Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
the oft lampooned "Men want to offer solutions to your problems / women just want to be heard and listened too about their problems."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Except in that case, the target was not a member of the elite I'm talking about, but probably one of their biggest rivals/enemies.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
'These people don't realize they're one bad week way from being dragged out into the street and burned at the stake.'
They "don't realize" it because it's not true. Because who's going to be doing the dragging? Your average citizen is still comfortable enough, and has too much to lose. Even if they didn't, they're too weak. This sort of talk (like that of "2nd amendment remedies") is pure ego-saving bluster. Put the slightest pressure on them, and they submit utterly. Security can and will see off any half-hearted and half-assed attempts that might occur.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
I am once again surprised — pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless — to find one of my comments on this list.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
The Christian Church of Anchorage, Anchorage Church of Christ and Faith Lutheran Church
Why those three?
I'll also note that the first one is way out on the wrong end (the south end) of town for me. The other two are at least busable, though via multiple buses (and then there's the lack of early Sunday buses). And the third one is just down the street from my parents, which means I know the neighborhood… and no, that's not a positive.
And again, I'm not a Christian, so wouldn't it be kind of wrong to be going to church just for some sort of social benefit?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Sharing fellowship with fellow Christians is a great way to strengthen your faith.
But what if you aren't a "fellow" Christian? I'm certainly not.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
This is conflating sexual preference with criminality. It's not a crime to have a sexual preference for children. It's a crime to molest children.
And back when those bad old sodomy laws were still a thing, it wasn't a crime to have a sexual preference for the same sex, it was only a crime to act on it in certain ways. And yet, most people nowadays tend to describe such laws as "making it a crime to be gay."
...remind people that relevant truths remain relevant, duh?
Daily life in our modern world isn't enough to do that?
And still, much like "raising awareness" in general, this isn't actually doing something about the issue.
Edit: I'd recommend watching the whole video. Hopping over and over from outrage to outrage — one day "I can't believe [X] did this!", the next "I can't believe [Y] did this!" — is not productive. It is, in Parvini's metaphor, just so much slop for the right wing proles to lap up like fat, dumb pigs at a trough. Focus on the whole, not the individual minor incidents. Fight the disease, not the symptoms. And, again, don't vent online — do something.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
you could quit at Grade 10 (or earlier, in some cases) and still expect to make a reasonably decent living.
My dad did this (in the late 70s) and was able to support a family of five (in the 80s and 90s) on just his single income.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Go to an IRL Toastmasters meeting
Looking into it, but so far most Toastmasters groups here have gone entirely to Zoom. (And my internet doesn't have the bandwidth and quality for doing that.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
This is aimed not specifically at you, @No_one, but more about at the general discussion around this topic.
I wasn't sure at first how to express my general feelings on this, but it's something along the lines of Neema Parvini's (and guest's) comments (from about 51:40 to 57:30, though the broader context begins around 47:00).
This is a non-story on a number of levels. First, it seems like another example of ginned up outrage-bait slop from the usual right-wing containment outlets. Secondly, even to the extent it's real, Google autocomplete has to be the most trivial level of interference. It's not like they're outright preventing you from searching the terms in question, nor are they preventing these terms from providing relevant results.
And third, that Google is politically biased and Silicon Valley hates the right should not be news to anyone at this point. So what's the point of making a fuss about it, or any other similar little issue in the endless flood of them? And the more important question, the one I find myself asking more and more when people vent about this or that "outrage" by the other side, and the one I'd like to ask all the people griping on Twitter, is "so what are you going to do about it?"
Like Parvini says later in the video (on the topic of free speech), endless talking-head debates are a trap. They're containment — they go nowhere, and accomplish little except wasting time and energy. (Yes, not exactly a fitting attitude for participating in this space, but I've personally got plenty of time to waste, and haven't found better places to spend my energy — indeed, I had a Sunday question about a week ago relevant to this.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
but unless you enjoy drinking first and foremost it's IMO a really inefficient way to meet people and make friends.
So what would be a more efficient way, for someone jobless and poor?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Also, isn't this kind of instrumentalizing religion. I mean, it seems like if one were to go to church, the primary reason should be religious belief, not the ancillary benefits? (Sure, I remember some folks in this space tend to discount this position — "Well…" back at SSC comes most readily to mind for mocking it while gloating about his own instrumentalization.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Myself I would look for a protestent church that isn't too large without pride, trans or other current thing flag or banner.
This helped me rule out the nearest Lutheran church — not so much the church's webpage, as the LinkedIn page of its woman pastor.
Do you have any opinions on the Pentacostals?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Why not? Or perhaps just holding steady? Or, at the very least, if decreasing, then decreasing very slowly, even as the "capacities" of private individuals are also shrinking, perhaps even faster.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
In some rare cases, they can operate effectively. This is almost always during wartime – either because soldiers are willing to die for the cause or because they will be killed for disobedience. (Presumably, this gives the wartime military a significant advantage over Walmart).
Well, I'd also note that for much of history, armies at wartime could be somewhat more self-funding that at present, thanks to looting and plundering — indeed, when it came to sacking cities, they could even be profitable endeavors.
Which gets to a counter-argument: the vast majority of modern military "soldiers" — those who aren't the "tip of the spear" actual fighting men — are performing roles that, up until sometime in the mid 19th century at the earliest, would be considered "camp followers." I note also how often generals and commanders would end up supplying their troops out of their own pockets — see George Washington petitioning the Continental Congress for reimbursement of various expenses of his troops. Add in things like buying and selling commissions.
So, is it really necessary that the camp followers of the past now be given the same uniform, the same honors, et cetera, as the actual warriors? (Or does this constitute a kind of "stolen valor" intended to lower the status of fighting men?) Could a modern army be run on an updated version of 18th Century "capitalist" logistics, rather than what we have now? Or is there something about the nature of modern combat that means military supply chains require this sort of "socialist" central planning to be effective?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Your number 3 is the one that most closely addresses the "socialista" argument, which is generally along the line of 'you say market mechanisms are so great for distributing goods and services among people, but that's not what the military uses for determining which supplies go to which troops where, is it? No, they use the kind of central planning — "to each according to his need" — that you capitalist boot-lickers always deride as inferior and unworkable. Where's your capitalist army, then, if markets are so much better?"
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
When provably the left notices and cares a whole damn lot about exactly this sort of thing.
I've seen a number of people notice this, and prescribe as the counter-argument "then let me win." If it's such a trivial non-issue, if it's so not worth caring about, let alone fighting over, then why not just surrender the point and let the other side get their way?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
I don't know why "just make up insane creeps who have a set of views no one actually has" is what these folks came up with.
Well, the Jimian theory would be that the actual views held by real "weird and discomfiting right-wing figures" constitute thoughtcrimes that these people are forbidden from acknowledging, let alone repeating, even if to mock/criticize.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
One is to remain convinced of the reactionary right view and accept that the future of might has no place for ones such as yourself
I have no problem with such a future, the issue is about contributing in the present to the cause of bringing such about. Like the "Operative" in Serenity (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), it's about building a better world while knowing "there's no place for me there."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
but you can't run a society if most men refuse to participate.
Why not? Sure, you couldn't in the past, but we were less technologically advanced then. Many of the things that you needed men to do have been automated to the degree they're done by machines, and others can now be done by women instead. Add in that immigrant men are still willing to participate, because it beats the alternative back in the old country.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
they'll continue to employee the exact mirror-image rhetoric
Except the sexes aren't "exact mirror-images," and even those who tend to hold it in theory pretty much don't actually treat the sexes as interchangeable in practice (as your feminist interlocutors demonstrate).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Every time I see one of these bits about how hard it is to deport people, I just find myself asking why we can't just repeat Operation Wetback.
a lot of countries literally refuse to take people back,
Can't we just make them? I mean, if a US ship full of a bunch of immigrants to be repatriated, guarded by Marines and with a couple of Navy boats escorting, show up at one of the country's ports and start offloading people, what can the country in question really do about it?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Are modern military logistics really an example of a successful socialist system in action, as some left-wing individuals on Twitter like to argue?
Why don't any Christian groups try forming communities similar to the Hasidic communities of places like Kiryas Joel? Or have some done so, and I'm just not aware of it?
(When I've asked this question to a few people IRL, I basically got two answers, both of which — in different ways — boil down to "because we're not Jewish.")
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