Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
My 5e group is between games at the moment, and I'm hoping to find/run a group with a different system. 3.5, Pathfinder, Numenera, Traveller, Wolves of God... you name it, just something different from 5e.
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
I'm finding it very interesting how the Democratic party usual suspects are getting hit by their own supporters
Is that a Yemen flag there underneath the Palestinian flag, with a Trans flag in between? I guess they're... supporting the government over the Houthis?
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
Saying 'From the river to the sea' doesn't neccessarily require violence
In the same way that "blood and soil" could just be a call to recognize the efforts of hard-working small farmers. But if its used by protestors in the immediate aftermath of a horrible attack by a group of white supremacists who are known to have used it as their own slogan... at that point, I feel like using it and claiming innocence is ignorance at best.
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
The underlying assumption by Pro-Israeli voices is that it is impossible for Pro-Israeli content to simply be unpopular. It is impossible that the Israelis are simply bad at memes. There is no actual evidence of bias produced, no evidence of suppression of Israeli creators or boosting of Hamas hashtags, the assumption is that this bias must exist in order for consumers to make the choices they made.
I suppose the evidence would be that we have strong evidence that TikTok is willing to censor/promote/bury certain topics, as that's far more plausible than TikTokkers just not caring about Hong Kong compared to other platforms and causes. We also know that TikTokkers are more antisemitic than other platforms. Correlation does not equal causation (it's possible that anti-semites just prefer TikTok over Instagram for other reasons), hence why I said weak evidence.
To quote Nate Silver,
TikTok’s users are young, and young people are comparatively more sympathetic to Palestine than older ones — but not by the roughly 80:1 ratio that you see in the hashtag distribution. I would not treat this data as dispositive — expression on social media can be contagious and overstate the degree of consensus. But this matches a pattern in other TikTok content that is sensitive to China, such as tags critiquing its policy toward Hong Kong.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
It's going to be interesting to see which way the culture war swings on this one. On the one hand, I've seen a lot of rumblings because Tiktok is (generally) pro-Palestine. On the other hand, Trump.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
The "I can't be trusted alone in a room with a woman that isn't my wife" mike pence?
Wasn't that about avoiding spurious accusations?
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
I dunno, I'm a big fan of "hide nuclear secrets in a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich to sell to the Brazilians, then tell the FBI agent that if he's willing to pay you more, that'll prove that he's not from the notoriously stingy FBI."
Also his wife then tried to pass him a secret message asking him to lie about her involvement while they were both in jail, which was equally entertaining.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
I would laugh my head off if it was an autocorrect of Isildur.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
I mean, you had pro-Palestinian protests all over the place immediately after Israel was attacked. I don't think there'd have been much appetite for "collective punishment" by cutting aid money.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
she's anti-Semitic, the goblin bankers* are Jewish caricatures!
I think that argument has been quietly dropped since Oct 7. Its very difficult to argue that *she's * dog-whistling by setting the goblin uprising during a year when something bad happened to a Jewish community elsewhere in Europe, but that chanting a slogan used by an openly genocidal group isn't an anti-semitic dogwhistle.
It will, of course, still be vaguely remembered on the internet that of course she's been proven to be anti-semitic and that the details don't matter, but that's just the way things always work. (And, as an aside, that sort of thing really pisses me off in a general way - that the accusations are bunk, but get forgotten and stick regardless)
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
Weirdly enough, the Barsoom covers are probably the only Frazetta cover (or any other) art where he drew the characters with more clothing than the source material described.
Mantergeistmann
9mo ago
Ithaca: Eternal shithole, long has been, long will be. Those who must live there deserve nothing but pity. I’ve heard it’s even worse now, but how that’s possible is beyond me. 100.
I assume this is the part where you're taking the piss. Ithaca's always struck me as a very nice place, whenever I've gone there to visit family. Or is there a different Ithaca, one that doesn't host Cornell?
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
I thought Peter Pan had a unique exemption?
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
Hiding behind one to advance another, however, is deceitful.
How so? Isn't it just tailoring your argument for your audience? Does it matter how or why or for what reasons someone agrees to your end goal, so long as they do? If your goal is prohibition, of course you're not going to use the same argument on the baptists as you are on the bootleggers.
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
Israel has dropped white phosphorus on Gaza. Yes, but it's not unique. White phosphorous is too useful to not drop; everybody be dropping white phosphorous. If it lands on you you will die one of the worst deaths imaginable; but armies generally don't directly try to land it on people.
My understanding of WP is that the "warcrimeness" is based entirely on if its being used (nominally) for smokescreens/illumination/whatnot, or if its being used as an offensive burning weapon against enemy forces in a civilian area - the latter being Bad and the former being Eh, Fine Enough.
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
Man, the confederate flag has really taken a nosedive in terms of cultural... something.... over the past decade or two, hasn't it?
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
The only exception is when the argument for legality is frivolous, which this one was not, given that the final vote in the Supreme Court was 6-3.
The obvious counter-argument there is a claim that partisan justices gonna' partisan, and the breakdown has no bearing on frivolity as opposed to politics.
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
I'm reminded of Shamus Young's old post about Twitter:
Twitter is like owning a television that only shows me scandals by the Yellows, and acts of virtue by Purple. I no longer have to go to the trouble of fooling myself. We’ve invented software to automate and industrialize the process, and then added a scoring system so that the masses will constantly bring it fresh fuel. It’s a system of rules with the emergent property of creating a continuous flow of crowd-sourced propaganda. We’ve gameified tribal bigotry.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
I tend to go more for "amusing" than "annoying", but it's a matter of taste, I know.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
I'm considering getting an induction hotplate for work (I checked - it's allowed, either at the kitchen, or at my own desk, which is vaguely horrifying to me). What's the most eccentric thing I can cook/make that won't take too much time out of the day?
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
will actively and persuasively lie instead of saying something along the lines "I didn't see shit and if I did it would be unsafe to tell you."
I think that's the big concern, but it's also difficult to ask them to not lie if Hamas is demanding it. Other than journalists (and NGO headquarters) getting wise to the fact that they can't, in theory, trust anyone on the ground to not be making statements that are under duress, I don't think this problem (them acting as mouthpieces for Hama propaganda) can be solved.
Especially if it's the exact same statement they'd make if the hospital were empty, and they were filled with righteous indignation and a war crime.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
(Isn't the problem that there is no power for their incubators, not that they didn't have enough incubators? How are these new IDF incubators meant to be powered? Or delivered?)
I heard these incubators had their own power (or at least didn't require being plugged in) and so could also function to move the infants if necessary, but that was a single article that I can't recall the source of.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
You're quite right. None of the news sources I've read has said anything about what's stopping Israel from just walking up to the reception desk with a bunch of fuel cans and spare generators, and having a look around for tunnels while they're there. The assumption has to be that either it's defended by Hamas, or that Israel is kayfabing that it's defended by Hamas, but no news outlets seem to want to say anything beyond "the doctors say there's no Hamas, but we as reporters didn't bother to ask the IDF commander why they don't just walk inside."
It's really, really weird to read.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
Will Al-Shifa be the turning point, one way or another? Or will nothing change? If the IDF takes the hospital, and there are tunnels there, will anyone change their tune, or will it be "Well, the IDF was telling the truth this one time, but they still shouldn't have killed babies"? If there are no tunnels, will Israel back off and end their campaign in shame (their own and the US intelligence community's), or will they try to brazen it out and assume no real net change in total hatred for them? If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Or am I overestimating the importance of this one battle and the massive accompanying news coverage?
It isnt even that they weren't allowed access to restrooms... the building was closed (at least partially) due to construction, and the students had to shove past a security guard to get in. So it's more "You're not allowed to use the restrooms in the building you broke into (same as everyone else isn't allowed to enter and use them), but you can feel free to leave and use any other building on campus (like everyone else)."
Campus police also prohibited the people delivering Panera from entering the building to deliver it to the protestors (which, again, this building was in a somewhat-closed status unrelated to the protests).
It's also a bit ironic given that Vandy came out with a Free Expression Initiative a little while back, which I was heartily in favor of. I think overall, the admin has done a pretty good job of handling this, the overall Israel/Hamas conflict, and also the upcoming election.
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