Lewis2
2hr ago
It’s literally a nothingburger.
There’s already a meme for that.
ETA: Now that Reddit has hobbled old.reddit.com, it might be worth revisiting the decision to automatically change all Reddit links to old.reddit links.
Lewis2
9hr ago
Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children. Women are again the victims in crime and domestic violence as well. Throughout our hemisphere we have an epidemic of violence against women, even though there is no longer any organized warfare that puts women in the direct line of combat. But domestic violence is now recognized as being the most pervasive human rights violation in the world.
Lewis2
3d ago
I think if you had asked even the most ardent American patriot on 9/12/01, “Do you think we should invade and occupy Afghanistan for the next 20 years?” he would have looked at you like you were crazy before answering “No. We’ll just bomb the shit out of them.” We could have gone in, bombed whatever we felt like bombing, taken out the Taliban leadership, hunted down al-Qaeda without letting Pakistan know, and left. We didn’t have to try to form a modern Western democracy out of illiterate goat herders, child rapists, cousin marriage enthusiasts, and Islamic fundamentalists. It’s not like we didn’t have plenty of historical examples to warn us against getting bogged down in Afghanistan.
As for wounded pride, I suppose I just agree with the old adage, “war is politics by other means.” If the offense is great enough, war seems like a pretty reasonable response.
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It was 25 years ago. Who even cares at this point?
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I told no false story. Try actually reading what people write.
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If you want to bitch and moan about people bringing up old conspiracy theories, go complain to @TitaniumButterfly, as he was the one who brought it up. My anecdote was merely a response.
Lewis2
3d ago
From where I stand, the invasion of Afghanistan was an almost unqualified success. We swept away al-Qaeda, swept away the Taliban, kept bin Ladin on the run, mended our wounded pride, and demonstrated to foreign leaders that they didn’t want to harbor terrorists that would attack the USA. It was the extended occupation that was the problem.
Lewis2
4d ago
Not exactly what you’re asking, but I’d probably just show them news clips from that day. The shocking plane accident (maybe terrorism?), the second plane hitting the building, Bush being informed of the attack, the Pentagon being hit, confusion around the fourth plane, Bush’s speech, members of Congress returning to the Capitol and spontaneously singing “God bless America,” reactions from the UN and other countries, and so on. Give them something of the feel of the event as it was happening. You can probably fill in details about al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc., on your own.
Lewis2
4d ago
That seems like a rather harshly sarcastic response to the thoughts of a then-elementary school student who had never so much as seen an airport, but you do you. Also note that I said some credence, not all credence.
Lewis2
4d ago
I'm not sure the West was long-term viable after the decision was made to keep millions of blacks in the US.
Even granting, arguendo, everything in your first paragraph, by what mechanism do you see the presence of a large number of blacks in America dooming the entire West, including in Europe, South America, the Commonwealth, etc? It seems to me that the West either committed suicide in 1939–45 or failed in more recent decades (whether due to Communist influence, a superabundance of empathy, etc.).
Lewis2
4d ago
I remember my band teacher showing us a couple of photos she had taken of the Pentagon days after the attack. She claimed she was stopped by Pentagon security and made to stop taking pictures almost immediately, and I want to say they might have seized one roll of negatives (it was long enough ago that I don’t remember for sure). My family members were completely dismissive of 9/11 conspiracies, and at that age, I tended to defer to their judgment on such matters, but her story did strike me as lending some credence to the theories.
Lewis2
5d ago
I’ll be interested to see the reactions when white nationalists start using the new map to point out the relative sizes of Africa and Europe, before asking why the tiny continent should accept any immigrants from the massive continent.
Lewis2
7d ago
Some variation of the Swiss system, where (simplifying a bit) local residents have to approve citizenship requests, seems like it would do an okay job of this. Or at least it would as long as the local residents aren’t all of an “import the world” mindset.
Lewis2
12d ago
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Practice makes perfect, but most people only give presentations and demonstrations at most a couple of times per year, so they never get better. Also, only a tiny minority ever record themselves and go back over the recordings to see how they might improve (particularly by excising “uh,” “um,” “er,” etc.).
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Relatedly, most people don’t prepare properly. I’ve heard it said that you should ideally spend an hour of preparation for every minute you’ll spend speaking. That may be taking things to an extreme, but a ratio of one hour preparing to 15 minutes speaking has always struck me as the absolute bare minimum. I think most bad presenters just wing it.
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“I’ll just wing it” might be more common among extroverts. They enjoy talking to people and assume that those skills will transfer seamlessly to giving presentations (they don’t). On the other hand, some introverts have a deathly fear of public speaking, so they suck because they’re nervous.
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Nervous people especially, but also others, talk too fast. Sometimes this is unavoidable if you have to cram a lot of information into a sort time frame (for example), but it’s pretty common even when there are no real time constraints. Talking too fast isn’t great on its own, but it also usually leads to more “ums,” since the brain can’t keep up with the tongue.
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Very few people take a systematic approach to learning new skills, especially outside a classroom setting. So even if they think “I’d like to be a better presenter” (which more likely than not never even occurs to them), they’ll never take the next step of thinking “how?” And most people who did take a communications class in college regarded it as a silly freshman blow-off class; it didn’t occur to them that they might actually learn something valuable from it. (To be fair, though, many colleges treat that class the same way, assigning it to any random adjunct who happens to be teaching a lighter-than-normal load.)
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Most people are fuzzy thinkers. They include unnecessary details and get lost down rabbit holes when they present because that’s just how they always think. Even with ample preparation time, it probably wouldn’t occur to them to change that aspect of their presentation.
Lewis2
15d ago
Judas has to be an exception, right? “Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.”
Lewis2
18d ago
What do you think about early 20th century ads painted on the sides of buildings? There’s been a concerted effort in my neck of the woods to restore these “ghost signs” and bring them back to their former glory. In one sense, it’s kind of stupid, since the businesses being advertised have mostly long since closed their doors. On the other hand, the hand-painted lettering is usually not unattractive.
Lewis2
24d ago
It isn’t even purely about race. If someone kidnapped and hanged Clarence Thomas, many of the people who are currently crying about the lynching of Arday would be downright jubilant. As Sloot said, it’s all who/whom.
Lewis2
24d ago
Interesting how different our moral intuitions are. I would say, for example, that the teenage boys who kidnapped, raped, brutally tortured, and murdered Junko Furuta should have been immediately executed, and the fact that they weren’t was a terrible injustice. Likewise the murderers of Iryna Zarutska and Debrina Kawam, the would-be murderer of Bethany MaGee, and everyone involved with the Pakistani rape gangs. Allowing any of them to live, let alone to ever see the outside of a prison cell, strikes me as a horribly anti-social policy. I honestly can’t understand the mind of someone who disagrees.
Lewis2
26d ago
My thoughts were similar. I believe pretty firmly that filicide is a crime worthy of death. I believe it firmly enough that if I ever murdered my children, I would probably administer the punishment myself if the state refused to. The only wrinkle is that I also believe suicide is immoral—but does a self-administered death penalty really count as suicide? I’ve come to think no.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Failing that, he could also have written a tell-all book about how he lied his way to the top. People love that sort of thing. He could have been a modern-day Frank Abagnale.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Yes, they believe the lifestyle is degenerate, but that doesn’t detract from their view that it’s a sin (indeed, it reinforces it). Botond173 was responding to this comment, which I think had the right of it:
They might say that it's a sin, and I don't think they're lying or coming up with an excuse, I think that's what they legitimately believed
Lewis2
1mo ago
I think most just actually see it as a sin. It’s mentioned as such in both the old and new testaments, and it was condemned by nearly every church body and sect until the 1960s. I don’t think you need to reach for hidden motives here.
Lewis2
1mo ago
It wouldn’t work on the necessary demographic. Mamdani did best among 18 to 29 year olds. For them, Yeltsin is ancient history, completely irrelevant to today; besides which, their education from leftist teachers most likely never included that episode.
True, but I think she’s an actual, honest-to-God gynocentric feminist, and it never occurred to her that that statement might be controversial. She’s like a pro-lifer who starts off her arguments by claiming we are all made in the image of God. Neither one really thinks about how people who don’t share her foundational beliefs might react.
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