WhiningCoil
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User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
8hr ago
She's 5. I have no clue what is typical for The Hobbit. I know another Mottizen said he read The Hobbit to his kids around 6 I think? I might be misremembering. A friend of mine tried reading to her son when he was 4 with an illustrated version. She acts like it went great, but her husband intimated to me that it went nowhere. So there's that. Was the idea behind me buying a companion artbook through.
It was a little touch and go at first without lots of pictures on every page. We'd go weeks without reading it, and she'd just want to hear Brambly Hedge again. She did really enjoy tracing Bilbo's path and adventures along the map in the back of the book though, and was very excited to get to the dragon. Even so, that didn't always carry it. Then I got a sketch book of The Hobbit by Alan Lee, and my daughter looks through that while I read to her, and suddenly she wanted me to read more Hobbit to her morning, noon and night, and then start over as soon as we finished.
WhiningCoil
10hr ago
you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you?
Yeah, that's been a problem. I'm actually working on a draft of an effort post about that. I'm gonna try really hard on it, and probably eat a month long ban for something I never saw coming if past is prologue.
WhiningCoil
12hr ago
So, I outperformed the market by a pretty good margin. My brokerage account is up about 17% annually over the last 10 years. No clue about my crypto assets, but probably better. I had some phenomenal winners (BTC, NVDA, COIN, NTDOY, V) and some pretty stinky losers (MMM, Ubisoft, CGC). One thing I learned is that with the losers, so long as you don't gamble with something retarded like leveraged options, the most you can lose is the money you invested. With the winners, you can be up many many multiples. You invest the same amount of money into NVDA and CGC 5 years ago, and you might be down 99% on CGC, but you are up 1000% on NVDA.
All that said, I'm older, and I'm shifting my investing entirely towards low fee S&P index funds. I'm generally letting ride what I have, moving profits over to the index when I take them. Because it's been awesome, and leapfrogged me a decade or more of shrewd by the book investing. But I don't expect to get lucky forever.
Have fun, stay away from options, don't touch leverage, and my best investments have been in companies I had a deep familiarity with and a good sense of their place in the market. When COIN was priced to go bankrupt like they'd have their own FTX event, I threw another $10,000 in because I knew that simply was not going to happen. When investors wanted Nintendo to get out of the hardware market and predicted the Switch would be a failure, I flew down to San Antonio and played Zelda and a bunch of other games at the first event you could do that pre-release. I flew home and immediately bought Nintendo stock. Nvidia was just year and year after year of them having something like an 80% market share on the Steam hardware survey, and being an Nvidia customer for life (Riva 128 gang represent). With Bitcoin I spent the time to actually understand it's technology and ecosystem and came to believe it had actual value beyond the hype.
My worst picks were things I really didn't understand, but grabbed just because. I didn't understand MMM was dealing with major lawsuits, I just knew they were a big company that had been around forever. Ubisoft, I donno, I guess I just liked some of the games they'd put out on Switch and I thought they might ride it's coat tails more. CGC was me trying to bandwagon changes in weed legality. That was a mistake. Although V was one I got just because people said it always goes up, and for the last 10 years that's more or less been true. But they said the same thing about MO and that basically quit being true the moment I bought some.
WhiningCoil
12hr ago
Sure enough, I finished reading The Hobbit to my daughter again this week. My wife has moved onto reading her Charlotte's Web, but the kid brings up questions about The Hobbit constantly all the same. Why did Bilbo take the arkenstone from Thorin? Or the ring from Gollum? Why was the Dragon so curious about Bilbo's riddles instead of eating him? Why was Thorin mad at Bilbo? Why are the goblins so mean? Why did the Elf King imprison the dwarves?
Broadly she's been exposed to facets of the human condition none of the other children's books she's read have exposed her to, and it's wonderful to see her mulling over the scenarios in her head days, even weeks after we read it. It really makes me appreciate Tolkien even more as a writer. I mean, it's not the first longer form chapter book we've read her. We read her an abridged version of Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz and another illustrated book called Brambly Hedge. And those have all be fine stories with good and evil, and characters with flaws. But in that simplistic way where friends broadly stay friends, characters with a flaw display that flaw in every scene, and things are just more simplistic and black and white.
I suspect I'll be reading The Hobbit for a third time soon. She's also been begging to start The Lord of the Rings, but she's almost certainly too young for that. I should probably refresh my memory about it too.
I finished reading The Illiad and loved the shit out of it. It was a slower read for me, and I tried to get through a chapter a day. I also grabbed a book about the fragments we have from the rest of the Greek Epic Cycle, but it was underwhelming. I think I want to grab some of the Greek Tragedies that derive from the epic cycle though. At some point. I'll probably read The Odyssey next.
Currently reading The Mote in God's Eye, and it's a page turner like I haven't picked up in a long while. I'm about halfway through with 200 pages left, and I expect I'll finish it this weekend. It was written by a pair of conservative authors in 1974, was nominated for all the awards, and damned if it didn't deserve them. It's a phenomenal first contact story that evolves into a mystery/intrigue thriller. Highly recommend it. I plan on getting around to the sequel some day.
WhiningCoil
12hr ago
Thanks, I just threw up in my mouth a little.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Man, hearing you break out the various political machines made me wonder how much the other competing rackets in the DNC coalition treat the black political machine. Especially when time after time, under the slightest amount of public exposure, they turn out to be literally retarded.
But instead it got me thinking about how much of politics is just ritual. It doesn't matter that people like the Philadelphia mayor are nakedly retarded. At some point a consultant will give her the magic words that say "I'm electable". The press will go "She said the magic words that make her electable". And all the voters will think to themselves "Well, the priestnews said she said the words that mean I should vote for her". So she's mayor. Apparent illiteracy aside.
And I single the black political machine out for their politicians just nakedly being unable to speak properly, display a 5th grade level of education (see above), or provide believable explanations for their preposterous behavior. If machine politics weren't at play, it's hard to imagine how these people could have ever gotten anywhere close to the positions they hold.
I mean, here we are, this lady couldn't spell Eagles despite it likely being somewhere right in front of her, I doubt it will impact her electability one iota. Howard Dean's political aspirations were destroyed by one awkward scream. "What's Aleppo?" will haunt Gary Johnson in his nightmares until the day he dies he was beat over the head with it so many times. Overwhelmingly the priest decide what matters and what doesn't, and their congregation just receives that opinion.
Obviously, politics as ritual is responsible for people like Mike Pence too. All I ever heard about him was that he was "electable" despite not knowing anything about him, or anything he's ever said, or any accomplishment he could ever lay claim to. There is very clearly a ritual to rightwing politicians as well, with different magic words and a different priestly caste conferring "electability" unto them.
Which is clearly what drives many of these people completely fucking insane about Trump, and now many of the people who have rode his coattails in his new coalition. These are bipartisan heretics one and all. They don't ritualize the right words, the priestly caste has excommunicated them, and none of this was supposed to happen god damnit! It was the end of history!
In theory, there should be a DNC bench of outcast that could take over the DNC just as hard as Trump and 8 years of Trumpism took over the RNC. But instead, Trump stole many of their best outcast too (RFK Jr, Tulsi, Elon).
It's going to take a new DNC to have any hope of keeping up with the new RNC. If rumors of the Black Political Machine filling in the gaps left by a withering coalition are true, jeeze.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Alternate hypothesis, that I simply want to be true, and it's pure vibes.
The Democrats know they have committed horrendous crimes. There is no longer any uniparty firewall between Trump and the proof of their crimes. No former CIA backstabbing Mike Pompeo as secretary of state. No more hostile FBI and other intelligence agencies that just want to investigate Trump and sabotage his admin versus validating the claims he makes about others. Even the DOJ seems more willing to bring the full weight of the federal government against his enemies, in much the same way they were brought against him, and it's not unlikely they'll actually find something. They might even investigate the claims of voter fraud versus dismissing them out of hand like Barr famously did.
A possibility exists where Democrats know exactly what they've done, and also know there is little that can save them at this point. They're in shock, and they are going through the motions. The anxiety of when the hammer will finally drop is killing them.
At least that's my fan fiction. Could probably use more guns and tits.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
I mean, this is very much the thesis that Mike Benz keeps putting forward. USAID and it's network of NGOs functioned to almost completely manufacture reality. He's so far down that rabbit hole, he believes that almost everything we perceive about politics and where the consensus lies is a carefully constructed lie by USAID and NGOs.
I had an article once, I can't find it now, talking about the nuts and bolts of how these protests work. Which is basically that a network of like minded (the article doesn't go into funding) activist embedded in various organizations start working the phones and collaborating with each other, and they do so with such speed and behind the scenes deft, the entire effort seems natural. The "community organizer" calls their local representative who calls a friendly reporter. At some point the perfect "victim" with a sob story is selected. Sometimes it's even true! The reporter is networking with the totally doesn't exist anymore Journo Pros mailing list to get their little set piece national coverage. A local affiliate goes out to get the B-Role footage that every cable news network is going to use. And the key to this whole thing is speed. Within 4-8 hours of whatever event occurred that could boost a narrative it's been done. A layman might think it was totally organic, when in reality it was just a rolodex of numbers.
And possibly a bunch of USAID funding...
IF USAID funding was such a key part in all this, it being cut off says a lot about why the Democrats seem completely adrift and feckless. During the Summer of Floyd, Maxine Water's used to be able to nakedly call for violence in the streets, and next thing you knew a mob was harassing random diners in Baltimore. Now, it's like someone took away whatever causal mechanism turned Democratic politician's speech into flashpoints on the streets and then national news stories that bolstered their narrative.
I mean, maybe the nation just isn't feeling it anymore. Maybe 4 years of Biden's "The adults are back in charge" just destroyed something in people's minds about how responsible D's are versus R's. Maybe the skill level of the D leadership has fallen off a cliff and they forgot how to do this shit. Maybe more than just SV billionaires defected to Trump.
Maybe it was USAID the whole time. It's a convenient explanation.
Whatever it was, it seems like the Democrats have lost their mojo.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion would like to have a word with you.
If Russia started positioning missile batteries, and putting military bases in Canada and Mexico, and the governments of Canada and Mexico were not responsive to our protest, I have zero illusions that a competent administration wouldn't practice "diplomacy by other means" to stop it.
We used to understand that countries had legitimate security interest inside their sphere of influence. We didn't have to like it, we just had to be realistic that it's not always (or hardly ever) in America's national interest to intervene in every conflict on the face of the Earth.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Every capable nation in the world is already working on it's own nuclear weapons program. The precedent was set when Ghedaffi disarmed, and ended up with a bayonet up his ass inside a decade. North Korea brings it up every time we try to get them to disarm. History didn't start 4 years ago. Nukes have gotten you a seat at the table, and some level of caution for your sphere of influence. Disarming gets USAID sponsoring a color revolution in your country. The US will literally fund the same terrorist organizations that launched the largest terrorist attack on our own country, if it means they also get to coup some petty dictator that pissed them off once and then was foolish enough to back down.
I mean, who's even left to worry about getting nukes, that isn't already trying?
WhiningCoil
2d ago
ready to be bullied on a MIGHT then you might as well disolve NATO right now and go home.
I mean, yeah, that's kind of my thinking.
Just what exactly is your theory of mind with Putin? That he's this bloodthirsty thug that will only respect coming down on him with the full force of the US and NATO combined forces, but that he's also too scared to use his nuclear weapons to backstop a conventional loss on the battlefield a days drive from Moscow? I just don't get it. He's simultaneously this enormous belligerent and also a pushover to you.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
And if you don't think that's what we should have done either
I see I have misjudged you. I didn't realize I was speaking with a "Putin is too much of a pussy to go nuclear" kind of guy.
Uh... alright then. I mean if that's what you actually believe. Glad it's out there.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Zelenksy blew past several red lines we had previously had in terms of aid because we didn't want the conflict to escalate. And time after time, he got what he wanted anyways, and often used it in ways to try to drag the US deeper into the conflict. Tanks, long range missiles, fighter jets. About the only thing he hasn't been given are nukes, so I suppose, yes, he hasn't been given literally every weapon under the sun. Previously the Biden administration has at least postured about not wanting Ukraine to use our long range missiles to strike inside Russia... which they did anyways.
Maybe the whole thing has been a pointless exercise in half measures. Maybe we shouldn't have slowly trickled increasingly sophisticated and destructive weapons into the conflict, and just gone all in. Maybe we shouldn't have kept up this pretense of trying not to escalate, and not enable strikes deep inside Russian territory, and just bombed the fuck out of a nuclear power. Maybe we should have just gone mask off and thrown all the US troops we had into the conflict and gotten it over with.
I mean, I don't think so. But maybe I'm wrong.
And if you don't think that's what we should have done either, the really only leaves winding this up. Most sober strategist now admit the war is unwinnable. The most we can get out of it is encouraging the Ukrainians to genocide themselves in the trenches to try to bleed Russia. Might be good for the US geopolitical interest, but it won't look like Ukraine "winning".
WhiningCoil
2d ago
This was all true. But it's also hard to square that with the Zelensky of today asking for every weapon under the sun, wanting to make zero territorial concessions, and even "retake" Crimea which was only ever Ukraine's on paper. Like Trump, it's hard to tell if this guy got high on his own supply, or is merely bluffing to try to negotiate from a position of "strength". In which case, I don't much mind Trump bullshitting back. Zelensky wants to bullshit like they can push Russia back to 2014 borders? Fine, Trump can bullshit that he's 4% popular and started the war. If everyone is just making up bullshit, why not? The only one unhinged IMHO is the guy pissing off the state that has backstopped the defense of his nation. Maybe he's counting on the EU acting on their TDS and making up for this historic folly with material support that has thus far failed to materialize.
Either way I'd consider it a victory, so long as the US is disentangled from the whole enterprise. Although I'd be more happy with the war over so that the next Democrat in office doesn't just jump back in with both feet.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
An actual historian may correct me, but once upon a time in my AP History class going on 25 years ago, we learned that early on in America the President and the Vice President were directly voted on by the Senate, and could even come from different parties! This... didn't work great. The system was quickly revised for the President and Vice President to be a joint ticket. The problem of having an Executive Branch at odds with itself was quickly made manifest.
250 years later, we're putting a Republican President at the top of a Democrat Executive Branch and pretending we haven't just circled back to the same problem. I get if you are a Democrat you are thrilled that a class of professional civil servants is a check on a President you didn't vote for, and an accelerant for a President you did. But you should probably also consider that somewhere in the range of 60% of Americans1 approve of Trump cleaning house and getting the Executive Branch in line with his policy objectives. Maybe because they agree with his agenda, maybe because they understand and have lived through the issues of a divided government, or maybe because they just hate the Federal Government after Covid Tyranny and natural disaster fecklessness.
- I saw this in some CNN poll. It might be bullshit, I don't know.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
Maybe I'm overly black pilled, but what law?
Virtually the only aspect of the bill rights in tact is the provision against quartering troops in people's homes. We've discovered in the last decade mass government surveillance, illegal search and seizure (civil forfeiture), a cabal of misleadingly named NGOs funded by the government trying to end run around the 1st amendment, the federal government in naked dereliction of duty enforcing it's obligation to protect our borders, local and state governments in collaboration with school systems to systematically violate parental rights, etc. Literally not one of the rights I'm supposed to be lucky to have because I live in America that I learned about in middle school actually exist anymore.
None of those things were a "constitutional crisis", despite the Bill of Rights being part of the constitution. And yet Trump unilaterally firing many of the people responsible for those violations of the constitution somehow is. Because of some process minutia lawyers are arguing over.
I simply cannot possibly be made to care anymore. When it comes to my rights as outlined in the constitution and the Bill of Rights, nothing seems to be a "constitutional crisis". When it comes to arguing over who exactly has the authority to illegally surveil me (or other unconstitutional abuse of my personal rights), suddenly it matters exactly how congress delegated this illegal authority, and the separation of powers that has haphazardly allowed said illegal authority to continue, and Trump can't just shut down illegal programs or terminate state actors that have systematically abused my civil liberties! They have rights!
And my god, think of what would happen if Trump was able to abuse all the programs they had been abusing over the last several decades? What if he spied on his political opponents, and then used parallel construction or process crimes to disqualify them from office? Only we are supposed to be able to do that, because we're special!
It's pretty well known trans kid is the topic I'm most radicalized over. In my state we voted as hard as we could to stop it. It just doesn't matter. No matter how hard we vote, the schools refuse to stop. No matter what judges say, the schools refuse to stop. Now we have the president telling them to stop... and they refuse to stop. They tax the fuck out of us, and then use that money to fight us in court forever until they run the clock out and a different administration drops the cases or changes policy. This has been radicalizing for me beyond belief. Voting nor the law is solving this life or death issue.
And while that is going on in my state, in my county, I'm supposed to care that Trump might illegally be taking a fire axe to the DOE and lawfaring said schools? That those actions are the bridge too far and a constitutional crisis?
I just can't possibly be made to care anymore. Trump could wipe his ass with the shreds of the Constitution his predecessors have left behind. Most of it's down the toilet already. Just because Trump uses the last of the roll doesn't mean he's chiefly responsible for using it all. He's only responsible for replacing it.
WhiningCoil
6d ago
You know what, since I've been summoned...
You know how virtually the only thing the FBI ever did (prior to persecuting their political opponents) was textbook entrapment? Talk some neuro divergent weirdo in their mom's basement into joining ISIS or committing a McVeigh style attack, sell them some fake (or real) materials to do it, and then immediately arrest them? Take a few victory laps proudly in public about how they caught another "terrorist" and they're doing such a good job keeping America safe. Then depending on whether they caught a white guy or a brown guy, one party or the other would grumble. And libertarians. Always the libertarians.
Isn't it weird how as often as the FBI does this, we've never heard about them accidentally letting someone they radicalized slip between the cracks and actually commit an atrocity? I mean, you'd have to assume it's happened at least once. Everyone fucks up eventually. Maybe it was Bob's last day and the hand off of his casework was just sloppy. And if I were the FBI, and that happened on my watch, I'd bury that shit as hard as I possibly could.
I think about that sort of thing a lot with the Trump shooter in Butler PA. Except minus the part about him accidentally slipping between the cracks after being radicalized. It would be remarkable with all the declassification and all the regime enemies in charge of intelligence if we ever find out. But given that google searches for "Bleach bit", "lawyers", "wipe hard drive" and "offshore bank" are exploding in DC, I suspect they have their tracks well covered. You know... were that the case.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
Robert E Howard's original Conan stories have a lot of almost Lovecraftian horrors in them. I know they had a correspondence, and a loose understanding that their stories could conceivably occur in the same world. Nothing explicitly shows up (to my knowledge) that crosses from one author's fiction to another's. But there are often shared themes.
Yeah, my wife wants to read Narnia to her too. She's been looking for a nicer hardcover edition that doesn't break the bank. There are a bunch of all in one hardcovers of the whole series on Amazon, but they seem suspicious. The page count seems too low (500 pages?) and the photo reviews all show horribly quality issues.
Edit: I almost forgot! We're making an earnest attempt at not being a "TV" house hold. So it's unlikely we will ever proceed from The Hobbit book to The Hobbit movies. Or for Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.
It's actually interesting, trying to raise her as long as we can without the crutch of TV. It's exhausting, for sure. Sometimes life would be a lot easier if we just threw on a DVD and walked away for an hour or two. But I think it's been worth it.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
So, like 2 years ago I built my kid a stool with a drawer, and stuck a copy of The Hobbit inside it, since she was developing more of an affinity for fantasy through these "Julia's House for Lost Creatures" stories I bought her. But she was only 3 and not very interested in it. Too many words, too much description, not enough things happening, or pictures. She's 5 now, and we were doing pretty OK getting through it. She had more interest in the story, but the lack of pictures really were hard on her. A friend of mine had tried reading her 4 year old an illustrated and unabridged copy of The Hobbit (I've since learned he lost interest in it), which gave me the idea to order a companion art book for my daughter to look at while I read. So I ordered Alan Lee's Hobbit Sketchbook.
It's been night and fucking day. I think it took me 6-9 months to read The Hobbit to my daughter. I got the art book when we were almost finished, right after Smaug had been killed. My daughter went from having enough interest to sit down and see what happens next once a week, to begging me to read it to her virtually every spare moment. Then as soon as we finished, she wanted to start again right from the beginning. We get through about 20 pages or so a day, and after 2 weeks I expect we'll finish in another week or so. It's all she talks about too, it's adorable as can be.
I'd like to believe this could be a core memory for her spending time with her dad. In much the same way I remember what must have been the 1991 Washington Redkins' season, and how much it became a family event watching football with my dad.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).
In one of the last episodes of Breaking Points I could stomach, the hosts were arguing over whether Trump was an authoritarian fascist. And no matter what the right cohost pointed out that Biden had done too, the left cohost just said "But authoritarian fascism is by definition right wing, therefore nothing Biden did was authoritarian fascism because he's on the left". That was it. And it was more or less the moment I realized the show I'd been a patron of since it began wasn't worth watching anymore.
But that does seem to be how those people think. Whether something is authoritarian is not a matter of specific actions, but actions coupled with intent. If you assume your guys have good intent, they are never authoritarian. If you assume the other guys always have bad intent, everything they do is authoritarian.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
The "donating blood" bit is probably unavoidable-- but also I suspect it's just not very salient, even for leftists fighting the culture war. My dad didn't give blood for a long time because there was a mad cow disease outbreak in the region he lived and at some point he was told not to. And honestly, he just didn't really care. Giving blood is an act of charity. People get more mad about the idea that their community doesn't care about them than the idea that the community doesn't need as much of their help.
Yeah, after I visited China was I banned from donating for a period of time because when I went to Xi'an it was technically in a malaria zone. Didn't seem like a big deal.
When I as in middleschool, there was a kid with Hemophilia. Had a rough time of things. Felt like every few weeks he'd be on crutches cause he got a bruise on his leg or something. I remember in 7th grade science class when we were learning about the AIDs epidemic in the anodyne way it might be taught about it effecting everyone and everyone needing to be careful, he flew into a rage. Kept yelling over the teacher that it was those damned gays that spread it absolutely fucking everywhere with their promiscuous lifestyles.
Of course, he was a hemophiliac child in the 80's when HIV positive gays were contaminating the blood supply. I never put two and two together then, but I always wondered if he was personally effected by that, or merely righteously angry that he was put in harms way.
I'll concede that the "no unprotected sex" thing would probably be looked at unfavorably no matter what, but at least hypothetically reagan could have pissed off different people. Imagine if instead of saying, "no sex," he'd said, "instead of penetrating each other, why not try out these bizarre fetishes?" and subsequently promoted, for example, full-body latex condoms, humping in fursuits, teledildonics, tying up people in chairs and verbally abusing them while they pleasured themselves, etcetera. In a degenerate alternate universe reagan could have enraged the conservatives instead of the liberals by trying to convince America that penetrative sex was for boring straight people.
I mean, even just a year or two ago when Monkeypox was spreading, the humble suggestion that gays stop having giant unprotected orgies with multiple strangers was viewed as a demand that "gays stop having sex". There seems to exist a certain vocal segment that gets their way that any insistence that gays use protection or practice monogamy is akin to trying to get them to stop being gay.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
Here is the problem.
I hate my outgroup. You know I hate my outgroup. I know you know I hate my outgroup. The circle is complete. There is no more charity to be had. The rules here are clear, you are not allowed to nakedly hate your outgroup.
So to comply with the rules, I have to hide my power level. In my above post, I'm trying to be as narrow, as evidence based, and as charitable as I can. I'm talking about the narrow category of the prompt "Why are there sex pest in feminism?" It should be understood from the prompt I am discussing the subset of feminist that are sex pest. Likewise, when I'm talking about the abuse victims (funny how you omitted that in summarizing my thought as "hollowed out p-zombies"), I'm talking not talking about all feminist, I'm talking about how abuse damages victims.
But... you know. You know I hate feminist more than the plain read of my comment would indicate. You know my feelings towards them extend well beyond the scope of what I actually said. Does it really matter if I say or not, if we both know I think it?
I mean, according to rules, if the rules matter, it does. But increasingly the attitude from the mods that enforce the rules is that it doesn't. All I hear repeatedly is "Stop it, you know what you are doing". And all I can figure that means anymore, is that I continue to struggle to participate, despite feeling deep in my heart a hate I'm not allowed to express, but which everybody knows I have. It needs not be expressed anymore, it's just assumed, and so everything I say is a rules violation.
It might not even be wrong.
I think it's largely that the proto-male feminist hears feminist talking about all the myriad ways in which men are just the absolute scum of the earth, and the proto-male feminist takes a deep look inside themselves and sees that it's all true (for them), and thus a convert is born.
In much the same way I've heard it said that church is for sinners, feminism is for sex pest. They probably need that message about what a piece of shit they are more than the typical male. But in much the same way we all fall short of our moral aspirations, a sex pest is going to sex pest.
It probably doesn't help that they find themselves surrounded by vulnerable, hollowed out by abuse, p-zombies that will agree to anything. You read that original article about the nanny, and the thing I'm most struck by is her absolute inability to articulate a single thought she had. It's all her echoing things people thought she should feel. Gaiman, Gaiman's ex-wife, her friend/therapist. This is a person so completely disassociated from themselves though some alluded to past trauma, it brings into question if they are even capable of consent, in much the same way we understand an animal, a child, or a person with severe mental disabilities isn't capable.
Edit: Once upon a time, the jannies here explained what rule you broke, and how you broke it. I see now they just take things out on people without explanation or comment and interpret you not getting it as more evidence that you are participating in bad faith. How is anything I said here worse than the prompt, or any of the other comments?
Indeed.
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