Receiving @argumate posts like:
(The musical, of course, is based on the original script by Erika Moen.)
funnily enough “two perfect squares” is what I’d call my pop group if I had musical ability and a partner in crime as square as me
More you might like
collapsedsquid said: What about Criminal Country?
believe it or not, this is actually hot discourse right now:
土澳 or TuAo: Is this Chinese popular term for Australia affectionate or condescending?
Taken literally, TuAo means “unrefined, backwards Australia”.
…
Wai Ling Yeung, a former Chinese studies professor at Curtin University, points out that many Chinese-Australians use the character for village when referring to suburbs.
“Because of that, many China-based netizens think all Australian cities are like country towns, but this is in fact not what Chinese-Australians mean,” she said.
She contrasts TuAo with humorous slang used by Chinese abroad in other countries, including FuGuo for Britain, meaning “decadent country” — a coded term believed to refer to the UK’s attitudes towards homosexuality.
The US is also sometimes referred to online as MeiDi, meaning “American empire”.
If the Chinese call it an Empire, who am I to disagree? The largest military budget in the world, culture and commerce spreading out over the Earth, a currency used as a reserve everywhere else and as real money by entire foreign countries, and partial responsibility for the growing global obesity epidemic - who is to say that a Republic can’t be an Empire?
Now,
* inhales *
* coughing *
you know what actually nevermind the rest of it
* coughing *
this pipe gimmick was a bad idea
* wheezes *
the mods are awake, stop posting discourse
“The Postmodern Symbolism of Predatory Birds in Post-Rationalist Mythology”
@mitigatedchaos, with excerpts from WP:ForestWander, WP:Stemonitis, et al. Tumblr Journal of Sociology, 31 Mar 2017. (CC-BY-SA)
Anonymous asked:
So, this artist Penelope Umbrico made a collage of the incredibly large number of portraits people had posted to flickr of themselves standing in front of the sunset, and put it up as an exhibit for an art gallery. Unsurprisingly, this apparent tendency for people to take pictures of themselves standing in front of sunsets and posting them to flickr has inspired others to take pictures of themselves in front of the collage, and posting it to flickr.
argumate answered:
It’s like the tension in MMORPG design: if everyone does the same quest it destroys the logic of the game world to some degree (the bad guy is beaten millions of times!) but if quests have to be unique for each player you can’t share the experience.
* twitches *
Time. The answer is Time.
Set the MMORPG in a world where the timelines are divergent and there are thousands or millions of them, and the world itself is broken into thousands of planes/zones/worlds spread across a vast and diverse cosmos in a state of multiversal war.
The players are warrior-chrononauts, members of various factions in this cosmic war across universes and timelines. Many of the same worlds, however, occur again and again, and thus they have a shared experience of intervening in them. There isn’t just one Space Hitler, there are thousands or millions echoing out into the cosmic void.
Video games are almost perfect for this, since single-player games do the multiple timelines branching thing intuitively just by their structure, with saves and replays!
oh sure you can do that for one game, just gets a bit painful when you have to resort to it for all games.
Ah, but thanks to Death of the Author, I already did.
Running from my problems like: 👻🎃👟 (at Terror in the Corn)
Look when I claimed that America was a pumpkin-strewn dystopian hellscape I was only joking
Only a fucking coward would say there are too many pumpkins in this country.
You’re not a coward,
are you, Argumate?
yes, it’s for you
Please remind me to not give @mitigatedchaos any formal power if I ever become King of The World or something. Maybe I can bestow a purely ceremonial title like First Lady of The Republic of Cascadia or Vice Antipope. Grand Ideas should be kept in their ivory towers where they belong.
I dreamt I was a superhero could fly etc. but I kept getting captured and killed by gangsters so I got irritated and started pushing a drug decriminalisation slash harm reduction program to destroy their business and I got so bored I woke up so I guess they won this round
Current Political Mood (Past 24h)
All Issues Are Wedge Issues
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
think-tanks nerf bats redundant unpruned regulations
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!
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.