WhiningCoil
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
No one even remotely in our reality would think Kamala is a strong candidate.
All this could be, and I feel the same way. And yet, the fact remains, lots of voters are not "even remotely in our reality". The mainstream media might be shattered, but Kamala only needs to nudge things fractions of a percent, and those shards are fully capable of that.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
I think it'll be way less coherent than that. You can actually tell what's happening almost in your fictionalization. I think it'll be something where Trump just blurts out, apropos of little
"She put the Hattians on Ohio! Terrible, terrible. Many such cases." And if you know, you know. If you don't, he just sounds crazy. What about Hattians in Ohio? Was Kamala actually in any way responsible for... whatever he's talking about? He might as well be ranting about lizard people or clockwork elves.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
I honestly don't know, because I cannot possibly craft an argument she could make at this late stage which could possibly win me over. Her proposals to raise capital gains tax, a new unrealized gains tax, her talk about how Trump has lost his "privilege" of free speech, this woman will utterly ruin this country. At best the deep state runs her like a puppet, same as they did Biden, to prosecute pointless foreign wars while a feckless DEI cabinet lets the country burn as they give speeches about how bridges are racist and sexist.
As for what she can do to win over that extra 1% of the electorate to clinch a close election, I'm not sure that's on her. That's going to be on the media to craft her legend, and social media to censor anything that puts holes in it. I mean, already, with virtually nothing that's changed about her, she's still the same abject failure of a presidential candidate she was in 2020. But the media has turned her into the second coming of Obama based on nothing.
All she really needs to do is get a few canned lines out that the media spin masters can work with, regardless of context. That'll be clipped out. If she can get out a single "I'm talking now", whether it lands or not during the debate, SNL this Saturday will have a long hagiographic cold open dedicated to it. More people will see that than the debate, and that's how they'll actually remember it. And everyone will clap.
Harris will give bizarre word salad non answers to half the questions, but the other half she'll have a nearly flawless rehearsed answers for.
Trump will mostly ignore the questions and just go on about whatever topics he feels he's strongest in. His answers will also be too online, and assume you know what he's talking about. At some point he'll bring up the 20,000 Hattians in Ohio, but it will be in the most confusing way possible. You'll either know what he's gesturing at and nod along, or think he's an absolute crazy person.
Despite the mics being muted while the other person is talking, at some point Kamala will try to shoehorn in "I'm talking now", because the "vote blue no matter who" crowd loves it when she says that and it gets them all fired up. But in context it will make almost zero sense.
If the debate rules break down at some point like they did with Biden, and they stop muting the mics, I have no fucking clue what sort of chaos will break loose. Pretty sure Harris' entire strategy is to just bully Trump into shutting up with girlboss energy, but I'll be extremely disappointed if he lets her. But I wouldn't be shocked if the moderators put their finger on the scale and start selectively muting Trump so Harris can speak in that situation, even if it's supposed to be his time to speak, like for his 2 minute rebuttal or however they structure it.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Yeah, mine was a bit different.
class box
{
public bool[] coins = new bool[2];
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
box[] boxes = new box[3] { new box(), new box(), new box()};
boxes[0].coins[0] = true;
boxes[0].coins[1] = true;
boxes[1].coins[0] = true;
boxes[1].coins[1] = false;
boxes[2].coins[0] = false;
boxes[2].coins[1] = false;
int discard_count = 0;
int firstcoin_count = 0;
int secondcoin_count = 0;
Random rand = new Random();
for(int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)
{
int boxnum = rand.Next(0, 3);
int coinnum = rand.Next(0, 2);
bool firstcoin = boxes[boxnum].coins[coinnum];
if (firstcoin)
{
firstcoin_count++;
bool secondcoin = boxes[boxnum].coins[(coinnum + 1) % 2];
if (secondcoin)
{
secondcoin_count++;
}
} else
{
discard_count++;
}
}
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("discard_count = {0}", discard_count));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("firstcoin_count = {0}", firstcoin_count));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("secondcoin_count = {0}", secondcoin_count));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("chance of second coin given first coin = {0}", (double)secondcoin_count / (double)firstcoin_count));
}
With output of
discard_count = 49935
firstcoin_count = 50065
secondcoin_count = 33440
chance of second coin given first coin = 0.6679316888045541
So, if you treat the coins as not being fungible, this makes sense. But they are fungible? So why wouldn't it be 50%? The question isn't about pulling a specific gold coin, but any gold coin. Like I'm pretty sure I could bang out a quick script that will run this 1000, or 10,000 times, or however many you want, and the observed results will be 50% and not 66%.
Edit: Huh, I'll be damned, it is coming out 66%
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
As a man, or a boy perhaps, puberty feels like it doesn't count until you finally get laid.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Probably! Staying home with your family is awesome. And past a certain point, the kids keep each other entertained. I work from home and it feels like the best of both worlds, taking lunch breaks to read The Hobbit to my daughter. I'd much rather do more of that and less pointless stitching together of web libraries for more money than I probably deserve.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
These people would never tolerate a society where men were the ones required to make all the sacrifices.
Wait... we don't? By nearly every metric we have (life expectancy, workplace fatalities, military draft, family court nonsense) that is exactly the world we live in. Women have choices, men have responsibilities. I've watched men attempt to make the argument that men should have choices too and fail. Can't blame them for going the other route and insisting that gasp women should also have responsibilities.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
I'm reminded of this bit Bill Burr used to do before he got married, that he felt he'd just been single too long. He'd just habituated to not taking other people's feelings into consideration. He's been married for ages now, and has two kids, so it's a very old bit. Either from his first or second special I think, when he did a lot more comedy at women's expense.
He was also a lot funnier. Alas.
When I had my own child, I was reminded of someone saying that when you have a child, it's like your heart is now outside your body, and it's terrifying. I felt that immediately. The change from non-parent to parent was more profound than anything else in my life. Graduating college, losing my virginity, getting married, buying a house, the death of my father.
But I wonder if, not unlike Bill Burr who wondered if he'd just become too habituated to ignoring other's feelings, women become too habituated to being the center of attention in their relationships and can't give it up. Because while having a child was the most profound change in my life, it was a subtle change. My life went from trying primarily to take care of my wife, to primarily trying to take care of my daughter with my wife being a close second. For my wife, it went from being the center of attention, even her own, to having to give that all up for an infant.
I say women, because they overwhelmingly are the center of attention in relationships. Virtually every piece of relationship oriented media puts the man in the role of pleasing the woman. Ever step foot in a relationship counselors office and it's much the same. They will tell you to your face that it is their professional opinion that your needs don't matter and you need to sack up and meet your woman's needs if you want to "save" the relationship.
It's a good gig if you can get it, and in a world where Women are Wonderful, it's obvious why they wouldn't give it up for as long as possible, even if that turns out to be too long.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Maybe. But like I said, I still don't see any holocaust denial in there.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Ok, admittedly I listed to this podcast in the background while crunching for work. So I may have missed something...
But, I never heard holocaust denial? Everyone is saying he denied the holocaust, or acted like the mass slaughter of jews was a logistical error. When I listen to the podcast, I thought he was only referring to slavic POW's captured during Operation Barbarossa? And this was consistent with everything I ever read about it. Analysis about how the German's themselves went in under provisioned, and found themselves freezing and starving when the offensive didn't take only 6 months. I believe the designer notes for A Victory Denied or No Retreat cover the topic similarly in what those game designers learned when researching the invasion of Soviet Russia. It was a shit show, and a lot of POWs died of starvation and exposure, right along with their German captors. Obviously the POWs got the worse end of it, obviously there was a level of "these aren't our people" fueled neglect or cruelty. And to a degree Darryl Cooper didn't linger on the same litany of horrors popularized in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that we are so used to, instead playing the contrarian. Maybe this can be viewed as downplaying, or minimizing, but then again that flips back to his thesis that WW2 history is quasi-religious. The over reaction to his contrarian claims or attitude was profound. And the people just repeating "Holocaust denier!" was amazing.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
The Bill Whitcroft character is the weakest of window dressing to the moral themes the show is muddling through. He barely exist. Tell me how many episodes he was in? Tell me one other thing about him? What was his character arc? What does he stand for? He's in the background, nearly invisible for an amount of time I can scarcely recall, then suddenly he asserts himself like a Deus Ex Machine in the last episode or two? He might as well be Harrison Ford's phoned in voice over at the end of Blade Runner. He's a meaningless non entity, a utilitarian script gimmick, who does not engage with the themes of show what so ever. And the themes are clear, and they draw from fictitious historical works like the 1619 Project, especially towards the end as the black communist story arc progresses, and they become the moral center of the show, who's principles go entirely unexamined and unchallenged, even as they monologue that the Nazi's and the American's weren't all that different to them.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Amazon's Man in the High Castle was supposed to be anti-Nazi but it made Nazism look cool. They had supersonic jet travel, H-bombs, sick uniforms, big strong men marching in columns, enormous halls, the vigorous and manly Obergruppenfuhrer Smith. Lots of Nazis liked the show (or the 5 minute edits made of it), they skipped the boring bits about how eugenics was so bad and the angst of women and gays. No amount of hamfisted 'oh the Nazis go around destroying American monuments and eventually retreat from America for no good reason' could undo the damage those few minutes showing the Volkshalle did.
I will admit, by the end of Man in the High Castle, I wasn't entirely against the Nazis. Perhaps a part of it was the rapidly deteriorating state of my own world, paying an ever increasing diversity tax in an increasingly violent and low trust society. Perhaps a part of it was the way the show had not the founding stock, and founding principles, of America rising up to save it. Instead that task fell to black communist who rescue an America only too happy to collaborate with the Nazi's (but which suddenly found themselves free of them) from their own rotten soul. I mean, if you make me choose between black communist and Nazi's, I'm choosing the Nazi's 1000% of the time.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
My bad, I meant Relational Aggression. But no, I didn't make it up out of whole cloth.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
I mean, Trump has a pretty unique cadence to his speech. It's always been a bit rambly, a bit non sequitur. The usual hallmarks of senility, the inability to hold a conversation thread, are kind of difficult to apply to Trump.
That said, when I have bothered to watch long form Trump speeches or interviews, while he's not at Biden levels of word salad and starring slack jawed into space, he's definitely lost a step from 2020. And he's lost a lot of energy and force from his performances since 2016. I was watching that clip of him talking about his brother on Theo Vonn's podcast, and while he was human and sincere in a way you rarely see politicians, he also told the same part of the story what felt like a dozen times, got distracted, repeated it again, etc, for like 15 minutes.
And like I said, that's kind of always been part of Trump. But like Biden's stubbornness, it seems cranked up to 11 as he nears the cusp of "If this were Grandpa, we wouldn't be letting him drive anymore".
I'm still voting for him. I don't think applying "cognitive decline" to him the way it was applied to Biden is remotely fair or honest. But it's also impossible to ignore that he's lost a step or three since 2016.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
If it were me I'd just break the fourth wall and point out that its literally her one move. Tell her to get it out of her system since she changed the debate rules to do it. Mime saying it with her since shes so predictible. If there were and audience I'd lead them in a mocking chant of it. Turn it into that Simpsons meme about Bart saying the line.
I say this like it'd be easy to do, and it probably wouldn't. You'd need the instincts and timing of a veteran performer. Lucky for Trump, while he's no Bill Burr or Tony Hinchcliffe, I'd still say he has better odds than most at pulling that off.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
It just leans into the further political polarization between men and women. Women overwhelmingly cheer a woman living out their "and everybody clapped" public humiliation fantasy against a boorish man. Men get PTSD flashbacks to all the normalized relational violence they've suffered. It's just going to be two screens the whole way down.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Kamala's singular successful quip is "I'm speaking now". If Trump never interrupts her, she never gets to girlboss him back and have everybody clap. In fact, having the microphones muted except when it's your turn to speak is even worse. I recall, possibly falsely, that during her debate with Pence in 2020 she got so in the rhythm of going "I'm speaking now" when Pence would interject, she started accidentally doing it when she was point of fact talking over Pence during his time to speak. And then everybody clapped.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
"Free Speech" is used by socialists and all kinds of demagogues to fool a 83 IQ poor population that they'll "solve all issues" as long as you give them power
Yeah, I'd say he's considered that.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Musk seems determined to go full John Galt
I'd say it's less that Musk is going full John Galt, and more that the western world is devolving into every bit the dystopia Atlas Shrugged depicts, ham fisted and almost comically stupid as it may be.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Who said anything about free? I didn't say anything about free. I don't think I've ever seen free parking in DC.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Bicycle lanes are in no way the lowest of low hanging fruit for many cities. The last time I reluctantly went to Washington DC to take my child to the zoo, literally every square inch of asphalt was in use for some purpose, not always it's intended. You had two lanes and street parking (with myriad confusing signage about when and how it can be used) to make deliveries, do construction, go straight, turn left or right from a single lane, bike, be a taxi/uber picking up passengers, and more. And with this myriad array of mixed uses, all of which are 100% necessary, and everyone fighting for space, you want what effectively amounts to 1/3 of it reserved exclusively for bikes.
Yeah, I get if you are a bicyclist that doesn't sound too hard. Be literally anybody else in the city however...
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Could implicate some LGBTQ NGO that receives government funding in providing aid and/or radicalizing them.
What's happening in Springfield Ohio is punishment for voting wrong. "Great Replacement Theory" might not be the most watertight explanation. But NGOs run by deranged partisans who viscerally hate white rural Trump voters, as can be plainly seen by most of their social media activity, are certainly executing on perhaps a "Minor Replacement" plan.
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