Templexious
Stuck in time
User ID: 2308
Templexious
2d ago
It was a fragment of a comment that I genuinely didn't intend to post.
Templexious
2d ago
They're pretty clearly just regular drone exercises by the American intelligence corps. Not entirely sure what the purpose of the operations are.
It is a useful distraction from other things that would likely be in the overton window, though.
Templexious
7d ago
Is there really a convincing utilitarian argument here that health insurance ceos maximizing shareholder value is a net positive?
I can think of much stronger arguments against vigilanteism targeting ceos than bringing up the maxim that ceos are more valuable than plebeians.
Namely, glorifying this guy invites the more lazy ones to act, and a single other targeted ceo will be used to justify additional civilian-focused surveillance.
Templexious
10d ago
Current sentiment online seems to be positive- Kurds and Christians seem generally pleased with the current shakeup, reports of minor rapport-building.
At this point, it seems to be a waiting game.
Templexious
15d ago
Sadly, selling out Americans and the working class has been a pasttime of the oligarchy for the last 60 years, agreed.
Hopefully tariffs will begin to reverse the trend, but we will see!
Templexious
15d ago
If your reality predicts collapsism stemming from the Hunter Biden Pardon, go for it, it is your reality, and a useful rhetorical weapon.
Templexious
15d ago
As i said, mostly noise.
Templexious
15d ago
The uproar about Hunter Biden always felt farcical. From Clinton's emails to Mar a lago documents.
Temporary talking points and weapons that you're supposed to look down on for the enemy but the other way when it's your team.
Typical political shitflinging. It means nothing, was noise, is noise, and will continue to be noise. Useful for filling the air and giving the playmakers background latitude, however.
"Anti-woke" as criteria is the trouble.
The main game series we can consider "explicitly" anti-woke is the Postal series, and that devolved into cynical, low-complexity slop immediately. If the criteria of "anti-woke" was clearer, it would be easier to find a game that fits.
2016 Doom's main antagonist is a lesbianesque woman, and only the Doomguy can stop her, and Eternal even makes a few digs at hr wokeness with lines akin to "we like to think of the demons destroying earth as mortally challenged".
Relaxing it to 'games conservative white males can enjoy without feeling attacked for existing' widens those horizons dramatically.
Templexious
22d ago
Do you consider Slay the Spire to be woke? Elden Ring? Bloodborne? Mario? Pokemon? The Persona series?
Where is the line drawn?
Templexious
23d ago
It's a recent move, and the Left's grift is still there, however, they've started to tone things down in the advent of the ascending accelerationists. Granted, sites like Salon and NewRepublic seem to exist to prove the strawmen visions of the Democrats correct to a degree that feels deranged, even if one were to find the American Russophiles and Sinophiles unpalatable.
Templexious
23d ago
How many headlines showed up, pointing to random studies, calling right wingers dumb or conspiracy-prone?
How many left figures show up now and imply that the left rejects grifters and grift in a way that the right does not? Perhaps this point is worth its own high-level post.
Templexious
23d ago
Social media is an interesting case-study in "This is a thing everyone knows is bad, its structures are bad, and yet we do it anyway". A perfect example of a coordination problem, where due to competing interests no one actually exits the game, because there's just too much social consequence to exiting.
While most readers of my comment would assume I ascribe the detachment from reality that X is to Elon, it's not entirely true. Having watched Twitter's degradation from the early days, it was a blue-coded firehose of shit that went from being able to traverse in a sensible way to randomly interspersing bullshit regardless of how recent it is, to get you to click and spend more time on it.
So yeah, your ability to stay away from Twitter/X is to be lauded, and I make no excuse for my own bad social media habits, even if they amount mostly to browsing various hobby groups.
Templexious
23d ago
The Instagram algorithm and general Zucksphere of platforms don't really appeal. The ideal platform is one which enables and promotes complexity. Either by promoting thinkers and posters of complexity or simply bruteforcing complexity by making the feed truly ideologically-diverse.
An intractable problem, but I'd at the very least like to avoid platforms that cave to foreign interests
Sick of the bots and echo chamber that X has become, I decided to visit Bluesky. Nothing serious- just a hope that the algorithm would be more curated toward centrism in a way that would prove refreshing compared to the assault on reality that X has become.
Agree with Hanania on the topic of not giving up on existing institutions, and that it is increasingly impossible to deny that X is deleterious to being anchored to earth, and wondering if perhaps Bluesky would be better?
Think again, motherfucker! For, immediately, on the front page (no account) you are assaulted with the culture war and the assumption that you've not just picked a side, but you've picked the woke side. Instead of re-anchoring and toning it down, the social media justice warriors are still out in force.
Within 10 posts, I counted 3 about trans issues, 2 about billionaires, one about gaetz, and another about hegseth. (Gabbard remains unimpeachable, it seems)
It took a bit of scrolling before actual breaks, like discussion of Disney soundtracks, or nasa space pictures, started to appear. If bluesky is to be the twitter alternative, then retreating entirely from internet social spaces is the likely path forward for those that don't wish to be swept up in the torrent.
In conclusion, for the moderates and centrists: Your signal is jammed, and only extremism will be boosted on either twitter or bluesky.
Templexious
1mo ago
4B going viral on tiktok, with long-term staying power, would put the nail in the coffin for me that the app is actively designed to destabilize and undermine the United States and its culture.
Templexious
1mo ago
In this case, being anti-vaccine and alt-health should be considered actively malicious.
The problem of the US are the high prices of finding and getting good care, and the byzantine system. The frustration of that has been successfully redirected into whole-system skepticism.
Which, fair enough. But outbreaks of preventable disease are bad. In the end, it will be interesting to see if RFK and the gribblers end up biting off more than they can chew by going after the immovable corn lobby.
Templexious
1mo ago
The high number of people claiming that the trump picks won't last long seem to be hoping against hope. Trump does have a core number of people who do and are able to work with him over years and years.
RFK Jr is clearly a different personality than the establishment that wasn't able to last, so claiming that rfk will not last long seems premature.
Templexious
1mo ago
Of all of Trump's cabinet picks, RFK Jr is the most unserious.
The credentials of the others at least seem fit for the positions.
How well has smearing Rogan worked? Not well at all, it seems. Singers tend not to be taken as seriously as Rogan, but she is best ignored.
Templexious
1mo ago
Assuming that instead of trans advocates losing ground, it's shadow-speak, or fingers crossed in the background.
Seems like a particularly miserable way of viewing the world. It's a victory for your team. Take the W.
Templexious
1mo ago
Intriguing!
I admit to being skeptical of the persistent "the establishment is always after me!" cries that seem to be more and more frequent.
While I see and understand the throughline of her appeal to the Gribbler faction, I don't see or understand what earns her crank-hood.
Templexious
1mo ago
Sorry, that was a joke!
I phrased it in such a way that I expected most to recognize.
Please, do do a full write-up on why they are not, in fact, intelligence ops, and try and change my mind.
I'd much rather be reading about the netanyahu trials and discussing israeli due process, however.
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