pigeonburger
7d ago
I imagine it also includes straight men who work as gay porn stars.
pigeonburger
7d ago
Only if you make eye contact
The closest recent example I can think of is that FEMA worker who was fired for giving instructions not to go to Trump supporting houses during hurricane Helene disaster relief. It's not exactly the same though, because what that person did was in an official capacity I think? Though being charitable maybe it was really said in jest.
Also, it was not done in a vacuum with the Democrats in full control, it was done after the election, when it was made abundantly clear a large part of the american electorate had beef with the administration, so making a few public sacrifices probably seemed wise. So it's not the same as the Republicans handing over scalps of their own when they have a trifecta, the SC and >50% public approval (at least for the WH).
pigeonburger
11d ago
Seems like a great way for the Federal to take over control of something they were not meant to be in control of.
pigeonburger
14d ago
I was reacting mostly to
Everyone pushing defect ends poorly. Beyond utility, there is virtue.
Pushing defect is sometimes the wiser choice, especially when ones decisions impact dependants. The self-satisfaction one can feel by acting with maximum empathy is easily counterweighed by having lacked the wisdom to protect those who rely on our decisions. Which, in democratic societies, is theoretically the entire country.
pigeonburger
14d ago
Wisdom is a virtue though, one that would often consider taking harsh actions in order to achieve a a better future to be worth the cost.
Small weapon, small weapon and small shield and big weapon all appeal to me.
Small weapon alone is cool in the same way, for instance, John Wick killing 100 guys in a night club with one pistol is cool. It's a marker of extreme competence that the wielder doesn't feel like he needs to fill his hands to reliably get the job done.
Small weapon and small shield allows flexibility, I like it in video games, my first instinct when I start playing a Souls game or a game like it is to go mace and shield. I do hate the sword and shield in Monster Hunter though, but that's probably because Monster Hunter weapons are not necessarily about what the physical weapon instinctively indicate their gameplay would be like.
Big weapon is cool to me only provided the weapon is a spear/polearm. Giant stupid swords (I mean FFVII here, not historical two handed swords) is strictly for cringe edgelording. That said, in MH I main either horn or hammer, so apparently I can get over impractically large weapons.
Two small weapons is for cringe edgelording as well.
pigeonburger
17d ago
Rep. Mast brings up what USAID is accused of doing over that interview. I'll isolate the main claims.
Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal, $50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia. $47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.
and
Samantha Powers, she had a worthy goal, although it was a stupid goal, she said she was hoping to get the amount of foreign aid, U.S. aid dollars that go to actual aid, up to 30 cents on the dollar, from 10 cents on the dollar.
and
but there's probably more dollars that go towards state dinners around the DC beltway than what actually goes into rice and beans abroad.
and
And let's talk about the real facts on the ground. The Trump administration comes in, or representatives like myself that do oversight, the agencies will literally not tell us what they are writing grants for, literally. Or they will lie about it, or they will tell the new political appointees under the Trump administration, I'm just not going to tell you that. Those are real things that have happened.
As for evidence, I don't know what you expect; it's just people telling us what they see from looking at the organisation. For what it's worth I don't see anyone seriously disputing the claims of the Trump Administration and Republican Party that a lot of the money is mismanaged or sent to causes that don't figure in the mental image the average american has when they think "humanitarian aid", they mostly gesture at the portion that does go to real humanitarian efforts and complain that it's not necessary to cut the aid that is actually used for the intended purpose.
I would be very surprised if that was not because they're convinced that a review without a complete freeze would be ineffectual in stopping the grift.
pigeonburger
18d ago
A really bad one, for anyone who tries to eat my bunny.
pigeonburger
18d ago
That's why I'll be the guy going through the apocalypse with my bunny. Anyone who'll see me will think "If this guy hasn't resorted to eating the bunny yet, he's got his shit locked down tight and isn't someone to fuck with".
The bluff is worth skipping one paella.
pigeonburger
18d ago
I can understand that there's arguments that can be made as to why payments would be automatically approved, sure, but then it begs the question: why is the government paying "payment approval officers"? Couldn't the process just assume these are automatically approved? Why is someone in the loop if their job is to pass along paper?
pigeonburger
18d ago
Because the culture's approval was coming from left wing institutions, so it was less fruitful to do shock performance art as a right winger. Maybe we'll see more of it from the right if the culture does shift the way it seems it might be, though Kanye's an attention junkie and is jumping the gun by a lot.
pigeonburger
18d ago
For its own sake no, but I can see it as a way of denouncing sinful celebrity worship, once warped through the mind of someone with a bad understanding of how his actions are percieved by others?
pigeonburger
18d ago
I don't think it's necessarily against conservative values? I can easily imagine there's some type of point they're trying to make about celebrity culture being a form of prostitution and selling their bodies. It came out about as lucid and legible as you would imagine it would when someone with mental issues is in a situation where no one is able to stop him.
pigeonburger
19d ago
French "chien" is masculine while "chat" is either.
That would be news to me, a native French speaker. Chat is a masculine word (and is used to denote a specifically male cat, or a cat of a non-specified gender).
pigeonburger
19d ago
That said, apparently men are more likely to own cats than women in the US
Damn that 13th Amendment!
pigeonburger
20d ago
Israel is a nuclear state
pigeonburger
22d ago
I pretty much just use motte and bailey for the specific concept. Not sure why it's not entirely described by it. Most people do it.
pigeonburger
25d ago
I guess it's true that people who insist on interactions have run me out of MOBAs, but that's just because effective teamwork requires more interaction than I'm comfortable with, but that doesn't address the point with fighting games, another competitive genre, which I still do play online as long as I can disable text/voice chat.
pigeonburger
26d ago
Gotta disagree. I played DOTA2 for a while and I would have kept playing if I could have the same challenge without having to interact with actual strangers. So that'd mean either running with a regular crew or playing only with bots.
I play a bit of fighting games too, and to me the ideal with them is the challenge of multiplayer with none of the social interaction.
pigeonburger
29d ago
I don't think they need an order of magnitude of improvement. There's already headsets being sold now that are lightweight visor style headsets rather than helmet size headsets, more of these coming soon, and wireless tethering between computers and their headsets is now a thing. It's not all perfect yet, it needs a bit of tweaking to be consumer ready, but at this point the main thing is for pricing to come down.
Indeed, it's technical brillance compared to its contemporaries in the early and mid 2010s was so great, that even now 10 years later (an eternity in internet time) spinoff/dissident platforms like this one haven't found a better format. And when such a great tool was left to a representative slice of the western population (or at least, of the technophile western population), it really felt magical.
To ruin it, all it took was the admins coming down a couple of times on the same side of culture wars tussles (and it's not a matter of being the right or wrong side, just coming down on the same side a few times in a row is gonna do it), and the left noticing (as it often does) before the right the large amount of narrative-shaping power that was being left on the counter in the form of modship over ostensibly neutral subs.
It was inevitable. The years where it worked were great, but it was not a stable arrangement.
pigeonburger
1mo ago
Fun fact, here it's been turned into a Christmas song (trigger warning: sung by a 13 year old Céline Dion).
pigeonburger
1mo ago
I can imagine a failure mode in that they could all discuss amongst themselves and agree to vote unanimously in favor of a painless method that creates gruesome results, in order to further discredit death penalty.
I'd say tell them that half of the people rounded up will be executed by the top method and the other half with the runner up. Do the executions one at a time, forcing the whole group to watch, alternating methods. After each two execution, have every one vote which one seemed to be the best, telling them that if either method gets a clear lead over the other (over 2/3 votes after at least 3 rounds / 6 executions), then everyone will get executed all at once with that method. Once that clear lead criteria is achieved, pardon everyone left.
I mean, I'm 0% aroused by the idea of having sex with men, but it's also not the thing you would have to pay me most to do either. I can easily imagine there are some guys who don't like it, but also don't mind it, and would be fine with doing it as just another job.
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