FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1hr ago
I mean sure, but he's got around 35 others so he should only be 3% upset about it.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1hr ago
Someone on twitter described the Michigan Democratic ratfucking as like "defecting to Germany during the fall of Berlin."
That's pretty much accurate.
I have trouble even feeling bad for Elon when he gets targeted with Lawfare at this point.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1hr ago
Men voted 49% blue to 49% red, Women voted 58% blue to 40% red, White Men voted 43% blue to 55% red.
You call this stark? Your lede had me thinking it was at least 70-30 either way.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1hr ago
I'm not sure "Trump is an inveterate liar and just be sayin' shit sometimes" is really an argument that the Republicans are more principled when it comes to gibs.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6hr ago
Homeboy, Trump literally promised $5k debt financed cash free and clear if the Republicans won. The gibs are out of control.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6hr ago
Abbott is a function of Paxton.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6hr ago
Abbott
Outrun
I see what you did there
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
12hr ago
Polling isn't (and never was - 1992 in the UK remains infamous in the industry) good enough to call close elections, and the 2026 Senate election is close.
The thing that has always been most curious to me: How many people vote for the wrong person? Like, literally vote by mistake. They walk in planning to vote for Rogers, they sit down at the table and vote for Rogers, they walk out and would tell you that they voted for Rogers, but they actually filled out their ballot for Sayed.
It clearly can't be zero. That would be impossible. Speaking particularly currently as the father of a newborn, no comparable task has 100% accuracy rates.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Probably? I'm counting "winning big" as "taking the Senate" which was considered the reach goal before the campaign season started. It's totally within the realm of probabilities that there Democrats don't the Senate or that they don't take the house, 1/4 and 1/20 per the market odds. But I think a miss of that magnitude will break any sense of trust or credibility polling has had on the culture, either they're useless horoscopes or Trump's various vote-repair efforts have succeeded in altering the rules and making them useless.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Make sure you measure the actual dimensions of the TV and, preferably, hold up a piece of cardboard in the wallspace you intend to use for it. A lot of times people end up with an absurdly large TV because shopping in store, 65" feels like a reasonable compromise position, only to get home and find it either doesn't fit or dominates a too-small room.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Nate Silver is at this point essentially saying that there's no way to soften, or unskew, or fiddle with the mechanisms in the polls and produce a Republican win: either the Democrats win big, or polling as we know it is useless.
This concerns me, in that polling is a significant part of how Americans understand the world. It may be that polls are no better than horoscopes, often with less math!, but it can't be denied that millions of Americans understand the polls as meaningful information about the world. A polling miss this large will break people's brains.
One of the refrains of the 2020 election conspiracists has always been a reasonable motte: It doesn't really matter if the election was stolen, if enough people think it was stolen than it damages the legitimacy of democracy and the government etc must step in and seriously investigate the allegations of wrongdoing to assuage those concerns. If the confidence of the public is shaken, it must be restored, even if the allegations are factually false.
I'm worried that this is gonna be the big one. Democrats lose, when Democrats have abundant "objective" evidence that they're going to win, and as a result a large part of the D electorate decides that elections are fake and fixed. Or Democrats win, and Trump refuses to accept the result for whatever reason, and gets enough traction to make it a real problem for everyone.
Probably, nothing ever happens. But I'm worried. The polls are unequivocal at this point, the result may not line up with it.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Tom Brady did it for a long time with the Patriots.
Tom Brady routinely took lower pay than he could have with the Pats, he never took the league minimum. Lebron joining the Sixers for free is a totally different animal. A player taking a pay cut to allow for salary cap room for a better team is one thing, a player who is top 25 in the NBA taking the league minimum is another.
The sixers probably won't play well, for a variety of reasons. But if they do, it'll be an interesting discourse.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
Automatic weapons are not the biggest deal. But what are you going to do about armored vehicles? Really hard to kill a tank with your AR-15.
The days of Washington when an armed, motivated local population could defeat a great power (though not on their home continent) in open battle are long over.
This is such a stupid motte-and-bailey. Sure, if you ask a marine captain: "Can you take control of a small town if all the men in it are armed with semi-automatic rifles?" The answer is obvious.
But if you ask him: "You have to take control of this small town. Would you rather that all the men in it had semi-automatic rifles, or foam pool noodles?" The answer is also obvious.
Civilian ownership of AR-15s doesn't have to be a win-now button to be useful.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
It's amazing how cursed the Sixers have been as a franchise that this team isn't a bigger story.
-- I honestly think this team, win or lose, will be remembered as more insane than it was ten years from now. Given I'm a homer so I think that VJ and Maxey are going on to great careers; people are going to look back on this team and see Lebron the GOAT, Embiid an MVP level player, stars in Brown, Maxey and Edgecombe. Without thinking that Lebron and Embiid were past their primes while VJ and Tyrese hadn't hit theirs yet. I think in terms of each player at their peak talent, this might end up being the best starting 5 we'll ever see, even if it's not actually the best basketball team.
-- How high does this team have to finish for the NBA to crack down on the Lebron Loophole this offseason? If the Sixers weren't such a joke of a franchise over the last decade plus, we'd already be hearing about how they unfairly got a superstar for free and it undermines parity. Like obviously if they get a ring, but do wear about it if they make the semis? Win the NBA cup lol?
-- My parents' parasocial relationship with Tyrese Maxey went nuclear when Lebron basically said he came to Philly to hang out with him. He's always smiling, always calls the sideline interviewer "ma'am," and now he's so nice that the GOAT basically made his team decision on Tyrese being his new best friend. My mother will not hear any Maxey slander.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
He also correctly understands that his wife, on the other hand, at the level of her social station as the queen, and that she does have actual political backing (certainly from her far-away royal family, possibly from other local aristocrats sharing her views).
That is a great example of poorly written patriarchy. She would never act this way, because no one would support her in it. Her father would be in favor of her being forced to do her duty. There's no way anyone is taking her side here. And if the fear is that she'll have him assassinated, the best way to protect yourself from that is to get a child on her.
Like, I get that there is an explanation for it, I just found the explanation so poor that it ruined the book for me.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
The "contrary" (read: left of center) views will come back when Trump fails or moves off the scene.
For the past four years, I listened to about four Eagles podcasts a week and every game was appointment viewing. If for some reason I couldn't attend the game or watch it on TV, I engineered my day so I could listen to Reese on the radio broadcast, even if that was mildly inconvenient. This year, I watch the games, I'll attend a few, but it's not a priority. I'm not following the podcasts or the back of the roster moves, if I had to miss a game I'd just shrug.
I watched a little sixers basketball last year, likable young guys in VJ-Maxx even if they were tied to the anchor contracts of injured stars, but I didn't worry about them too much because they were ultimately doomed and hopeless in the near term. This year every day there's a game on TV I bring the baby down to watch it with my parents (luckily basketball tipoffs coincide with me getting home from working and taking over newborn care), I'm listening to Rights to Ricky Sanchez, I even picked up the latest from heavyslime.
The difference being that when the Eagles were good, I wanted to talk about them. When the sixers were bad, I didn't want to talk about them. When the sixers are good, I do want to talk about them. My allegiances don't change, but my dedication to them does.
What we need to do is maintain an honest, open forum and just wait until the worm turns. Which inevitably it will. I'm old enough to remember seeing Forty more years* on the shelf at Borders.
If you went on a baseball forum this month, you'd think Milwaukee was the most important baseball town in the country. If you went on in 2014, you'd barely hear about the Brewers. Liberals have been withdrawing from political discussion of all kinds since 2024, after a depressing series of losses that make you go "man this team will never get out of its own way." When their team looks like a contender for a ring, they'll be back.
*Thinking about it, I wonder if the thesis of the book that Barack Obama's election permanently altered American politics isn't more accurate than I give it credit for, in that the post-Obama many Republican beliefs of the past have been left behind and in many ways the party has remade itself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. Trump has many things in common with Obama, in terms of positions and style, the he does not have in common with Dubya or Reagan. Maybe I'll delve into this as an effortpost.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
We have religious institutions in our world because we have religious doubt in our world.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
Man I don't even know about the politics of it all, but it seems like Reddit is increasingly just useless and boring. /r/sixers and /r/eagles are boring. /r/classicwowtbc is in a constant state of mutual flame war. It just feels like the perpetual stew that was reddit has gone rotten and it's not easy to revive it. Reddit needs to crater and maybe something worthwhile can revive.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
You can only rehash the same foundational questions about race
Clearly what we need is a new race to worry about.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
I guess this period also coincides with the decline of the latchkey kids phenomenon and the gradual de-normalization of what we would call today free-range parenting.
Exactly. The rise of safetyism and managed childhoods leaves kids with a strong death urge with no outlet for it. You can't just go out and drag race with your buddies or jump into a quarry or get into a fight. Your day is scheduled and managed and supervised. Even if you want to get into a pseudo-risky sport like skateboarding, rather than juvenile delinquents chased by cops through city streets, today's skaters are dropped off, helmets and elbow pads firmly fastened, from fleets of Toyota Siennas, at the local skate park. They've been co opted by the system.
On a different note, the notion that street gang membership and the popularity of dangerous hobbies has somehow declined in the same time period is suspicious.
The rate of high school students who have been in a physical fight in the past year has dropped from 42% in 1980 to 19% today. The rate of high school students who drink, do illicit drugs, go to parties, drive drunk, hell who drive at all, have all cratered in that time period. In 1985 teenagers made up 15% of all motorcycle riders, now it's less than 2%, and I'd bet half of those ride with their dad. We know that kids spend more time at home, less time out with friends, and immensely less time unsupervised by adults than they did decades ago. It would be incredible to claim that kids today were more likely to engage in dangerous hobbies, given that the most dangerous ones (fighting, drinking, drugs, parties, driving) are all definitely on the decline.
I'll spot you gang membership, the point I'm getting at there is the idea that for the middle class white American youth the opportunity to get into some trouble used to be around in their own community; now the middle class white American youth lives a life so managed and scheduled that the opportunity to get into some trouble is farther away.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
And also to better safety procedures for doing the same tasks, along with teenagers and young adults engaging in those activities less.
But regardless, the opportunities to get oneself killed aren't as present. It doesn't matter that it's because of improved emergency response and car safety and medical care that I can't get myself killed drag racing, it matters that I can't get myself killed drag racing.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
Spoilers
And I'll again note that I gave up late in the third book, and might not have given up at all if it weren't for my current mood (newborn baby) so my criticism is limited, the book wasn't bad, just not perfect.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
Why is there more stress and suffering now that would lead to the tripling of teenage suicides?
So, if you look at the CDC data, the suicide rate among 15-19 year olds has climbed from 8.5/100k in 1980, to 9.4/100k today.
But at the same time, the accidental death rate among 15-19 year olds has fallen from 57.8/100k in 1980, to 18.9/100k in 2024.
What I'm suggesting is simple: it used to be a lot easier to get yourself killed, so people who didn't want to live didn't have to kill themselves. You could get a dangerous job, engage in a dangerous hobby, drive recklessly, join a street gang, or otherwise just do something stupid. The drop off in accidental deaths of almost 40/100k is more than enough to hide the .9/100k increase in suicide deaths, it would only require 1/40 accident victims to have a death wish in their heart of hearts.
My theory: some portion of people are born with a tendency towards suicide, and this will first express itself through engaging in activities likely to get oneself killed while ignoring safety precautions before manifesting as a formal suicide if the accident doesn't occur. Suicidal ideation and unsafe driving habits are highly correlated among teenagers.
Modern safety measures thwart the teenage suicide in his effort to kill himself accidentally, forcing him to more direct means.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
You are slightly wrong here, though I think the reveal is at the end of this book. I thought it was kinda of foreshadowed but in general the character responsible is generally subtle and is very much part of the grim-dark element trope subversion element. I think thats a pretty core part of his writing theory. He wants to subvert fantasy tropes in a dark/grim way.
The lack of foreshadowing is part of the trope-subversion, things just happen without massive buildup. This can work really well as a rug-pull subverting expectations, but without a connection to the characters or otherwise caring about what happens, it ends up feeling to me like "a bunch of things happen" rather than "a story." Subverting expectations works when the writer is cleverly creating expectations and then dashing them, once I have no expectations there's nothing to subvert.
The king doesn't rape his wife because he's a coward. That's the whole point of why he was chosen to become king.
If that's what he was going for, he just didn't land that plane for me. The whole scene was anachronistic and immersion breaking.
Is your theory that Paxton is actually a principled public servant and not a wildly corrupt whoremonger forced to trot out his own betrayed ex-wife for advertisements?
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