Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Mischief Maker]

I was gonna take the Chapo view that this whole Meta thing was intentionally cringe to draw attention away from the Facebook whistleblower and congressional hearings by encouraging the proles to redirect their attention toward making impotent jests at a clueless billionaire...

...but then I remembered Zuckerberg did this during Hurricane Maria.

[BryanM]

"When you're in the middle of a disaster like this, it's really important people have access to the internet."

/victim finder drone footage looks remarkably similar to victim maker drone footage

Aiiii caramba....

I think they desperately want to grow into a new sector, and this is the easiest no-effort no-investment no-expertise thing they could think of. Facebook itself is a miserably obvious idea: people want to reconnect with old friends and family. The early internet was absolutely laden with shitty pay-for "meet your old classmates!" kind of websites. All of them trying to keep your old friends ransom, who wouldn't even be there if you were dumb enough to pay the fee. The first one that was free to use and "good enough" would have taken the same position Facebook is in now.

Actual, real AI is hard. Fulldive VR: the thing of fantasy unless that AI superintelligence thing works out. Easier to market old existing products other people already made instead.

... ok, I understand it now. They know it's bullshit, that there's not an untapped niche market here. But they need to look like they're trying to their investors. It's like some kid filling out a homework assignment they have no idea how to complete with as plausible sounding bullshit they can come up with. "Grow more revenues next quarter" is an impossible task when you're supposed to accomplish it every single quarter, forever.

We should feel more sympathy for our evil overlords that want us to rent everything and not own anything. They have it tough, too.

Hey, we are posting this on a forum stuck to software from 15 years ago

Hey phpBBNow is almost perfect. It will be perfect as soon as the admins install that [s]strikeout[/s] plugin for the very important ability to use the <s> html tag, the most important of html tags.

Nostalgia has definitely saturated the market, with the late 80's early 90's aesthetic just devouring everything lately. The SoulSearchAndDestroy youtube channel perhaps being an apex predator of an idealized time that never-quite-was. The Analog Horror genre, a slightly more different take.

The whole beach episode trope itself is quite the fantasy into itself: in the real world, it's hot as shit. Your skin peels off thanks to all the gamma radiation going around. There's sand everywhere. And as everyone knows: sand is terrible.

[Mischief Maker]

I'm taking a small amount of vindication in these dark times from Shaun Skull's new video on Jimmy Dore's anti-vax grift.

I went through a similar journey in early 2017 when I got into the Jimmy Dore show, then one day I was getting into an argument with someone about Syria and decided to link a study that Jimmy Dore said was proof positive Assad didn't gas his own people. But I found no link on that video to the study in question and had to piece together enough details from the screenshot he displayed to track it down and... it did NOT say what Jimmy said it did. A short while later Jimmy pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory and I bounced.

Well according to Shaun, that was not an isolated event. Jimmy's continued the habit of drawing convenient narratives out of published papers by intentionally skipping around and quoting out of context.

Dude was never a progressive, just a trend-chaser, and Bernie was the hot trend once-upon-a-time.

[orange808]

Ever had to listen to a song and dance (at work) about the money your employer spends on health care, when said employer (directly or indirectly) supports lobbying against reform?

Yeah. *shrug* Fuck what you spend. I'm not impressed. You made those costs go up and now you can't pass all the costs to me in this market? Oh, that's too bad. Boo hoo. Here's an idea: let's reform the system.

[Mischief Maker]

Employment-based health insurance is a powerful club to hold over the heads of labor.

One employers seem to value more than their out-of-pocket costs providing private health insurance.

[orange808]

A month old, but still worth sharing. Always pleasant to see charlatans exposed--and Laffer is among the worst.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/202 ... r-and-won/

[BulletMagnet]

Employment-based health insurance is a powerful club to hold over the heads of labor.

One employers seem to value more than their out-of-pocket costs providing private health insurance.

I don't know if anyone's ever attempted to crunch the numbers, but I'm tempted to guess that if they had to attract workers with living wages and decent working conditions instead of "if you get sick while unemployed you're totally fucked", whatever they're chipping in to the current setup - while shifting more and more of it onto us every year - would be chump change in comparison, before you even get into how they wouldn't be able to treat us like disposable indentured servants as much anymore. And that's if nobody demands that whatever they'd additionally been withholding in wages for health insurance (and/or "for health insurance") be put directly back into our paychecks.

EDIT: Once more, for those in the back:"Originalism" is a massive, screaming joke.

[orange808]

Depends on your situation, but inflation hurts rentiers the most.
https://theintercept.com/2021/11/10/inf ... lk-prices/

[Mischief Maker]

I thought Manchin killed BBB to prevent inflation.

Oopsie.

[orange808]

I thought Manchin killed BBB to prevent inflation.

Oopsie.

Yeah. He's a Republican.

Ultimately, this will make my debt cheaper. Depends on the person and situation. I won't fib; I like it when I win and Manchin (along with his rich friends) take it in the cornhole.

[Vanguard]

The other side of the coin to individualism is collectivism. Dominionism, like all forms of authoritarianism, exists in opposition to liberty.

The American government's checks and balances are an abysmal failure. It's a joke that anyone ever believed that judges appointed by the president would keep the president's power under control. Any real system of checks and balances that exists to reign in the powerful, and not just serve as theater to convince the masses that the powerful are under control, must put power directly into the hands of the common man. Nothing else will work.
Like, how is this

The West figured out that if all men -- kings and serfs -- were subject to the same divine law, then the serfs could hold the king accountable.

supposed to work? Why would that be true? How would the serfs assert power over the king? When has this ever happened, aside from revolutions which aren't particularly reliant on concepts of divine law.

Real socialism has been tried and it's been a tremendous success, far more so than any contemporary competitors. Real socialism means the working class has power over the workplace and the economy. The Soviets and the Maoists did not give their working classes control over their workplaces or power over their economies, so they were not real socialists. The clearest example of real socialism succeeding would be the systems created by union workers of the late 1800s and early 1900s who pushed for more rights, better pay, better hours, more control over their workplace and their lives. Under pure capitalism the average lifespan was 30 years a typical workweek was 70 hours, average pay was just enough to eat until the next shift, workers had no rights, and both parents as well as their kids would have to work as wages were not sufficient to feed more than one person. It was a genuine contender for the most miserable, evil time period our world has ever seen. Real socialists turned that around and created the relatively nice conditions of the 1900s. Now, of course, what they created was merely a hybrid of capitalism and socialism. If you want an example of pure socialism then I do not have one. Though it's frankly hard not to notice how the further a nation moves towards socialism on the capitalism/socialism spectrum, the better off it is, and vice versa.

If one were to make an honest attempt at building a Christian society based on the words and actions of Christ as presented in the bible, it would have very little to do with modern conservatism. It's difficult to say that Christ would oppose social safety nets when he was depicted as openly feeding the hungry and healing the sick for free, and telling others to do the same. He refused to defend himself or even allow himself to be defended through violence when men came to bring him to his death. He even cast Cure Serious Wounds on one of them. Seems at odds with gun worship. Lots of talk about forgiveness and mercy, not really a good fit for the pro-cop, pro-death penalty, pro-punitive deterrence crew. The story of the good samaritan is anti-racist and anti-nationalist. Jesus never said a word about gays, though he did have a fair bit to say against the wealthy and powerful.

[BryanM]

I remember that time I mentioned the "easier for a camel to pass through a needle than a rich man getting into heaven" quote and was like "checkmate, hierarchy lovers!"

The contortions they went through to justify the current world would turn gumby into a mangled corpse. The "the needle is a metaphor for some gates in some old town!" lie. The "it just means it's really 'hard' for rich people to get into heaven!" line. (Bitch, please. Ain't no camel passing through a needle and coming out the other side as a camel. There's very hard, and then there's impossible. Very hard is winning the Nobel prize. Impossible is eating the sun.)

Little did I know, we aren't playing the same game here. There's a nearly incrossable line between one with terminal values aligned with rationality (which no human is completely) and one with the goal of fitting in with one's peers here. There's a reason extreme hierarchy and religion (and modern religion is TV. It serves the exact same function in society) go hand in hand, in the natural world the way pirates divide treasure is the rough limit to what a rational person would accept.

Arguments ultimately aren't what we need to change opinions and minds, environments are.

It's a joke that anyone ever believed that judges appointed by the president would keep the president's power under control.

Hehahaheh.... yeah, it's a really funny one. It's always funny when Thomas Frank doesn't quite grasp the constitution was intentionally designed to protect an elite dictatorship, and so much of our history is blatant cartoonish lies. "Checks and balances." Heh.

I always keep trying to explain how the supreme court doesn't have substantial godlike power: they have no army, they have no police, and they have no mechanism to replace the leadership of either. (What would that even look like? "Hey mister in charge of the guys with a bunch of guns and tanks and drones and ninja torture assassins... You're not in charge anymore because I signed a very angrily worded sheet of paper that says you're not in charge anymore. It's got my name on it and everything. Checkmate, lardstuff!") They're just another fig leaf to obscure those who hold true power.

[BulletMagnet]

Aaaaand right on cue Michael Flynn, in an open appeal to the QAnon crowd, says the USA should only have one religion. The pushback from The Reasonable Sensibles will be zero. Y'know, the Rational Realists who, as the end of 2021 gets closer, are not becoming less convinced that Trump will be reinstated, but MORE convinced. Yup, definitely time to piss away even more of our agenda, they'll totally come around this time!

If one were to make an honest attempt at building a Christian society based on the words and actions of Christ as presented in the bible, it would have very little to do with modern conservatism.

Oh, if you want to make a Biblical argument against Dominionism you can have an absolute field day.

[Mischief Maker]

I'm taking a small amount of vindication in these dark times from Shaun Skull's new video on Jimmy Dore's anti-vax grift.

I went through a similar journey in early 2017 when I got into the Jimmy Dore show, then one day I was getting into an argument with someone about Syria and decided to link a study that Jimmy Dore said was proof positive Assad didn't gas his own people. But I found no link on that video to the study in question and had to piece together enough details from the screenshot he displayed to track it down and... it did NOT say what Jimmy said it did. A short while later Jimmy pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory and I bounced.

Well according to Shaun, that was not an isolated event. Jimmy's continued the habit of drawing convenient narratives out of published papers by intentionally skipping around and quoting out of context.

Dude was never a progressive, just a trend-chaser, and Bernie was the hot trend once-upon-a-time.

Well that video blew up, to the point that the original author of the article tweeted that Jimmy misquoted him.

So now Jimmy is "taking responsibility" (to avoid being demonitized by Youtube).

...by which I mean he's dumping all the blame on some unnamed "producer" and announcing that guy is fired, admitting in the process that he doesn't read things before he takes them on-air.

Meanwhile Tulsi, the candidate Jimmy was encouraging people vote for instead of Bernie, who he covered for even after she dropped M4A, is going on Fox News and being coronated an official conservative by Hannity.

[BryanM]

IBM struck a deal with McDonalds to install automated tellers for their drive-throughs. As I'm interested in such things, I went to youtube to see how well they work in the real world. Not a lot of videos to choose from. So, I clicked on a Fox News video.

Hoo boy. Not three seconds could pass by before they started laying into Joe Biden. It's Joe Biden's fault these poor corporations need to eliminate these "entry level" jobs with machines. It's Joe Biden's fault the economy is in shambles. It's Joe Biden's fault your daughter hates you. It's Joe Biden's fault you have erectile dysfunction.

Needless to say, I couldn't make it to the part where I actually see the thing go "bleep bloop would you like to super size your chicken muggets meatbag?" I thought Rachel Maddow was bad, but holy shit.

I.... just wanted to learn things. Not watch someone stroke their hate/love boner over Some Person eight thousand times per second. You'd have to have holes through your brain to think that's good television...

[vol.2]

oh god. my dad is addicted to Racheal M. always on the tube when i visit. boy oh boy that's some sensationalized bs tv. just the tone of her voice gives me panic

[To Far Away Times]

Fox News will rot your brain. Its straight up propaganda.

[Vanguard]

I remember that time I mentioned the "easier for a camel to pass through a needle than a rich man getting into heaven" quote and was like "checkmate, hierarchy lovers!"

The contortions they went through to justify the current world would turn gumby into a mangled corpse. The "the needle is a metaphor for some gates in some old town!" lie. The "it just means it's really 'hard' for rich people to get into heaven!" line. (Bitch, please. Ain't no camel passing through a needle and coming out the other side as a camel. There's very hard, and then there's impossible. Very hard is winning the Nobel prize. Impossible is eating the sun.)

The thing is that even in the (fake, made up) explanation where the eye is a gate, the camel still has to discard its possessions to get in - the rich guy has to stop being rich or he won't get in to heaven. And this is right after Jesus told a rich guy to give away his money to the poor, right then and there, so it's not really ambiguous.

I've heard Christians say that Jesus was really talking about being "spiritually rich," and it's fine to be a billionaire as long as you're humble about it.

I.... just wanted to learn things. Not watch someone stroke their hate/love boner over Some Person eight thousand times per second. You'd have to have holes through your brain to think that's good television...

Partisan politics is all about obsessing over how much you hate Other Guy. It's encouraged because as long you're focused on that, Your Guy doesn't have to enact any positive change to keep you on his side. That's been both parties' go-to strategy for some time now.

[BulletMagnet]

An inside take on the shipping situation in the USA, and why it's unlikely to get better anytime soon.

[Koa Zo]

An inside take on the shipping situation in the USA, and why it's unlikely to get better anytime soon.

If only we all weren't so gluttonous.

[BulletMagnet]

In more everyday news, yeeeahhhh fuck yoooouuuu yeeeahhhh.

[emphatic]

Yay, Rittenhouse aquitted!

[orange808]

Yikes. This won't end well.

[Mischief Maker]

That judge was auditioning hard for a Fox News job with all the unnecessary theatrics.

"Oops! This isn't my gavel, it's a MAGA hat. How did this get here???"

[Sengoku Strider]

Be the straight to VHS movie you want to see in the world.

[BIL]

I told y'all the minute the footage dropped in the antique past of August 2020. Not even the most hellaciously mind-altering stink wafting off your gaping shithole of a country

Spoiler

was gonna secure those charges. All well and good to shoot for the moon, until Challenger 2021 is carbonising your asscheeks.

Grand black comedy, shame it almost got a kid fucked. My favourite was that tub of lard prosecutor earnestly pleading with the jury, to find it in their hearts, to just recognise... sometimes, you just have to take a beating. Put your faith in the well-known restraint of the enraged mob. Was he quoting Goodfellas? With all the fantastic fiction at hand, I'd like to think so.

Shit case, even shittier prosecution. I hope all involved get Brady charges rammed up the hellnoparts, now the defendant's barely legal boipucci is safe from the world-renowned Federal BBC!

Spoiler

^ RAPE LMAO So principled.

God damn it Bryan! :[ Americunt Thread is bad for my soul, or at the very least, the wet meaty thing I call one! I must have more punitive buggery! An entire universe of imprisoned men getting rammed, with infinite possibilities and potential. Where's that NG.com prison diary, where that white nerd's big fat cheeks foiled his battle-hardened cholo assailant's substandard pen0r... I will find it, and link back to it here - may it keep your countrymen on the straight and narrow.

[Durandal]

On the one hand, publicly televised court cases are a mistake and prone to creating nation-wide (and since in this case it's USA #1, the entire internet is wrapped up in it) "debates" where despite people tweeting about it daily, only a few bother to stay up-to-date with the newest facts. On the other hand, the incompetence by the court at play here only further solidified my stance that death penalties are a mistake. If this is what they're trying to pull off in public, imagine what they're doing behind closed doors.

Either way this should have been an irrelevant case with no relevant future consequences. Unfortunately man's desire for cheap internet gotcha's turned this into something much bigger than it deserved to be, and now not only do we got a martyr on our hands, but from now on we can expect more people coming to demonstrations armed and ready trying to provoke others into attacking first so they can fire back and claim it was self-defense.

[emphatic]

God bless you, BIL.

[BIL]

God bless and rove all you shumps bros (;｀w´;)

[Rob]

People with an abnormal fixation on the police somehow (very mysteriously) tend to be the dregs of society: the convicted pedo, the knife-wielding domestic abuser, the drunk driving "medic". Ziminski. "Jump kick man". We are instructed to believe that self-defense is vigilantism and a lynch mob is not. That self-defense is a relic of white supremacy. That the dregs have a right to assemble and decimate city blocks because their cause is righteous - justice is driving 40 miles to start fires and lowercase white vigilantism is driving 20 miles (crossing state lines!!) to put them out.