human extinction.
Years ago, a government minister was asked why he proposed to increase welfare while raising taxes at the same times. The welfare money did not actually help to the people in need. He answered on an accidentally hot mic “You see, Iwan, wages and pensions have been stagnant for two years. This scheme will raise average wages on paper and divert welfare money into pension funds. Retirees are our base. We can’t not raise pension in an election year. It would be political suicide!“
I have a friend who sometimes volunteers for a left-wing party. He’s friends with many activists and left-wing think tank pilots. I asked his party friends at his birthday party: “Why don’t you support the elimination of welfare cliffs, or simplifying tax law, or a version of the paperwork reduction act, or a version of FOIA?“ They agreed that all of these were sensible ideas with potentially broad popular and multi-partisan parliamentary support. That was precisely the problem: “Why would anybody vote for us specifically if we just did the same shit as everybody else. Why not let the conservatives spend their political capital on bureaucracy? What if we make a big deal out of this and then moderates agree and steal our votes? If conservatives or moderates proposed this, we would have to oppose on principle. If social democrats proposed this maybe we would support it. If Marxists come out against bureaucracy we will be surprised. But why waste time on this instead of minimum wage? Our constituents are all poor people anyway. The middle class and self-employed people are affected by complicated taxes. They don’t vote for us anyway. It would be political suicide!“
* hissing sounds *
We will CRUSH the pathetic legislature and their traitorous, kakistocratic political parties by rolling over them with a column of actual tanks
We will REPLACE the treacherous legislature with voter-delegate think-tanks that are funded according to their percentile standing on a legislative prediction market times their number of votes! DEATH TO THE TREASONOUS INCENTIVE SYSTEMS! LONG LIVE THE UNION!
The hard part about assessing the counterfactuals to Chinese repression is that a minor flare up of civil strife can easily kill fifty million people; balancing things like that against the insidious ongoing costs of poor resource allocation is hard.
Yeeeeeah kinda hoping there’s no new Chinese Civil War that ends up killing fifty million dudes and destroying one tenth of the global GDP, sending the economy of Earth into three decade long depression.
belvarine said: I’m not sure “transhumanism” is colloquial for “using tools.” Typically transhumanists are trying to ascend beyond human limitations. This would create class disparities in the short term and that makes some people rather suspicious. I personally don’t care either way.
belvarine said: And when i say “human limitations” I mean fundamental limitations. Death, unable to be several places at once, physiological caps on processing power, that kind of stuff.
whereshadowsmakeshadows said: I think another reason is some people see it in the context of markets where transhumanist tech will be guided by profit rather than social good
oh right, the horrifying thought that rich people might not die.
Ehhhh, if you consider the whole Em thing it is actually plenty horrifying (and also doesn’t even benefit the rich very much). And other Bostrom-ish fears. One begins to wonder whether such a thing happening means that the Tribulation is beginning.
(Also I consider consciousness-forking to be a Very Bad Thing in (nearly?) all circumstances. Do not do the thing. Blessed be the Lord who seems to have made it pretty difficult and maybe actually impossible.)
I certainly consider the Ems thing horrifying, and also an accidental critique of Capitalism. To consider it a good thing, one would have to conflate economic utility with goodness… which I guess some people do.
And I’m a Transhumanist.
Part of the reason I engage in so much futurist shitposting on my blog is that people across this world are trapped in the present moment and cannot see the future. The issues of this world will change so dramatically, but they act as if the technology of the 10′s will go on forever, just as they acted as if the technology of the 00′s would.
We must be ready. It is absolutely vital that we are ready. And nations, states, families, even religions… there must be things which tie us to our past and anchor us in context.
But then, I still believe in nations and states, families and morality. And somewhere inside me I still feel that we will all be judged somehow, even as that same spark calls infinite torment injustice. But not everyone believes or feels these things anymore, if they ever did.
Against all reason I’m fascinated by the friendzone discourse, seriously.
It’s closely related to something you hear less about: the bonezone, which despite its name is not opposite the friendzone, but rather adjacent to it, not far from relationship town; someone’s really gotta diagram this stuff out.
“I can’t believe they put me in the friendzone!”
This complaint can have layers of meaning, but it starts with disappointment. The speaker was hoping to make it to relationship town, or maybe just a quick visit to the bonezone, but instead ended up in the friendzone, where they’ve already been many times before. It’s identical to a similar complaint that is also very common, although typically not in these words:
“I can’t believe they put me in the bonezone!”
The speaker was dreaming of relationship town, or perhaps a long stay in the friendzone, and had a rude awakening to find themselves here instead. Logic suggests a third complaint which you also may have heard:
“I can’t believe they want to take me to relationship town!”
The implications of this one are obvious.
But why does disappointment over mismatched expectations around friendship, sex, and relationships, attract so much heated debate?
The first wrinkle is that disappointment can turn to angry accusations. They led you on! They were deliberately ambiguous about the destination! They have ulterior motives!
While miscommunication is regrettable and sad, deliberately deceptive conduct can be infuriating; no one wants to have their time wasted and their emotions toyed with by someone who isn’t being honest with them.
But this is self-evident, why would it attract debate? Unless…
Consider: dating and relationships often run on subtext in which actually revealing your hand is a huge turn-off, unless you’re dating some kind of nerd or other unusually direct person.
I occasionally get harassed by Republicans on Facebook asking me essentially “DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS LIBERAL THING THE POPE IS SAYING”
But they never reply when I affirm my fidelity to Pope Francis and to the Catholic social teaching. It’s like they can’t believe that I actually believe what the church teaches.
I mean… dude. This is my religion. Why wouldn’t I want to believe my own religion?
Also, 95 percent of the time it’s exaggerated or taken out of context.
Programmers of rattumb, how much truth is there to the rumor that many programmers can’t program, or that they cannot cross programming languages without specific instruction, or pick up new language concepts on their own?
Programmers of rattumb, how much truth is there to the rumor that many programmers can’t program, or that they cannot cross programming languages without specific instruction, or pick up new language concepts on their own?
If you know three programming languages within a paradigm, you can pick up another in a couple of weeks. You can write something simple after a day, but learning the API takes a bit more time.
If you know programming languages within three different paradigms, you can learn a language in another paradigm as quickly.
If you only do high-level stuff, moving to a lower level closer to hardware is harder than the other way round.
Moving to another paradigm within one programming language, say from MVC to a continuation-passing web framework or from a game library like SDL to an entity-component framework or from PostgreSQL to Redis, or from gradient descent to bayesian filtering, can also take some time.
If you know a couple of concepts and paradigms, you start working on day one, but you will only be really productive after a coupe of weeks.
That said: If you have trouble understanding a concept like distributed version control or object-oriented programming or shader pipelines, it is orders of magnitude easier to ask an expert to help, tell the expert what you think you understand, and let the expert tell you where your understanding needs to be updated. Experts can tell you where you’re wrong. If you learn a new paradigm, you can get stuck on a fundamental misunderstanding for some time.
Specific instruction from experts is great for that reason, even if you can pick stuff up on your own.
While what I’ve gone through so far mostly matches up with this (it took me about 10-20 manhours to feel like I was really starting to ‘get’ javascript in terms of general program structure and thus feel less tongue-tied, for instance), the real purpose of my question was to assess employment prospects according to the distribution of competence in the field.
With Newt fucking Gingrich complaining about Mueller overstepping his investigatory mandate, it’s beginning to seem like we’re reaching levels of hypocrisy that are ridiculous. It feels like it’s exceeding that which can be explained by generic ill intent, it feels like the universe is mocking us.
They’re all hypocrites, every last one of them, and in this moment, I am furious
Not because of some fake Newt Gingrich’s hypocrisy, but because our nation is eviscerated by our own political class’s incompetence
I have evolved beyond such petty, mortal concerns.
I’m out-of-phase with my home timezone, but rest assured, I am a true North American and not a paid poster operating on behalf of the Australian Hegemony.
Why do you think China is about to enter a period of decline?
Well, kind of. They have some serious challenges ahead in the 21st century which exceed those of America’s.
The rivers running red with industrial runoff? The gradual slowdown in economic activity that the PRC has depended on to remain in power? The continued significant corruption, debt, and malinvestment such as the ghost cities? But the biggest one is, of course, the after-effects of the One Child Policy, which dramatically increases the ratio of older dependents to workers, and puts more economic pressure on young people, making family formation difficult/unaffordable.
China can potentially rise to meet all of these challenges, but it will not be easy, and the stress may break the PRC government and result in a civil war.
To do so, it may be necessary to transform their style of government into something new, but if they go the direction I’d go if I were them? That may be one helluva fight for dominance of the 21st century.
(Not sure when I got this ask. In fact, I can’t even remember when in recent times I mentioned this about China. It is important to remember in this and other considerations that the Chinese are not stupid, contrary to what the outsourcing American corporations assured us with “but the good jobs will stay here!”)
Programmers of rattumb, how much truth is there to the rumor that many programmers can’t program, or that they cannot cross programming languages without specific instruction, or pick up new language concepts on their own?
jesus fucking christ, some poor soul shared David Hines’s debut article on Jacobite on /pol/ and the users are really going out of their way to prove his point about the right being incredibly disorganized and ill-prepared for any actual happening
What if people are not stupid because of political ideology, but political ideology is stupid because of people?
the thing that’s fucking killing me about The Last Night is that the idea of a like panopticon sousveillance state where everyone is under constant scrutiny by those around them, and any wrong move you make can be instantly broadcast to frothing legions of people who hate you and will do you real harm, is
a) extremely cyberpunk and something I’d be interested in exploring
b) a hugely fucking ironic premise, coming from a Gamergater
*inbetween digging out tweets from X years ago to report to people’s bosses to hopefully get them fired* damn. It’s really Ironic Coincidence that my enemies are concerned about frothing legions of people who hate them
If there is a gay gene, gay marriage and adoption will pull it out of circulation soon.
This is the usual and obvious response to people who say that gayitude can’t be genetic because otherwise it would have been selected out already. Bruh, before we had gay liberation being gay was not a major knock on fertility since you would probably be having kids anyway. Fortunately, now we do have gay liberation so we can weed the queers out of the gene pool as Darwin intended.
Cochran goes off against the “gay uncle” theory and other cockamamie schemes which claim that gayness is not selected out of the population because of some offsetting benefit, by making the entirely true point that the benefits to your family have to huge in order to compensate for taking you out of the gene pool entirely. However, this objection loses a lot of its force if the fertility loss from homosexuality is small. If homosexuals reproduce at rates similar to heterosexuals, then having the gay gene becomes all-upside from a Darwinian perspective.
Seen in this light, homophobia is a eugenic cultural institution which keeps gay genes in the gene pool by forcing even obligate homosexuals to marry and have children.
Personal anecdote indicates that Cochran is probably on so something:
I think it’s an alternative developmental trajectory that can reduce intermale competition for mates or something. Seems like it could be more influenced by early environmental triggers than anybody wants to admit. In-utero tuning to the parental environment is probably part of it. Cochran goes so far as to say that it has to be partly communicable, which would upset a lot of people.
I mean, Alzheimer’s is apparently bacterial/microbiomic in origin, but nobody treats it like it’s communicable because it really doesn’t look like it is. The vector would have to be extremely convoluted and indirect.
I don’t think we’ll lose the gays for another reason - by the end of the century, we will have figured out how to make new people gay or bisexual on purpose. That has to be factored in to the calculations.
The inability for the different political parties to work together to accomplish their goals is just like when I was working on this project for school and... Oh my god, I just remembered that time Emily refused to do her part of the group project, even though we had initially all agreed on what each of us had to do, and we had two weeks to get it done, but nooo, she just never got around to doing her part. She even had the easiest part, and I had to do it for her. Uhm, what was I saying before?
this is like a political cartoon except all the passive aggressive labels are set in a girl’s high school like a tedious anime
Glad we got that sorted out. Now onto the next item on our discourse agenda: Ugg boots - sexist, or female empowerment?
brutally appropriated from Australian bogan culture, next question
Funny that you say that because they literally were- the original Uggs were Aussie but the patent was filed by an American who saw it and copied it. Guess who’s making all the $$$. Hint it’s not the Aussie family business out somewhere in WA.
wait did you think I was joking
Me: I have never made a single joke in my life
Mutuals: I know yet we laugh anyway
“We don’t shitpost to lie. We shitpost because when the world itself is a joke, so is the truth.”
I think the “robot“ thing comes from this thinking that the majority of the cost of the items we buy is the cost to produce the item. Every once in a while, I see someone go though the cost breakdown of an item, and it’s transportation, retailing, marketing, and all the other things that you have to do other than making an item that cost most of the money.
That might be some alternative ways to organize society that could take advantage of reducing those costs, but… I think they’d be so exotic that you couldn’t call them Communism anymore - not in the way we understand it now, and not in the Fully Automated Luxury Communism way, either.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot at congressional baseball practice in Del Ray, Virginia, and possibly four others were injured by an assailant, according to another lawmaker who was at the practice.
Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama said on CNN that he and other lawmakers tried to apply a tourniquet with his belt on one injured person to try and stop the bleeding. Scalise crawled to the outfield.
I’m afraid that we’ve crossed lines we can never come back from. Attacks on public servants are an attack on democracy.
A truckload of presidents have been assassinated over the course of U.S. history. Congresscritters have been succesfully murdered before. Democracy will survive.
Attack more public servants imo
Do you want right-wing paramilitaries? Because that’s how you get right-wing paramilitaries.
We already have more right-wing paramilitaries.
Elevated above background levels for now, but they’d disengage over time as the narrative of leftist violence lost credibility. Doing stuff that will only seem to prove them right is not a good plan. Have you even been here? The Klan/etc are not actually that big. In fact, they’re pretty friggin’ small relative to population.
I’ve figured out why I take such a strong dislike to fantasy stories where people are persecuted for their special powers. They’re often modeled on real oppression of people who were considered unimportant–poor, unattached, and not influential within the community. The stories reframe them as having supernatural gifts that make them more special than their oppressors, and that makes their oppression wrong. But if you need to be special to deserve not to be oppressed, then what does that say about the real not-special people who were persecuted, cast out, and outright murdered?
muggle pride! although they are something of a majority, so not quite the same.
Reminds me of a great insight I got from (IIRC) John C. Wright: the X-Men is such a powerful fantasy precisely because it allows you to imagine being both the innocent victim of persecution, with all the moral legitimacy that conveys in the modern world, and the ubermensch, the next stage of human evolution – at the same time.
it’s nice to see that Tumblr has both opinions on ethnic minorities, that they are bloodthirsty savages who carry knives and start fights and cavort in the streets with dark designs on our women or that they are precious smol cinnamon rolls whose quaint folkways and colorful costumes must be protected at all costs.
wait, cinnamon rolls isn’t some kind of lewd slang?
“Jeremy Corbyn tried to pass through a law that would required private landlords to make their homes safe and “fit for human habitation” last year – but it was rejected by the Conservatives.
Labour proposed an amendment to the Government’s new Housing and Planning Bill – a raft of new laws aimed at reforming housing law – in January last year, but it was rejected by 312 votes to 219.
According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment were themselves landlords who derive an income from a property.”
Whatever you think about the man as an individual or politician, he sure is on the right side of history a lot.
More regulations driving up the cost of housing <—-> Right side of history
the regulation about not cladding the outside of high rise buildings in flammable material tho
having sufficient fire escapes
for that matter fire alarms
very poor choice of example of regulatory harm
I’m sure our dear Voxette wouldn’t mind losing the regulations in favor of requiring all landlords to carry insurance against the death or debilitating injury to occupants with a cap at $1 million per occupant, reflecting the cost to the rest of society of people dying in unsafe housing. After all, it would be terribly immoral to give the landlords a subsidy, right?
They will of course also be required to carry sufficient insurance for neighboring buildings. It wouldn’t be very fair if they got away with a huge fire burning down someone else’s property just because they were bankrupt.
Right, and the insurance company needs to prove that it can actually cover these policies, which requires them to inspect the properties and regulate their safety, such as not covering the exterior with fuckin’ inflammable cladding.
You’re going to get regulation one way or another.
Glad we got that sorted out. Now onto the next item on our discourse agenda: Ugg boots - sexist, or female empowerment?
Steve Scalise is a racist, homophobic, anti-choice, shithead that gives speeches to crowds of white nationalists and called himself “David Duke without the baggage.” Please stop normalizing the murderous, bigoted agenda of the Republican party and pretending these right wing lawmakers just have a benign difference of political opinion.
The guy almost died, and you’re just going to insult him? What’s wrong with you?
Look, you nazi sympathizing, hentai loving piece of shit: Not a single shred of courtesy or sympathy is owed to an avowed racist that gives speeches at white nationalist events. None. Zero.
The only regrettable thing about this incident is that the shooter missed.
The original Nazis, the actual ones, not these washed-up, low status fringe guys that no one likes, came to power because of an environment of substantial political violence in which people were willing to make large, very large, tradeoffs to restore the perception of security.
Socialists and Communists literally fought them in the streets and it failed.It made the problem worse. It took empires to defeat Nazism.
You lot have this idea that if White Nationalism is not constantly suppressed, it will naturally grow and take over, but this perception is mistaken. Under normal post-war circumstances, white nationalism doesn’t have much to offer the typical white person. After all, Hitler made them all look both stupid and evil, and his thousand-year empire imploded in only a fraction of a century. White Nationalism has been mocked and made low-status for some time.
Now, normally, WNs don’t have much to offer the typical white male…
Unless you crank up the political violence such that WN ideas about erasure of whites and fundamentally incompatibility between races start to sound more reasonable to marginal people most vulnerable to WN conversion. Mass immigration doesn’t help, nor does not believing in borders or countries, since you can’t credibly offer them a home they’d live in for a lifetime, but it might be overcome by someone clever enough.
You think you’re fighting White Nationalism with your righteous indignation, but you’re actually creating it. You’re getting high on outrage while increasing the actual level of risk.
With every wrong password he entered into the stolen phone, the thief forgot a cherished or important memory.
have I mentioned how much I am into magic systems that require you to pay in happy memories
partly because there’s not an easy way to game them. it’s not like ‘extracts a price in pain’ (which is still fun too!), or even ‘damages you in some way’, because with those you can ‘cheat’ the system by using a payment option that you find disproportionately unobjectionable
if you’re paying in happy memories, you’re never going to have an easy decision to make, never going to be able to use magic without it being a wrenching necessity – because by definition the price depends on how good, how cherished, the memory is for you, how much you want to keep it
I guess, but while I see the ability to bring about pain in the story, I can’t say it appeals to me, and I find myself thinking more in terms of “game balance”, I suppose. But I have a very technological orientation, one about human strength, human power, the capabilities of companies and states and continents. But these things are paid in mundane prices, mundane misery, mundane blood. A collapse here, a fire there, a polluted river, the hours of the lives of our brightest and the hours of the lives of pur most mundane. But all along, the goal is to ‘cheat’ as one would cheat at magic, to profit, and to profit off of that profit, in a self-reinforcing cycle as we ascend towards the skies and gain entire worlds. If a magic is a spiral that only ever leads downwards, then what use is it, except for the benefit that only be gained through immorality(/amorality)?
