Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Iran War. When.

2021
3
6%
2022-2025
15
28%
2026-2030
7
13%
2031-2040
3
6%
2041-2050
0
No votes
Never
25
47%
 
Total votes: 53

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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Just a heads up to those of you on Earth who might not have heard yet, the Pope sold Trump all your stuff.

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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

God, that American flag Punisher skull upvote arrow is so fucking perfect, but not for the reasons they think.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Spoiler
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What about the Space Pope?
We apologise for the inconvenience
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

One of the weaker bits. Maybe an oblique reference to the character in Phantasy Star 4. ... very oblique.

I thought the whalers of the moon was the greatest thing in the world, and was dismayed no one else knew or cared. The teacher told me to shut up when I sang the song.

Ahh... that's today's Pathetic Geek Story.
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

I used to sing Whalers on the moon so you aren't the only one lol.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

APOCALYPSE WATCH - UPDATE:

Nearly 1/3rd of the US population is secretly dead from the vaccine over the past 5 months, but thus far CNN has been successful in keeping anybody from noticing.

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In a matters of months America will just be Bill Gates, Hillary, Tom Hanks and anti-vaxxers. Just like BLM & Antifa planned all along.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

That's one hecka expedited apocalypse. They need to chill and get some patience.

Bringing up Tom and doomysday, his brother Colin played a bad guy during a season of Dexter. His arc made me think it might have been cool if there was an ambiguous supernatural element to the series, where the rituals of the characters were actually true. So Colin was working to end the world, John Lithgow was trying to resurrect his dead sister Pet Sematary style, and so on.

... Dexter is old enough to be retro now. We old.

... and googling the franchise, they released a teaser for a new 10 episode season for some reason? At least Michael's still alive and apparently healthy enough to continue playing a psycho, he had cancer right?
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

Apparently in the books Dexter's inner-voice urging him to kill turns out to actually be some evil elder god.

I say season 1 was the only good season of Dexter. He was a psychopath only diverted from mass murder by rituals memorized by rote. The only time he felt emotions, and the only time he was sexually aroused, was when he was examining blood spatters in grisly murder sites. In fact he chose his girlfriend based on the fact that her rape survivor status meant she was less likely to ask for sex. The series kept having "did he?" false scares like when the neighbor's yappy dog disappeared. His long-lost brother's attempts to deprogram him were tempting Dexter into full psychopathy. In the season 1 epilogue when Dexter said his father "betrayed" him, I thought in the subsequent seasons he was going to start deviating from the code and turning into more and more of an actualized monster.

...then season 2 starts and Dexter is for all intents and purposes a completely different person. He cares about his step-kids, he has a normal sex-life, his kills are no longer horrifying drawn-out torture scenes but now a clean stab. And the murder is not motivated by fulfilling his awful urges but some righteous sense of vengeance.

I bailed on the show when Dexter bloodlessly strangled a pedo eyeing his gf's daughter and saying, "Nobody harms my family!" They turned him into yet another Batman.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Season 1 was definitely a full and complete story. I still found things that were entertaining in the following seasons (even the useless bland potato mush that is Colin I could overlook... as one might surmise with a little careful study and a lot of rumination, I am somewhat fond of apocalypses)... until the last season. Hoo that was bad.

Like with Prison Break and Supernatural and That 70's Show, they had to make more product after the natural end had passed.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:APOCALYPSE WATCH - UPDATE:
It would seem that the far right has finally overplayed its hand and made a claim so utterly outlandish that nobody would ever believe it.

Seriously, people in Wyoming getting vaccinated?
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by system11 »

I don't think it's particularly useful trying to put things like that in the 'far right' or 'far left' etc box - that's simply nutjobs. They've existed for as long as the earth was noticed to be round, and probably before.

My favourite new lunacy was Twitter deciding to announce that it's false that you can 'catch' the vaccine from people who have had it. That and magnestism. This is little green men levels of crazy.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

system11 wrote:I don't think it's particularly useful trying to put things like that in the 'far right' or 'far left' etc box - that's simply nutjobs.
If you're talking "nutjobs in general" you might be able to make that argument to a certain extent; this particular brand of nutjob, especially at this moment in time, however, is a very different kettle of fish.

I don't know many details of how things are going across the pond in this area, but over here one of our two major parties is literally one step removed from adopting Bill O'Reilly's "Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer" call to arms wrapped in a patina of plausible deniability as their official modus operandi.

And because people will indignantly jump down my throat if I don't explicitly say so even though it's obviously implied, no, this doesn't mean that everyone on one side of the political aisle is a conspiracy theorist, but it does mean that this isn't remotely an evenly distributed issue. That, to be frank, is the same bullshit stance that killed the inquiry into the Capitol riot; well sure, you've agreed to structure the commission precisely as we requested, but what about Antifa, who had absolutely jack shit to do with the Capitol riot? Sorry, that's not an argument, that's just pure self-interested bad faith writ large.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

system11 wrote:I don't think it's particularly useful trying to put things like that in the 'far right' or 'far left' etc box - that's simply nutjobs. They've existed for as long as the earth was noticed to be round, and probably before.
I'm pretty sure the Earth was round before the French National Assembly of 1789.

https://www.history.com/news/how-did-th ... -originate

TL;DR: Proponents of democracy sat in the left wing, proponents of monarchism sat on the right.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Being better than other people is a core human need and all, but this is a "people who drive slower than me are reckless, people who drive faster than me are psycho" kind of thing. We're all fucking crazy as shit.

Sprinting head first into a social collapse, and what are we doing? Be-bopping on the titanic.

Some of us are so out there, we're in pure denial there's even an forthcoming apocalypse. Crazy crazy copium.
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system11
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by system11 »

Mischief Maker wrote:
system11 wrote:I don't think it's particularly useful trying to put things like that in the 'far right' or 'far left' etc box - that's simply nutjobs. They've existed for as long as the earth was noticed to be round, and probably before.
I'm pretty sure the Earth was round before the French National Assembly of 1789.

https://www.history.com/news/how-did-th ... -originate

TL;DR: Proponents of democracy sat in the left wing, proponents of monarchism sat on the right.
These labels no longer align with the groups who performatively identify with them.

As for the CNN link BulletMagnet posted above, come on - it's a CNN opinion piece, reminiscent of penny dreadfuls at this point. People are still absolutely hysterical, I thought it might have burned out a bit by now.

Everyone should be more concerned about authoritarianism (actual, not perceived) at this point, and the slow death of true liberal ideas under the jackboot of progressive activism. Somewhat relatedly Biden is a whole different kind of awful, he's probably going to tank the economy more than it already is which will disproportionately slam the lower earning working classes as it always does - but nobody seems to care what he's doing, even when he simply continues or reinvents things that were apparently so horrible under Trump. It's pretty wild.

I haven't been wading into these conversations much anymore because it's so incredibly depressing. That and for every bit of incendiary drama, everyone starts jumping down eachothers throats egged on by whichever highly partisan media they follow, reinforced by social group think, and often much later some actual truth emerges which completely contradicts it. I think there's no better current example than the lab leak hypothesis. When you look back at all the political posturing, the censorship and demonisation of anyone suggesting it, it's hard to reconcile with the last few days of admissions that it's worth investigating. Anyone with basic common sense could see it was something worth considering right from the start. The fact that Fauci has publically changed position on it would suggest they have some information of note.

In the UK people have mostly been whining and causing a storm about wallpaper. Well - the renovation of the prime ministers flat. Weeks of nonsensical drivel and twitter hashtags over nothing, something of so little consequence that nobody will remember it in a few months. The fact that he's sleepwalking us into a dystopian hell and clearly 'green virtue signalling' on a massively damaging scale at the behest of his activist partner, well nobody cares about that very much. That gold pressed wallpaper was much more important.
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

system11 wrote:As for the CNN link BulletMagnet posted above, come on - it's a CNN opinion piece, reminiscent of penny dreadfuls at this point.
If you'd like to explain why what the article cites concerning both what the highest-ranking conservatives in the US are openly saying and how many of the rank and file claim to believe them isn't any real cause for concern, especially in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, I'd certainly like to hear it; then again, if you put yourself in the "Biden is blatantly more dangerous than Trump, if anything" camp methinks you and I tend to inherently worry about very different things.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

system11 wrote:I don't think it's particularly useful trying to put things like that in the 'far right' or 'far left' etc box - that's simply nutjobs. They've existed for as long as the earth was noticed to be round, and probably before.
The crazy stuff I'm posting mostly comes from greatawakening.win, which is the main QAnon forum, and and thedonald.win, where the former Trump Subreddit exiled themselves to. As well as right wing-centred alternative social media platforms like Parler & Gab. A lot of this stuff does spill over to Democrat voters, but you won't find the same scale or pervasiveness in general discourse. This is very much a right wing phenomenon spread over the past 3 decades through the portion of conservative media which decided it was in the business of fighting culture wars rather than what was traditionally considered journalism. (This is not at all to deny that there are centre/left outlets which adopted a similar approach, but the full-time disprovable conspiracy mindset never took the same sort of hold).

Two days ago a Yahoo/Yougov poll was published showing 73% of republicans believe the Capitol riot was caused by left wing protestors. Despite both the FBI and (republican House minority leader) Kevin McCarthy saying left wing protestors weren't involved.

The non-profit, non-partisan, Public Religion Research Institute also published research this week looking into how pervasive the Q-Cult has become.

Fully one quarter of Republicans believe in the core Q Cult conspiracy that "The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation." That is the actual sentence human adults in the United States were asked if they agreed with, and said "yes."

That's not a small number. 23% of Republican-identifying adults amounts to 21 million people.

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In fact, that 15% of all Americans figure comes out to 30 million + people, a number larger than the Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches combined.

Where this gets concerning is the larger number on the right who agree that "Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." This is where the denial of responsibility for the Capitol riot - and the senate Republicans blocking even an investigation into it - creates cause for worry. Because if you're reading these right wing social media sites, people are frustrated with waiting for something to happen, and their fantasies are becoming outright bloodthristy. These are from different threads on different sites on different days within the last month or so (TRIGGER WARNING: Blood Thirst):
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"Mike" in this case being pillow manufacturer and martial law enthusiast Trump Bro Mike Lindell:
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"I want tens of millions to die" - Super Patriotic American on the internet.
The 6.5% is a reference to black people, for those who don't speak garbage:
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A common recurring theme is the sense of validation and gratification they will feel when they start seeing public executions of the people they don't like. Many of them make statements to the effect that it's the only thing that keeps them going:
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"Hang the teachers," or Why I post these people's statements in a thread titled 'Prelude to the Apocalypse':
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"lmao" they said.
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This is demonstrably not a 'they're all in on it' type of thing. It's very clearly spread through people consuming news sources which are essentially fan fiction such as OAN, NEWSMAX, Breitbart and Daily Caller, and to a lesser extent Fox News (specifically their commentary shows) and local right wing tabloids:
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But in all reality blaming media is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. This stuff springs up organically on social media, the corporate media involved are just feeding back to these people what they want to hear and will share.
Last edited by Sengoku Strider on Sat May 29, 2021 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

Fuck me, that spoiler tag section just keeps going and going and GOING...
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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system11
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by system11 »

BulletMagnet wrote:
system11 wrote:As for the CNN link BulletMagnet posted above, come on - it's a CNN opinion piece, reminiscent of penny dreadfuls at this point.
If you'd like to explain why what the article cites concerning both what the highest-ranking conservatives in the US are openly saying and how many of the rank and file claim to believe them isn't any real cause for concern, especially in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, I'd certainly like to hear it; then again, if you put yourself in the "Biden is blatantly more dangerous than Trump, if anything" camp methinks you and I tend to inherently worry about very different things.
I don't think Trump was dangerous and I don't think Biden is dangerous either - but I do think the latter is going to prove eventually to result in more of a decline overall in political relations and the personal circumstances of 'general working people', and it's unclear who is pulling the puppet strings at any particular moment. He's a familiar skin suit worn by the new and old establishment, I'm not sure that's really any kind of progress.

People are being driven insane by media, even "respected" sources. It's easy to see why by just following a few breadcrumbs. This could turn into a long post - let's start with the opinion piece - these are the among the most awful of all sources of information in some cases. I'm not going to parrot the entire thing but here are a few bits of it:
Today's Republican Party is building a political bomb -- and the ingredients for the explosive concoction are being mixed before our eyes. When it all blows up -- and it will, unless the party changes course soon -- the result will be not just rhetorical extremism but could well include real violence.

If you thought the events of Jan. 6 were shocking, what comes next could be far worse.

A chilling new poll by PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute, found that nearly one in four Republicans (that's tens of millions of people) believe the QAnon mythology that "the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles." You might just shake your head and laugh at this nonsense, except that that they also believe that "because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country."
Sensationalist phrasing throughout, designed specifically to trigger a response of fear - note the "incendiary" language of the first paragraph particularly the use of "building" which implies a deliberate act. Next we have the warning of impending doom and some dog whistle buzzwords with an emotional reference to the capitol riot - an event which while serious was definitely overreacted to by anyone who could possibly benefit from doing so - it now serves as a totemic rallying call. The article continues (note I am cutting sections here and there):
You might just shake your head and laugh at this nonsense, except that that they also believe that "because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country."

This is no fringe cult. The number of people believing these and other outlandish QAnon conspiracies is enormous.

Poll after poll has also found that a majority of Republicans, 61% according to the latest from Reuters/Ipsos, believe the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Inspiring these legions to keep their weapons handy for political purposes are (snip)
Here we see the QAnon extreme level loons being deliberately confused with the people who believe there was something unfair in the election. It doesn't matter what that unfairness they perceive is, because it is conveniently filed under the narrative forming term "stolen". The next line deliberately re-associates that group of people with the extremist element.

As an aside I did particularly enjoy the part later on about how politicians calling eachother Nazis is really bad, when the exact same rhetoric was being used at the previous administration and everyone loved it, because it was their opponent. Anyway, Greene is absolute trash which I think we can all agree with, the rest of the op-ed is back to pulling out all the terms of fear and danger.

If we click through from that diatribe to the original piece it was based on (also on CNN), we find a less hysterical version:

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/28/poli ... index.html

There's not a huge amount to complain about in this version - it's made clear that this article is a presentation of some poll results. It's relatively dry in comparison. Read the two again and see which one results in the strongest reaction. One is a deliberately manipulative panic piece, one is a presentation of some news / data. The former is emotional gutter journalism, it can only make things worse.

So on to the polling data, there are some interesting problems with it so I'll just bullet point them.

*) The sample size is small, a little over 5600.
*) The report makes little distinction between people who "are republicans" and people who voted republican - this is a blind spot. I voted for the UK Labour party a few times. I'm not a socialist, I simply considered them the least bad option on that day of the week. "Least bad" voters while numerous due to a lack of proportional voting systems, are often lost in polls.
*) This is the most important part - you can engineer answers by phrasing questions for people and asking yes/no. The pollsters are putting words in peoples mouths by asking them to answer yes or no to what are non-trivial thoughts or positions. I see this a lot in corporates when they ask employees about renumeration, the questions are engineered to encourage the answer on their terms leaving little way to express an alternative answer such as "we are unfairly paid".
*) Due to the sample sizes some of these conclusions should be taken with a pinch of salt. 1656 people were filed under 'republican' but bear in mind my second point. 28% of those agreed with the phrase supplied to them about violence potentially being necessary, so 463 people. 386 non republicans agreed. Do you see what I did there? What were they actually talking about though - overthrowing the current government? It seems highly unlikely that the democrat contingent (123) agreed with that so why would anyone assume that all of the republicans would? The initial article we started at seemed to think that was the only meaning, but if you look at the backdrop of vandalism and riot with defunding the police being talked about and record numbers in some areas leaving the force - this could simply be based on the concept of self defense. It could be anything, it could be the principles of the second amendment. The question (see above) was specific in wording but ambiguous in meaning.


TL;DR stop getting too worked up about this, overreacting to it may even make it worse because nothing gets people more interested in false news than overtly emotional attempts to destroy it. I will say that polling company in the study are WAY, WAY better than yougov - who have terrible sampling due to the way polls are distributed. Some of their polls with barely a thousand responses are cited by news organisations here and it requires people to -want- to be polled and take action to do so. Like review sites, most of the people who were that motivated have an axe to grind.

All IMHO of course. I'm just so tired of everyone being terrified and angry with eachother all the time when the things we should really be worried about just run unopposed - for example social media engineering and monopoly walking hand in hand with governments, or the spectacular levels of damage being caused by identity politics.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

system11 wrote:note the "incendiary" language of the first paragraph particularly the use of "building" which implies a deliberate act.
I won't dispute what you note about the use of "spicy" adjectives in general here, but this particular point doesn't, at the very least, neatly fall under that umbrella; frankly, I find it incredibly difficult to argue that the GOP's constant and near-unanimous flogging of the "there are unanswered questions about the 2020 election" story isn't the very definition of "deliberate".

It could be argued whether or not their core intention in doing so is to encourage violence, but there's no way they aren't stoking the proverbial flames to their own advantage; personally, I'm tempted to put it in the same basket as the Capitol riot itself, namely that those egging on the mob aren't explicitly trying to incite violence, but they do know that what they're saying and doing almost certainly will overflow its banks within certain groups of people, and as long as they still get the clout/votes/fundraising/etc. out of it they just plain don't give a shit if anyone gets hurt or killed along the way, because, well, they can't be outright blamed for it. And yeah, that's more than enough to concern the likes of me, especially in a country with a whole lot more guns floating around than your own.

EDIT: Oh, and this just in.

Off to the side, you state that the Capitol riot has been used as a "rallying cry" by certain actors, which is surely true, but I do wonder where precisely you'd draw the "just right" line between "overreacting" to what happened and, as conservatives nearly across the board here have done, simply dismiss out of hand anyone who doesn't want to immediately move on from it when 60-plus percent of Republicans still profess to believe that Biden isn't a legitimate President (and, once again, if the same trends leading up to the election still hold, the actual figure is almost certainly higher, especially since 80-plus percent openly approve of Liz Cheney losing her leadership position for refusing to subscribe to it).
Here we see the QAnon extreme level loons being deliberately confused with the people who believe there was something unfair in the election.
As has been discussed at great length before now, Trump and his allies have had months to present the "overwhelming evidence" they supposedly possess that something was off with the election, and have gotten in front of judges dozens of times, but every single time have, instead of finally letting everyone see what they've supposedly dug up, opted to push laughably tortured readings of the law that would allow them to simply disregard the results when it suited them, and have been tossed out on their asses (allow me this opportunity to recall Trump's pre-presidential assertion that he'd sent detectives to Hawaii in search of Obama's birth certificate, who could not believe what they're finding, until he simply told reporters "we don't talk about that anymore" and they politely stopped asking).

This came to a crescendo with the Supreme Court suit filed by the Texas attorney general - openly supported by 17 other GOP AGs and over 100 GOP legislators - which all of a sudden claimed that the magnitude of the election fraud they were alleging was so pervasive and so widespread that actually gathering any evidence of it, let alone overwhelming evidence, would be impossible, and that the Court would have to just take their word for it.

Even a Court with Trump's own appointees making up a third of it couldn't bring themselves to take it seriously, and countless GOP election officials, not to mention so shameless a bootlicker as Bill Barr, have openly acknowledged that the election's results (in which, I might remind you, the Republican party at large performed above expectations, though they still somehow felt the need to make "election security" a priority in the immediate aftermath) are, by any measure one might apply, completely valid. So tell me, why shouldn't anyone out there who still doesn't quite seem to realize (or, more likely, admit) what they've got on their hands when they line up behind the unanswered questions canard not be placed in precisely the same boat as the Pizzagate crowd?
The report makes little distinction between people who "are republicans" and people who voted republican - this is a blind spot.
Unless I'm missing something, the report cited in the article (the same one Sengoku Strider referenced in his most recent post) explicitly refers to "party affiliation" when talking about Republicans, and differentiates between those and more general "conservatives" elsewhere. Did I overlook something blatant here?
This is the most important part - you can engineer answers by phrasing questions for people and asking yes/no. The pollsters are putting words in peoples mouths by asking them to answer yes or no to what are non-trivial thoughts or positions.
I guess you could possibly surmise that the later two questions, while obviously intended to refer specifically to central QAnon tenets (particularly when presented in tandem with the first), could be interpreted as something farther-ranging, I can only wonder how many of the respondents actually thought the pollster was suddenly switching over to something completely different...or that such sentiments shouldn't still be worrying to us no matter what particular worldview they might spring from (which seems to be a regular refrain whenever BLM or "cancel culture" rear their heads on here). Not to mention how much legitimate wiggle room might exist between "yes" and "no" when you're talking about a global ruling cabal of Satanic pedophiles in the first place.

TL;DR: What you state about the opinion article being presented in such a way as to invoke an emotional response is a reasonable criticism, and no, we shouldn't be constantly freaking out at each other (just remember, I go back far enough to remember being told I want the terrorists to win), but I'm not nearly as ready as you are to also dismiss the underlying data it draws from - and who, specifically, it points to as the crux of the trend it's covering - especially keeping in mind where we've very recently been, and the abject unwillingness of high-profile people who obviously know better to even pretend to stem the tide.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Getting away from politics - the art of pretending to your fans the other team is always about to cause an apocalypse - and back to the actual apocalypse, everything you thought you knew about pandas is just another Illuminati lie:

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#PandaDenier
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

The Panda is a fun little side character in The Perfect Run. His name is Timmy and all he wants is to be famous and popular~
Sengoku Strider wrote:Two days ago a Yahoo/Yougov poll was published showing 73% of republicans believe the Capitol riot was caused by left wing protestors. Despite both the FBI and (republican House minority leader) Kevin McCarthy saying left wing protestors weren't involved.
lol fuckin' trolls.

Some really advanced GAN video They conjured up I guess. I thought we were at least ~15 years away from being able to fake something like this.

Oh wait.... of course. They're paid actors. How silly of me.

They can't get the impersonators' scripts quite right even on their most accurate TV shows, but somehow get the culture and bickering just perfect for this.
215 kids found buried at a school up in Canada
hoo boy... real genocide isn't as fun : (
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

system11 wrote:Somewhat relatedly Biden is a whole different kind of awful, he's probably going to tank the economy more than it already is which will disproportionately slam the lower earning working classes as it always does - but nobody seems to care what he's doing, even when he simply continues or reinvents things that were apparently so horrible under Trump. It's pretty wild.
Are you suggesting Biden will do more damage by poorly designed new policy or by maintaining the neolib status quo (something he is certain to do).

Trump permanently shifted America's relationship with China, but that was inevitable. There's a cold war of sorts brewing, there. There was bipartisan frustration long before Trump. He was convenient cover for policy shifts with China, but I don't see it rolling back.

I agree that Biden must learn from Macron on environmental policy. I don't personally doubt climate science and I support making changes, but you can't save the world on the backs of the working poor.

Biden's immigration moves did bite him. He wanted to get his base excited, but he underestimated the coyote biz marketing machine. They blasted his comments out to desperate people through an advertising megaphone. Give a desperate person any hope and they'll grab it--justified or not. As you pointed out, the real world results will be only slightly different.

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Not related to you, system11, but.... As a side note, the centrist "yes, but.. smug" liberals (they know who they are) trumpeting Canada's asylum policies made me grin. Ever check the facts on that? Unlike America, Canadian asylum is *temporary*. They deport you! You don't get to stay! (Oops! That's kind of a big deal, huh?) I also see that Canada is deporting people in country for asylum because of traffic tickets. No, it's not because they disrespected the law officer or refused to pay a fine/handle the situation. It's because Canada willfully *wants* to deport people--and they will use any excuse. Their asylum programme is window dressing. Don't tell me their numbers without context. And, that's the frustrating thing, isn't it? I have zero doubt the sources of the Canada numbers knew the details, but they couldn't be bothered with the truth. (Apparently, people with integrity are doomed to be labeled cucks. The world belongs to "ends justify the means".)
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BryanM wrote:Like with Prison Break and Supernatural and That 70's Show, they had to make more product after the natural end had passed.
Yeah iirc Supernatural you could tell Season 5 was actual ending, but then it went on forever after that. I watched a couple or so seasons beyond that before just quitting. It didn't feel the same, probably different writers.

Was there planned content for Prison Break beyond the first season? That one was so long ago I don't remember.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Yeah, it was meant for ~13 episodes, but it took off and the guy stretched it out to ~44 episodes. Then the post series where the protagonist was just a guy who broke in and out of prisons for fun. It had a revival season back ~2017 that I didn't watch.

Even having a full one year plan is rare for these things. (I'm deeply skeptical LOST had more than a napkin's worth of pre-production.) I'd think it completely crazy to gamble so many millions of dollars like that, but with the cancellation rate (Lone Star was cancelled 20 minutes into the airing of its first episode, it didn't even last a full 24 hours lol) and the monopoly they have (had?) this throwing shit at the wall strategy makes some sense.

The Promised Neverland had years worth of production done on the writing on its first arc - all this effort put into characters, worldbuilding, unexpected twists etc. The same level of care wasn't put into the content that followed that - characters act vastly out of character, shit just happens because something has to happen, the nature of the world and other people inexplicably bends to the protagonist's exuberance, etc.

Writing is super easy. Writing good stuff isn't : (
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FinalBaton
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by FinalBaton »

system11 wrote:I'm just so tired of everyone being terrified and angry with eachother all the time when the things we should really be worried about just run unopposed - for example social media engineering and monopoly walking hand in hand with governments, or the spectacular levels of damage being caused by identity politics.
Gotta agree with this.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Just another former national security advisor calling for a coup of the world's largest nuclear power by military junta. Complete with raucous cheers from patriotic democracy-bleeding patriots. Carry on, nothing apocalyptic to see here:
Appearing in Dallas at a QAnon conference, Flynn was asked during a Q&A session that was shared in a Twitter video: “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?”

After cheers from the crowd died down, Flynn responded: “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.
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https://twitter.com/MC_Hyperbole/status ... 84489?s=20

-
"Minamar."
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

DATELINE: Cultural death spiral into incoherent madness, day 1523.

Honourable and truthful cool guy American army hero Michael Flynn would like you to know that under no circumstances did he say the thing he is clearly on camera saying in front of dozens of cheering witnesses in the previous post. Shame you you.

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His supporters would like you to know that even though he absolutely didn't say it, they are coincidentally 100% all for it. Because whatever Myanmar is, surely it is not in the grip of the sort of totalitarian regime built on lies and the trampling of democracy that they spend 100% of their time fretting about. Armies are heroes.

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Former President Trump, ever vigilant sentinel of truth and liberal (but not that kind of liberal) democracy, for his part, is telling people he will be president again by August. Lovingly and joyfully.

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Of course, surely this is all just people having fun shooting the breeze, blown out of proportion by the mainstream media panic machine. It will certainly amount to nothing. True MAGA patriots wouldn't do anything out of hand.

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Enjoy the last 2.7 weeks of civilization y'all, Virtua Fighter 5 is free on PS+.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

We're halfway to another goddamn election year. It's like a Lasagna Cat skit, it never ends.

The good Lasagna Cat skits, they have an ending.
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Seems to finally be a consensus of sorts that zero corporate tax is unsustainable and there's zero trickle down. Someone pee on Maggie or Ronnie's grave for me. Fuckers.
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