Prelude to the Apocalypse

[orange808]

I can imagine the horror of any artist that uses any method to create single images based on a concept.

For instance, I decided to make something about freedom of choice. With mastery of the tools and few a minutes in my image editor tools, we have this.



15 minutes total if you can know how to draw and master the entire workflow. That's throwaway easy, now. Wanted to throw something up in a post real fast, so I did. I knew I wanted to go with something obvious and use doors. The AI took the description and that gave me a blueprint; I saw the good (and obviously derivative) idea in there and ran with it.

That would definitely scare the shit out of someone that may spend a long time sketching out a similar idea. A famous artist could probably sell that for millions.

[BulletMagnet]

The Onion's headline writers will be out of a job as the new House majority moves in; you just can't make this shit up.

Or, for that matter, this.

[Sengoku Strider]

The Onion's headline writers will be out of a job as the new House majority moves in; you just can't make this shit up.

I mean...

expect two years of taxpayer money being used to show off pictures of Hunter Biden's penis

...how is The Onion even still in business?

[BryanM]

That pacific cyclone which is totally not a hurricane is rather neat. I like the guy who compared these days as being like living inside Grand Theft Auto's Weather Randomizer.

Clown show in the House is quite nice. Hopefully they can incorporate some juggling and elephants for next season's episode.

[Mischief Maker]

Clown show in the House is quite nice. Hopefully they can incorporate some juggling and elephants for next season's episode.

I for one am outraged!

The longer it takes for the Republicans to pick a leader, the longer we have to wait for Hunter Biden's penis to be on all our TV screens 24/7.

[BryanM]

I warned you the entirety of their world revolves around the penis loooooooong ago you can't say I didn't warn you bro

[orange808]

I see the UK press picked up Matt Gaetz's empty threat to resign.

For those that don't know, Americans don't resign unless they have to. His party would welcome his retreat and a second opportunity to fill his seat. For all the talk about confidence, losing Gaetz wouldn't do anything to upset the government's ability to function or its legitimacy. His exit would be met with celebration.

He's just a wingnut shooting his mouth off and saying things he doesn't mean--and he expects people to take him seriously and negotiate with him. He's a knucklehead.

American politics don't reward backbenchers for resigning to build their brand.

[To Far Away Times]

I see the UK press picked up Matt Gaetz's empty threat to resign.

For those that don't know, Americans don't resign unless they have to. His party would welcome his retreat and a second opportunity to fill his seat. For all the talk about confidence, losing Gaetz wouldn't do anything to upset the government's ability to function or its legitimacy. His exit would be met with celebration.

He's just a wingnut shooting his mouth off and saying things he doesn't mean--and he expects people to take him seriously and negotiate with him. He's a knucklehead.

American politics don't reward backbenchers for resigning to build their brand.

Matt Gaetz is also a known pedophile and we have reciepts that he was involved in sex trafficking a minor, so there's that too.

He's too politically connected to be prosecuted though. Conservativism can't exist if laws are applied fairly on both sides. Kinda goes against the whole point.

[Sengoku Strider]

Clown show in the House is quite nice. Hopefully they can incorporate some juggling and elephants for next season's episode.

I for one am outraged!

The longer it takes for the Republicans to pick a leader, the longer we have to wait for Hunter Biden's penis to be on all our TV screens 24/7.

I see someone is not one of the secret vice president's 149,840 followers!

It's just a distraction for the normies, you're watching a movie. On the 17th vote (Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet) Trump will be elected speaker, and send Biden & Harris to Guantanamo to be executed for crimes against humanity. Somehow. (Military trial will be swift).

Then since as speaker he will be next in line to be president, he will reveal his shocking all star cabinet to the world!



MJ, 87 year old Elvis and Kayleigh McEnany? The winning never stops!

NCSWIC
WWG1WGA

[BulletMagnet]

I see the UK press picked up Matt Gaetz's empty threat to resign.

It would be nice if somebody bothered to call out the particularly sick and wide-reaching irony of his threat, namely the fact that he says he refuses to accept the idea of a "moderate" conservative as speaker (never mind that McCarthy is, among other things, a proud member of the Sedition Caucus): every time the "left" is in power, people like him scream demands that, in the sacred name of bipartisanship, they're only allowed to nominate "moderates" to any position, and when the latter inevitably acquiesce (please recall that the current President has a habit of waxing poetic about how nice it was working with Strom Thurmond), they're rewarded with a combination of calling every single nominee an unacceptable Radical Socialist no matter how laughably milquetoast they are, and pulling a shutdown and/or Gorsuch and just plain refusing to govern because yeeeaahhhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhhh.

Once the shoe is on the other foot, of course, the "liberal media" give a collective "this is fine" shrug (the best alternative for Speaker that Robert Reich can come up with is a guy who voted with Trump 92 percent of the time), when these assclowns don't have an ounce of consistency, let alone integrity, to justify their ongoing insistence that they need to destroy democracy to save the country.

[To Far Away Times]

I have to say it is impressive how conservatives have been able to frame right leaning democrats as liberals.

And extremist religious fundamentalism is just bog standard conservatism.

Get someone just a little left leaning like AOC, Liz Warren, or Bernie who wants to increase taxes on the .001% and cut taxes on the lower and middle class and they brand them as more socialist than Stalin.

I guess it helps to have a dedicated propaganda outlet and some zero budget upstarts in a race to the bottom.

[BulletMagnet]

Well, McCarthy has - surprise! - agreed to let the hyper-MAGA wing of his party lead him (and the rest of us) around by the nose in exchange for entering his initials on the House high score table, and moreover shown he has absolutely no problem welcoming abject trash (EDIT: and pussies) like Santos on board so long as it serves his purpose; in case that wasn't frightening enough, he got in front of the mics and declared that the debacle had taught his party how to govern. Fun times ahead. (Matt Gaetz, for his part, rolled over, played dead, and voted "present" with the rest of his cadre.)

Oh, and off to the side, a student shot a teacher in Virginia yesterday, which is such a humdrum occurrence by now that it doesn't even merit a mention around here nowadays...though it might be worth noting that the shooter this time around was a 6-year-old first grader, and before you ask, as the local police chief put it, "this was not an accidental shooting".

God bless America.

[Sima Tuna]

I was barely sentient at age 6. I doubt that child has any conception of what they've done or what it means. Really just a tragedy all around.

[To Far Away Times]

Well, McCarthy has - surprise! - agreed to let the hyper-MAGA wing of his party lead him (and the rest of us) around by the nose in exchange for entering his initials on the House high score table, and moreover shown he has absolutely no problem welcoming abject trash like Santos on board so long as it serves his purpose; in case that wasn't frightening enough, he got in front of the mics and declared that the debacle had taught his party how to govern. Fun times ahead. (Matt Gaetz, for his part, rolled over, played dead, and voted "present" with the rest of his cadre.)

McCarthy ended up with 14 losses before being elected. You could tell that number was getting a bit high for Matt Gaetz' taste, he doesn't want anything to do with something 18 or above.

[Mischief Maker]

Well, McCarthy has - surprise! - agreed to let the hyper-MAGA wing of his party lead him (and the rest of us) around by the nose in exchange for entering his initials on the House high score table, and moreover shown he has absolutely no problem welcoming abject trash like Santos on board so long as it serves his purpose; in case that wasn't frightening enough, he got in front of the mics and declared that the debacle had taught his party how to govern. Fun times ahead. (Matt Gaetz, for his part, rolled over, played dead, and voted "present" with the rest of his cadre.)

McCarthy ended up with 14 losses before being elected. You could tell that number was getting a bit high for Matt Gaetz' taste, he doesn't want anything to do with something 18 or above.

[BIL]

A riveting dispatch from OL BURIGHTY on the latest BURGERTROCITY

[Sengoku Strider]

A riveting dispatch from OL BURIGHTY on the latest BURGERTROCITY

"Sure, gun murders in the UK are zero. You can talk about the gun murders all day, but their knife attacks went up! Think about it." - Internet Man, 2023

[BIL]

Sure, gun murders in the UK are zero.

I suppose they are, relatively speaking, if you ignore black and impoverished white victims of gun crime. Otherwise the phrase "punching above one's weight" comes to mind, and not in the way that makes grand-dad fondly recall the days of Empire. 3;

Perhaps that is why the great and the good were very surprised and amazed when this happened in front of thirty eyewitnesses,

Spoiler

[/url]

and nobody saw anything. (it was no more notable an event than the usual steady trickle of its ilk; but circa 2020, the country was taken with her Burgeriffic message that our dickless cops were the ones shooting up the place, not generationally-entrenched gangbangers. Holy fuck lmao!)

Needless to say, there are some very obvious socioeconomic commonalities here, also seen in Liverpool (above link - nobody saw anything there either), and Glasgow, and Kingston, and other abnormally shooty places. Would bet a whole tree fitty this current case was the result of some deadbeat "gangster" cunt leaving his piece lying about the house.

Then again, it's Murica. You seen the Facebook Live of that little girl accidentally blowing her mini-gangsta cousin's head off with his own, extendo-clipped gun, then doing the Dutch on the spot, various family members peeking in on the ruin and hollering in escalating panic? Christ. You can't beat the saturation factor, whatever the finer aspects of each tragedy.

[Sengoku Strider]

Apocalypse getting right back to work.



2023 bringing it hard in the very first week, with gay jewish latino holocaust survivor white power nazis. In congress.

If the world will never see you as anything but a villain, the only path forward is claiming the mantle of supervillainy.

[BIL]

I've seen other white supremacists using that symbol too, like this Scottish broad

[orange808]

Everything in the universe happens in context with events before and afterwards. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

People that don't consider that are either willfully disingenuous or unbelievably stupid. Sometimes both.

[BIL]

Yes, the "event" being 4chan jerkoffs pulling a prank, and credulous morons - largely concentrated in Murica - lapping it up. They could've said the "V for Victory" was a Vichy apologist symbol, and your healthy stock of Pavlovian dinguses would've been on their knees before the belt buckle had hit the floor.

What to expect from the great nation behind Iraq War 2 and so many other well-researched productions? Certainly not circumspection, surely.

[Sengoku Strider]

Yes, the "event" being 4chan jerkoffs pulling a prank, and credulous morons - largely concentrated in Murica - lapping it up.

Enh. It's one of those things that started as a "prank," except it was propagated by people who were getting off trying to undermine anti-racism advocates on social media in the first place. It wasn't a critique of any journalist or outlet, anyone who took the bait would do. By the time the Christchurch shooter flashed it in court, the symbol had long since taken on a life of its own. I'd have to think Santos knows what he's doing here, signalling to internet trolls with Joker avatars and their meatspace fellow travellers that he will be their spirit animal, if they'll have him.



He's learning from the best.

[orange808]

What to expect from the great nation behind Iraq War 2 and so many other well-researched productions? Certainly not circumspection, surely.

Agreed.

Even better, that works on two levels, assuming you're not on holiday.

Coalition of the Willing.

[BIL]

Enh. It's one of those things that started as a "prank," except it was propagated by people who were getting off trying to undermine anti-racism advocates on social media in the first place. It wasn't a critique of any journalist or outlet, anyone who took the bait would do. By the time the Christchurch shooter flashed it in court, the symbol had long since taken on a life of its own. I'd have to think Santos knows what he's doing here, signalling to internet trolls with Joker avatars and their meatspace fellow travellers that he will be their spirit animal, if they'll have him.

Having (regrettably) read what some charitably call his manifesto, I don't put much stock in Tarrant's regurgitating. Even his atrocity was - sadly - boilerplate. The various murderous swine the imageboard cesspool has churned out over the last decade or so... it's like an ouroboros of shit that occasionally takes a breather to spew. Sick, sadistic cunts who should've done the world a favour somewhere quiet and dark.

Santos seems less like one of those gaping herpetic assholes, more an archetypally spineless worm who'll seek the path of least resistance/integrity. I suppose we'll see, but for what it's worth, MTG and the America First crowd despise one another at the moment, and the latter are political thalidomide, post-January 6th. I don't know if a classically grasping politician like Santos would go for that base. Kanye would!

(Anecdote Incoming!) Every time we play Scrabble, my grandma will, without fail, absentmindedly make the same gesture - with the addition of loudly *click*ing her thumb and index fingernails. It drives me fucking nuts, and I'm a tolerant dude who loves his grammy. Seriously crashes my train of CRISS-CROSS WORDSing thought. I've gently asked her to stop doing it many dozens of times.

I'm probably being over-cautious and certainly a bit prideful here. Just seems a bit too incidental, with the maddening tendenciees of unoccupied hands to do things. Check out this dude throwing up the 1488 GangGang sign! No, the dude in front, about 3y/o.

Spoiler

Agreed.

Even better, that works on two levels, assuming you're not on holiday.

Coalition of the Willing.

You've mistaken me for British before, when I felt it'd be churlish to correct - a reticence, some would say cuckitude, which I suppose reflects my cultural links to once-proud Cuck Island.

Coalition of the Willing? More like Coalition of Blair Suckin Dubya's Dick Like They In Prison. These soft-as-shite twats could barely take back the Falklands from a bunch of upjumped Great Value Nazis. Poisoning a bloody swathe of the ME against the West for a couple generations, leaving a million dead civilians in their wake, and creating ISIS is a bit beyond their scope.

They'll arrest the shit outta you for spicy memes though.

Why not bring up the Sykes-Picot Agreement? Now there's a fuckup, perhaps of apocalyptic domino stature!

[Sengoku Strider]

Having (regrettably) read what some charitably call his manifesto, I don't put much stock in Tarrant's regurgitating. Even his atrocity was - sadly - boilerplate. The various murderous swine the imageboard cesspool has churned out over the last decade or so... it's like an ouroboros of shit that occasionally takes a breather to spew. Sick, sadistic cunts who should've done the world a favour somewhere quiet and dark.

I've read varying statistics, but anywhere between 30-70% of people have some form of aphantasia: either limited or no internal monologue at all (though TBH I question those studies' instrumentation and have a hard time believing it's really that high). As in, they read a sentence but don't hear it in their heads. They make no editorial or qualitative judgements as they read. There's no inner critic which they can consciously interact with. There's no Spider-Man thought bubble floating out of their heads as they walk around.



They can consciously try to verbalize their abstracted thoughts, but a lot of the time it's closer to stimulus in-> response out. And psychopaths tend to be superficial and lack impulse control to begin with. These are the types of details I think of when I encounter people like that. I think most of these angry internet circles feed on a lack of self reflection; group-amplified outrage at having felt hurt or wronged by others resulting in acting out on it, because of an inability to deal with, alter or contextualize those emotions the course of their own lives.

Speaking of...

I've just discovered this now but back in 2018, Maxim Pozdorovkin made a documentary on the Trump phenomenon mostly through the eyes of the three main Russian TV networks.



I've got that feeling like when you discover a new favourite band who've been around for a few years.



BRB panicking.

[BIL]

I've read varying statistics, but anywhere between 30-70% of people have some form of aphantasia: either limited or no internal monologue at all (though TBH I question those studies' instrumentation and have a hard time believing it's really that high).

I'd heard this too, I believe, and wondered the same about that estimate.

I do believe self-interrogation is an especially tricky thing to balance. Too much neuroticism, and inertia sets in. Too little, and, well.

[rapoon]

People without an internal monologue visualize their thoughts (like the majority of us do), the absence of which is more often than not associated with aphantasia. A close friend "suffers" from this, but he's hardly some rudimentary filtration device incapable of responding
appropriately and contextually to external stimuli.

[To Far Away Times]

John Deere was not able to end the right to repair through the court system, so that's something positive atleast.

They're one of those comapnies, like Wiley or Monsanto, where just their very presence is a net negative and they're very atagonistic towards people's rights.

If you told me their HQ was in a James Bond style Volcano Lair I would believe you.

[BulletMagnet]

Seems Brazil's right is taking its cues from ours again, in the worst possible way. Up to and including a pussy-ass leader hiding away in Florida.

EDIT: On the home front, the Office of Congressional Ethics and the IRS have both been gutted; the latter is projected to allow tax cheats to hold onto over 100 billion additional dollars over the next decade, while George Santos called the former "fantastic".

Yeah, it obviously doesn't matter who you vote for, nothing ever changes.