AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
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User ID: 2498
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I don't know if the book is better, but the show is awful. It just beats you over the head again and again about how evil this society is and doesn't ever really do much else. Which is a shame because there's the building blocks of a compelling alternate reality in there.
A more measured version that a) has an actual story rather than the main character just glowering at the camera like she's about to go and do something (but never does) and b) prioritizes making Gilead believable over making it horrifying could have been really interesting.
Instead we get nonsense like the "her fault" chant.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
The replies to that tweet are full of gay pics, seems to work fine.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Haha there are still limits. No Muhammad pictures: https://x.com/texsurfin/status/1823597288033329528
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Is it just me or does Grok handle text generation better than other image generators?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I did funeral work while I was getting my degree. Mostly it was overnight stuff - I'd just be at home chilling until I got a phone call that there had been a car crash or a suicide or something and then I'd suit up and go to the scene and take the body to the coroner once the cops' forensics people were done getting what they needed. I also got a second job doing cremations for a while.
I highly recommend the death industry - you accumulate no end of great stories.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Well I would kill for a good pizza, so that tracks.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
How so? Jamaat e-Islami are a small player and the BNP is more of a lip-service-to-Islam party than an actual Islamist party.
Edit: Also I think Jamaat is currently banned?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Or I don't know, a system where instead of going into a big government account, the money goes into an account you actually personally own?
AKA the Australian superannuation system where every few years the government notices that people who make a lot of money have a lot in their retirement accounts and the poor people don't and maybe we need to mess with the rules a bit to mitigate this unfairness...
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
That's pretty much all of parenting. No one really knows what they're doing to start with but we all muddle through. As long as baby stays alive you're doing something right.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I used to pick up dead people. Of all the corpses I've dealt with, the one death that sticks in my mind as the most desirable for myself or my loved ones was a very old lady who passed away in her own bed with a well-read new testament on the bedside table next to her. Her 80 year old daughter and 60 year old granddaughter were there with her. I don't know if there's such a thing as a good death, but that one was the closest I've found.
I think we should be willing to accept earlier, natural deaths rather than dragging things out. Many if not most old people would prefer to die in their own beds with family around rather than in a nursing home or a hospital. Realistically you can't provide the same level of medical care in a home setting, but so be it.
However I very much dislike the idea of making deliberate choices to end a life. It's good for the human soul to accept the inevitable, but it is bad for the human soul to cull lives that are inconvenient. There is a difference between letting go and throwing away, and once you cross that line it is all too easy to start killing other people too. Why not the healthy-but-depressed person? Why not the person disabled by accident rather than age? Slippery slopes are indeed slippery.
Of course you start by saying it's voluntary. And it is, kinda, but the people who go know that they're an inconvenience and that it would be easier for everyone around them if they just sat in the nitrogen capsule. And more and more people respond to that pressure and increasingly society becomes built around the assumption that of course you'll off yourself when the time is right and then if you don't it becomes a really awkward imposition on everybody. And the choice ceases to really be a choice, it's an expectation.
Our elders deserve to die with dignity with their lives neither artificially prolonged nor not artificially truncated. When I go I want it to be in my home with my children and grandchildren around me. And when someone sees that I'm having a stroke or I'm struggling to breathe, they don't panic and they don't call the ambulance, they just hold my hand and stay with me till the end. That's as much as I can ask for.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
The government has collapsed and is now in the hands of student protesters - generally these types of arrangements are unstable and it’s quite possible there could be a civil war.
I think this is a bit over-excited, isn't it? The unpopular PM has already left, no one is going to fight on her side. The key policy demand of the protesters (that government jobs be allocated based on merit rather than on identity-based quotas) has been met. There's an interim government headed by a respected elder statesman that is going to hold new elections.
It's certainly been an eventful period in Bangladeshi politics but I think it's highly unlikely that a civil war erupts.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Anything else interesting happen in it? I listened for a bit and after five minutes of Trump talking about how awesome he was I tuned out again.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Yeah that's pretty much the range. Some kids get it immediately, some really struggle. Our 3 kids were all pretty easy in that regard (though not necessarily in others), and I think the average kid gets it quickly enough. Stick a tit in their mouth and see what happens.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
What do our more military-minded posters make of the current Kursk incursion of Ukrainian forces into Russia?
The battle lines inside Ukraine proper have become essentially immobile, so it seems Ukraine has at least found a softer place in which to strike. But it's not clear to me what the strategic objective of this operation is. Is it essentially a feint to draw Russian troops away from defending conquered Ukrainian territory? Is the plan to claim Russian land to negotiate land swaps with when the time comes for peace talks? I don't see how it directly gets the Ukrainians any closer to their goal of evicting the Russians from Ukraine.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
NYT/Siena is a very good pollster and their numbers are horrible for Trump. I think trying to pretend the polls are wrong is just cope.
But hey, if Trump loses again the GOP can just run him a fourth time in 2028. It's bound to work eventually.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Ehhhhhh. Building companies is hard, and building companies is well remunerated, but being hard is not why building companies is well remunerated.
Building companies is well remunerated because capital enjoys systemic leverage over labour and is able to claim more of the rewards from their cooperation for itself. When capital and labour work together both parties are better off (otherwise they wouldn't do it), but capital gets more of the reward because unemployed capital is much less miserable than unemployed labour. So the worker is paid in wages, while the investor is paid in profits.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I've never liked this type of rhetorical device, as it reifies the notion that Women's Lives Matter More
Women's lives do matter more.
I'm as anti-feminist as anyone, but the central lie that feminism has spread is that men and women are groups in conflict with each other. That's not reality - overwhelmingly, women and men are in cooperation with each other. That dynamic is at the heart of what family is.
Feminism also tries to tell us that the differences between men and women are minimal and mostly social. That's another lie, the differences are profound and biologically inescapable. And one of those profound differences is that men are vastly more replaceable. If you lose half of your young men, that sucks, but in 20 years you will have another generation of young men larger than the one that you lost. If you lose half of your young women, that is a demographic catastrophe that you many never fully recover from.
And beyond that, on the individual level women are better suited to the task of raising children - ideally you have both parents around, but if you have to lose one, it's better to lose the father. Meanwhile men are better suited to the task of courage and self sacrifice. If you force a married couple to decide on one of them dying, most of them will agree that it's the man who goes.
It is a good and noble thing that the men on the Titanic gave up their places on the lifeboats for the women and children. It is a good and noble thing that men go to war to protect their wives and sisters and daughters. It is a good and noble thing that men do the dangerous and difficult jobs that risk life and limb. This is our role, and this is why it is shameful for a man to be afraid of death and amusing for a woman to be afraid of a mouse.
I would much rather myself be attacked at night than it happen to my wife or my daughters. Any man of decency would say the same.
AshLael
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2mo ago
Yeah that's fair. I'll concede the point, I guess I was forgetting how strong the "transitory" claims were.
AshLael
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2mo ago
But if the land is stolen it's not theirs to give.
Aboriginal activists have a mantra that Australia "Always was, always will be" Aboriginal land. That necessarily implies that Vietnamese immigrants have no right to be here - it was the white people that let them in.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I think there's a bit of a talking-past-each-other thing with "transitory" inflation. The pro-transitory argument is we pumped a ton of money into the system during covid, but then we stopped pumping money in at that elevated rate, so once all the price gains from that bump in the money supply bubble through the economy we go back to the same moderate inflation rate we had before. And that case is basically true and has been borne out.
The anti-transitory argument is hey we got this massive jump in prices and then the prices never went back down. Which is also true. Of course, that's not strictly speaking an inflation problem anymore. Now it's a cost of living issue.
The assumption that once the price rises slowed down everyone would be happy again was the problem. Absolute levels matter as well as the rate of change!
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
I see you also listen to The Rest is History! Brilliant podcast.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
2mo ago
Moreover, why have I been anti-leftist and interested in anti-leftist modes of thought for a decade and I've never heard this argument before, and why does no one else seem to see that sort of obvious double speak when examining leftist stances on immigration vs leftist stances on colonialism?
I was once in a dumb argument about whether or not chicken tikka masala counted as British food. My interlocutor, a leftist, was arguing it was invented by indians who just happened to be living in Britain, so the UK shouldn't get credit just because it happened on their soil. And then decorated the arument with some stuff about it being another example of colonialists claiming something that wasn't theirs blah blah.
I responded by quipping "I see you agree with Mr Farage that immigrants aren't really British." He conceded the point immediately.
It's fun of course to win an argument with one line, but it's only possible when your opponent has an internally inconsistent worldview and hasn't noticed yet. So many people switch easily between frameworks depending on what casts [favoured group] in the best light and they don't even realise they're doing it.
No, the magic chair does matter. It creates a coordination point.
If you've got an army with the numbers to go and storm the opposing trench you still need a way to get them to all charge at once. If one goes on his own he gets shot to bits. Seizing control of the leadership can potentially give you that - you still need soldiers willing to obey your orders, but you can gain the authority needed to make them believe that everyone else is going to obey them too.
There's many examples of dictators who took power by exploiting legitimate processes before running roughshod over the law once in power - including the archetypal evil dictator Hitler himself. If Hitler loses the 1932/1933 elections - even with no reduction in real support, say because Germany had had a different electoral system - he doesn't pass the Enabling Act and he never becomes Fuhrer.
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