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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
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User ID: 894
Closedshop
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
On an even longer timeline, it's unclear that a pivot to Asia was ever going to be effective. Simply look at the demographics of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the key first island chain in America's Pacific strategy. It's unclear that all three, or even any three will exist as we know them within the next 30-50 years. That's not to say that China doesn't have its own demographic problems to solve, but starting with 1 billion people means that China has a much longer timeline than Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or the US combined. Take Japan, for example. Notably, Japan has been opening up its historically xenophobic immigration policy in a desperate attempt to stop the demographic collapse they are in the midst of (Daimyo Abe sheds a single tear). By definition, this allows more Chinese influence within the country. This is pure conjecture, but it seems that in 30-50 years, we will see a Japan that not only doesn't see a point in helping contain Chinese power, but will be a main arm in China's power projection.
Ironically, America's cultural exports, which was a large part of what won them the Cold War, sowed the seeds for its eventual destruction.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
It's not, even if replacing everyone is instantaneous, it doesn't change anything I'm the example.
Fair enough.
It relates to the question by demonstrating that organizations aren't just groups of people composing them, at least legally.
If I'm understanding your point correctly, the same can be said of people themselves. You are not the same person (probably) as you were 10 years ago, but legally you are considered the same person. The legal status of a group is simply a shorthand because it's not feasible to continually update the listing of members in a group.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
To take a human example, I don't really care if someone does fentanyl alone in the confines of their own home. I guess it's sad if they die, but that's their life. But allowing large groups of fentanyl addicts to congregate and use together has damaging consequences far larger than the damage they inflict on themselves.
I would say that the obvious solution to preventing groups of fentanyl addicts from congregating is to stop individuals from using fentanyl in the first place. Further, I'm not sure that groups of people using fentanyl in and of itself is the problem, but the results of that such as homelessness and destitution. Suppose a group of otherwise functioning fentanyl addicts congregate to one of their homes and does fentanyl, then leaves afterwards and goes back to work and later goes back to their families. Is that a problem in your eyes? Conversely, if a single fentanyl addict is shitting in the street and yelling at passers by, is that not a problem simply because it's an individual?
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
This is Ship of Theseus paradox and I don't see how it relates.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent
I don't see how it can be coherent at all when organizations are simply groups of people. If a person expresses a belief, that's fine. But if a person brings 5 of his friends who all believe the same things together to form an organization and express those beliefs together, that's not allowed?
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
2mo ago
Elden Ring is basically a video game adaptation of Der Ring des Nibelungen
I've actually never heard this interpretation of the plot of Elden Ring. Can you please elaborate on this?
Chinese entertainment — and to a lesser degree, East Asian entertainment generally — is dominating Western markets.
I'd actually characterize this as the other way around. I'd say that Chinese entertainment has noticeably lagged, between the death grip of anime and K-pop. China has some breakout hits like Black Myth Wukong or Three Body Problem, but in part due to interference from the CCP, most modern Chinese media has trouble breaking through to a wider Western audience.
Edit: To address the actual substance of the post, one thing that I think western entertainment has forgotten how to do is showing, not telling. Instead of presenting us with a dilemma and showing the consequences of the decisions the characters make (think Star Trek), we're now simply told what the correct decision is. Now this isn't a problem in and of itself, but all western entertainment is now like this. And what's even worse, the "correct" answers run completely contrary to the beliefs of a large portion of the audience. At that point, the piece of media is no longer entertainment, but a prolonged lecture. Much of Eastern media has not yet fallen into this. One notable exception I would note is actually China. The CCP is notorious for meddling in all of the cultural products that are produced. The Chinese entertainment that become truly popular outside of China are the ones that are free from obvious CCP meddling.
One quote that I believes fits the situation was said about a Korean player about The Last of Us 2. "It's a story about right or wrong written by people who believe they're always right."
On a separate note, when I understand that when something gets made, there's a limited amount of resources, both physical and mental, that goes into the making. I also understand that all of the decisions they make are deliberate, so that when I see that a character is changed from being White in the source material to Black in the adaptation, this is a deliberate choice made by the production company. It then stands to reason that every time a "woke" choice gets made in a piece of entertainment, some amount of resources went into making that happen. These are resources that could have been used to improve that piece of entertainment in other, tangible ways. Therefore, when I see a lot of these "woke" decisions being made, I have to conclude that more resources went into making the show "woke" than making the show good. So outside of general annoyance with the piece of media itself being "woke," I am even more annoyed in that they cared more about being woke than about actually making a good piece of media.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
Yeah. One fact that I always love is that the largest Japanese population outside of Japan is in Brazil.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
I don't think "nut" is uncommon. It's been in use for at least 15 years. For example, "Bust a Nut" was the name of the energy bar Alpa Chino made that commercial for in Tropic Thunder, which released in 2008. It's not exactly the same usage, but the association is definitely there.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
Thanks for that
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
Rebranding to Ejaculate & Evacuate?
Just an edgy joke insinuating that women are so vile that calling someone a w*man is tantamount to a slur. Similar to Fr*nch being a slur.
Edit: Formatting
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
Yeah, weird is nowhere near as bad a slur as w*man
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
Speaking of, I'm a little surprised that there's no thread on the recent developments with regard to Shadows, including the accusations of plagiarism and the apology letter from Ubisoft.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
https://tiktok.com/@truth24hr/video/7215886406835572010
This is just an example, and there's absolutely no indication that these captions are real. Also, the poster is obviously a warrior, so make of it what you will.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
3mo ago
I'd say that we're witnessing in real time how effective this strategy can be if those before/after college videos are any indication.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4mo ago
Not sure if this is the right place, but...
I know for a fact that the allegations of election fraud in 2020 on both sides have been discussed thoroughly both on the reddit and here. Is there anyone who can point me to a good thread for both Biden and Trump alleged fraud?
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4mo ago
I guess exile to Alaska is always good as a last resort. But at that point, we might as well start exiling them into the Pacific Ocean.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4mo ago
I always thought it had to do with the fact that Californian laws were simply more favorable to the homeless, creating a self selection process.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
4mo ago
The problem with exile is that there's nowhere to exile them to anymore. Exile only works when there is unowned wilderness or other communities that are not significantly connected to your own nearby. We're definitely not going to be exiling them to Canada or Mexico, and there's no real way to exile someone from say San Francisco that doesn't affect San Jose, Oakland, and Palo Alto nearby. We're definitely not going to be exiling them to somewhere like Yosemite or Death Valley.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
5mo ago
I had the exact opposite problem as you, but in a similar vain. I thought that because of how limited the MCU cast was at the time, there weren't actually enough characters to fully encapsulate how wide-reaching the storyline was. In the comics, Civil War was a massive event, spanning dozens of characters, including the Avengers, X-Men, The New Warriors, The Fan4stic, etc. And instead of the Airport fight scene, which was pretty cool, the fighting and devastation was much more wide-spread. The storyline also had some pretty hefty short to medium term implications, including playing into the Secret Invasion storyline.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
5mo ago
Why would they ever have incentive to do that?
If I may put on my (even more) schizo conspiracy hat on really quickly, it would be very easy to come up with an incentive. By the way, I don't actually believe in the following, but writing schizo fan fiction is fun for me: In order to better control the populace, "They" (the ominous "they" or "The Kabal", if you prefer some other name) need to disarm the populace. To do this from a top down perspective would be very difficult because there would be a lot of resistance. Therefore, "They" have to convince the populace to disarm itself. A way to do this would be to cause or make-believe an event such as SH. Have you been getting those Youtube pre-roll ads from SH Promise? There's a reason that they are being promoted now.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
5mo ago
Guess who's back? Back again. Eminem just released his new single "Houdini" today. It's billed as a kind of return to form to his old Slim Shady character. The music video is filled with references to his classics like "Without Me" and "My Name Is." Even his voice sounds like a younger version of himself in parts of the song. Is this just memberberries getting to me? Maybe. I did enjoy it in that early 2000s way though.
I haven't listened to Eminem or the rap genre since around 2010. I've tangentially heard about him in the years (I'm glad he felted MGK so hard that MGK had to change genres). Is the song as good as his late 90s to early 00s era? Maybe this is nostalgia talking, but I don't think so. Something about the song just feels like it's not as raw or groundbreaking as his early work. The lyrics are not as unleashed as they were in the early days. The music video, while good, paused too much in the middle of the song. Now all that being said, it's good. I enjoyed it. The lyrics, while not as hard hitting, are what you'd expect from Eminem. His rhyming is still crisp. He still raps like Eminem, or Slim Shady in this case.
While I'm just someone who used to listen to Eminem in high school or whatever, I think the song is good enough to stand on its own even without the callbacks to his classics. Is this his best work? No. Is it as completely rancid as Relapse? Definitely not. It's good. And that's more than I can say for a lot of the shit that gets released these days.
If any more serious Eminem or even rap fans would like to weigh in, I'd love to hear other opinions.
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話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
5mo ago
I might stand corrected. I thought the whole problem was that they trained the AI on ScarJo's voice
The beauty of the whole system is that you now suffer the consequences even without even ever being arrested. A woman can make a social media post about you and you get all of the social stigma of being guilty without any of the due process. Most people who suffer from this are simply thankful that only their social life, career, or both were destroyed and that they aren't in jail.
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