If thou gazest long into the Pit, the Pit will also gaze into thee

#879

Service Dog wrote: ↑ I think it indicates a big problem: Sis can't really hear how hateful she was toward the MAGA fish captain, or GF & me. She thinks she's on the good/normal/reasonable side. ... in the bigger picture--- sis is just one data-point in those recent poll numbers showing "Trump supporters" are considered the Number One problem America faces, according to Democrats.

For all the poisonous tweeters and hate-addicts on the Left... a bigger problem is people like Sis who don't comprehend they're a fountain of Fightin' Words. Their mouths are writing checks their asses don't expect to cash.

The cultural arrogance of the Left, and their despise for the "Neanderthals" (Biden just added that to the long list of epithets) is not new, but its beam narrowed and intensified in response to Trump. The Leftist elite -- especially the upper crust of the upper crust in the Hamptons -- almost never meet anyone who isn't just like them and thinks (sic) just like them. On those rare occasions they must interact with a smelly, calloused fisherman, or a sibling's contrarian partner, they're incapable of setting aside the group-approved mantra to employ a bit of common courtesy.

Three decades ago, Charles Murray warned about the growing insulation and incestuousness of the elite. With the disappearance of an objective, unbiased Media, we now are segregated into non-overlapping spheres of antipodal "truths". The physical split is also growing, as moderates & conservatives move away from leftist bastions.

The difference between the two spheres is, imo, the Leftist Elite sphere is far more insulated -- and has devolved into a cult. So when a Neanderthal points out that no mailboxes were stolen, the photos of 'kids in cages' were taken during the Obama administration, or that Trump never said neo-nazis were "fine people", it doesn't just elicit jarring cognitive dissonance. It's a direct threat to the cult which must be met by a vicious counterattack on the interlocutor/heretic.

And why on Earth did CNN approve of their reporter Dana Bash appearing with the CNN logo & chiron-- getting the story WRONG in a scene where she accuses Superman of being a foreign threat.

Dana Bash is a walking blonde joke. Dana Bash is the type of person who tries it when you say, 'ya know, you can tell if you're mentally retarded if the palm of your hand is bigger than your face.'

#878

Follow-up to that last long post of mine--

Soon after I typed that, GF's sis called. She told us about a possible business contact-- the captain of the fishing boat who wants to hire GF & me as fishmongers at the yuppie farmer's market. Sis kept interjecting comments about the guy's dumb political beliefs. He's a Trump supporter. She mentioned-- as her first example-- the "mailboxes Trump was having removed before the election, so poor minorities couldn't vote by mail." Apparently the fish captain refused to believe that was a real evil-trump-scheme.

I yanked Sis's chain by pretending not to know what she was talking-about. I said removing-mailboxes sounded like some crazy Q-Anon conspiracy. I said This Claim About Election Fraud Has Been Disputed By Official Sources. According To Authorities, Vote By Mail Is Completely Tamper Proof.

She fell for it, believing GF & I weren't well-informed about the totally-real mailbox thing. Sis said her friend from boarding took a picture of mailboxes being removed & posted it on social media. I said "oh, you saw it on a Californian's social media feed. Then it must be 100% real." She realized I was fucking with her.

She tried again, saying the fish captain's old mother was also a dumb Trump supporter... who told Sis that 500,000 people hadn't really died of Covid, many were deaths from other causes-- such as regular flu-- misattributed to Covid. I didn't push back on that one.

Sis's 3rd story was about how an old waitress at a local Hamptons' place told the fish captain that her dead veteran husband would have thought it disrespectful-- that fish capt flew a TRUMP flag about the US flag on his boat. If you're a real patriot nothing should be above the US flag. I said, "Yeah, America First!" GF joined in saying USA #1 stuff. What a joke, for anti-Trump people to pretend they care about the damn flag.

Sis got mad. She pretended to not to be mad, but she went personal: "I know you think you're both being funny, trolling, but neither of you voted-- so your opinion doesn't even matter!" That old cliche. Sis said we were fuck-ups because neither of us has gone to the doctor in years. She told GF "When was your last gyno appointment? How do you know what's even going on down there?!" Catty. Basically-- she was blurting-out bad things she really thinks about us/ but usually refrains from saying.

==
I mostly shrugged-off the call. But a few hours later, it bubbled-up in my mind.

I think it indicates a big problem: Sis can't really hear how hateful she was toward the MAGA fish captain, or GF & me. She thinks she's on the good/normal/reasonable side. I don't really think this will be a problem between me & her-- I don't need to prove I'm Right She's Wrong. (Tho it does interfere with how close & real our relationship can be.) But--- in the bigger picture--- sis is just one data-point in those recent poll numbers showing "Trump supporters" are considered the Number One problem America faces, according to Democrats.

For all the poisonous tweeters and hate-addicts on the Left... a bigger problem is people like Sis who don't comprehend they're a fountain of Fightin' Words. Their mouths are writing checks their asses don't expect to cash.

Big crash soon.

--
I watched most of Batman v. Superman tonight. I didn't realize it was pretty-much a sequel to Man Of Steel, which I haven't seen. So-- a lot of it is incomprehensible. But-- I also know it's considered incomprehensible by people DID see the other film. (And I've seen the subsequent Justice League-- also a mess).

There are many little details in Batman v. Superman-- which resonate oddly, now. Many many cameos of real-life news media celebs... such as the now-disgraced Charlie Rose. Oopsie. And why on Earth did CNN approve of their reporter Dana Bash appearing with the CNN logo & chiron-- getting the story WRONG in a scene where she accuses Superman of being a foreign threat. Holy impeachment. Then Superman goes to the Capitol and is blamed for a false flag terrorist attack on Congress. !!! :o There's even anti-Superman antifa-lookin' protesters. And MAGA-lookin' superman worshipers in the crowd.

I'm really enjoying the clunky defectiveness of the D.C. live action movies. Nice escape from reality.

==
I've also started playing checkers online against an AI which is deadly-smart, compared to the other couple AIs I mess-with. I only beat it by chance-- picking moves which occassionally happen-to be the right ones. It's having an effect on my general hubris... as my trains of thought their rounds. Real wake-up call that I'm not as smart as I think I am.

https://playgame.joomla.com/checkers/ch ... level.html

#877

God I miss the days when this shit was funny rather than terrifying

#876

A couple mornings ago, I was drinking coffee in bed with oriental GF, as she scrolled the Daily Mail on her phone.

Like everyone, she was reading about Dr. Seuss. She said her youngest sister would be upset, because she is a huge Seuss fan.

That sister attended fancy girl's boarding school in the U.S., cotillion meets 1980's feminism. She's a high-powered freelance corporate consultant shark, but married a rich old hippie in the Hamptons & only works as much as she wants.

Sister invited GF to join the 'Clubhouse' app, and GF was excited-- because GF likes the comedian Tim Dillon, who talks about Clubhouse. And GF is a sucker for invite-only exclusivity.

So GF gave-away her phone # to join Clubhouse, and gave-up her phone's contact list to the app-- to see who-else she knows-- who is on Clubhouse. I gave her some shit about giving away her data to Big Tech, but was un-decided-- whether I'd ask her to invite me in.

Among her contacts-- I saw some who strike me as hipster/insider/cognoscenti. And some who struck me as dopey 'follower' herd animals. ...indicating Clubhouse is already-past the elite-insider phase.

GF played with the app's features, and connected to Sister and sister's friend-- a young lady lawyer-- also in the Hamptons, also with a rich old Boomer husband-- he's also a lawyer. Sis and Lawyeress are young renegades, compared to their yachts-and-mansions neighbors, but that's a low bar to clear. The neighbors enjoy brunch on a pier while CNN's Chris Cuomo struts around his docked sailboat maskless, and the neighbors don't get ruffled that he's a fucking hypocrite.

The biggest mask they wear-- is everybody blandly agreeing with whatever the dumb consensus is supposed to be. Trump is bad (in some vague, unspecified way). Covid is 100% serious & just-like whatever Fauci says this week. They get the vaccine, because that's what one does. If they don't qualify for it, they get a doctor to write a letter, with fake co-morbidities, to qualify. I even know of a rich couple who took a weekend delivery job for the local liquor store, to qualify for 'essential worker' vaccine status. (Allegedly, they really did the work, for at least a weekend. Tho-- they would think nothing of lying about that, to avoid being disbarred or called-out for going too-far in bending the rules to full-on breaking.) These people rack up DUI tickets & marijuana charges-- confident that such things can be made to go-away, because they know the right people.

Sister & GF & Lawyeress created an open-to-the public 'room' in Clubhouse, as a test drive. No further agenda. Just a voice version of an old AOL chat room, pretty much. They complained on speakerphone about Dr. Seuss being cancelled.

Sis pointed-out that Seuss's 'stereotypical' image of a Chinaman, drawn in the 1930's-- is what actual Chinamen looked like in the 30's.

I jumped-in with my 2 cents about the charge of 'Orientalism' being wielded against Seuss-- by accusers who didn't understand the definition of Orientalism. Sis is very quick-talking and quick-thinking. She smart & assertive. But she's too quick to blurt replies to things I say-- entirely skipping past the substance of what I said. Her own thoughts are unconventional-- but she's doesn't listen to hear my unconventional thoughts. She used the word 'racist' to describe the bits of Seuss stuff in question-- and I said "is it actually 'racist' tho? What definition are the cancellers using? Why are we letting those assholes decide what's racist?"

Sis fully accepted the premise that "it's racist" because "it's considered racist in 2021". Which disappointed me. Lawyeress quickly excused herself from the call. I'm just guessing-- but I think her Spider-Sense tingled that she might be entering into a controversial conversation in a 'public area', with her name & photo attached, and wanted to avoid involvement. Makes sense.

Since then, the phase "These Red Pills Aren't Working" has been flashing in my head. MAGA people have been spreading memes about all the Biden voters experiencing regret... because they froze in Texas, or lost their pipeline job, or their athlete daughter will have to share a locker with men-- or whatever.

I think Sis & Lawyeress will complain than an unspecified "they" cancelled Dr. Seuss-- without tracing-back "they" to their own bland, passive "of course black lives matter" "of course racism is a serious problem" participation in the woke stupidity.

The last loose end of this anecdote-- is a talk afterward with GF, about Clubhouse. About my own curiosity & desire to have 'insider' access to a better quality of podcast-type chitchat/ vs. my misgivings about Big Tech and CIA voice recognition software-- tracking me on the app. GF was standoffish. She just wants to 'like' Clubhouse & mindlessly participate, without me shitting on it.

Later she told me the app is iPhone, only-- so I can't connect anyway. I said that just proves it's worthless junk.

Today I listened to Bret Weinstein talk about a woke entry-ist incident on Clubhouse. Same schizm, different day.

Just now, GF saw me typing this. She said not a single Democrat she follows on Facebook or Instagram-- joined the Republicans saying 'this is going too far' about Dr. Seuss. Except her sister. And some black guy raged at sis, in response.

A few days earlier, was the kerfuffle about asians marching against anti-asian violence. GF's social media was full of blacks who were unabashedly saying the asians pretty-much deserved the random beatings-- since asians are often racist against blacks. And the asians deserved to have zero blacks show up for their protest/ since not-enough asians support BLM. The defective moral calculus of those blacks' comments-- was glaringly obvious. But they mouthed-off like they were making brilliant, righteous arguments. Oblivious that they were undermining the sympathetic assumptions required for others to support the Black Suffering Industry.

but Those Red Pills Aren't Working, either. Sis & Lawyeress & their Hamptons clique will tut-tut about ancient asians being sucker punched at random, but they it won't change any of their generic, shallow 'Black History Month' opinions on race as a social issue "in 2021".

#875

Looks like Steerzo is alive and well and living in Italy.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56293637

#874

It's a real puppet show!

Watch Nance's face:

#873

Clarence wrote: ↑
Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:53 pm

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
Clarence wrote: ↑ Some of the soldiers that committed atrocities have apologized (or at least admitted to doing them) over time as well.
Sorry I massacred your village. Can I go now?
That's not what I meant. Obviously an apology doesn't magically make everything ok. What they did do is often appear on TV and tearfully tell their stories. Sometimes publicly apologizing both to those they hurt or killed and to the Japanese society (for behaving in such a way)Given that parts of Japanese society for the longest time (and heck some reactionaries STILL try to) ignored this stuff in hopes it would go away or even denied it, having soldiers admit to it is very important. Also, since most Japanese atrocities occurred in out of the way or otherwise obscure islands and small villages and such (most weren't ordered from up top but happened due to lower level decisions often by NCO's) there are many that if a particular Japanese doesn't tell a story, no one would even know about, and if nothing else it helps history by adding extra details. Anyway, the military superseded and largely was apart from the Japanese civil society, and what they did was no reflection on that society. Part of the Japanese training method was to brutally beat their conscripts often for little or nothing. Take the worst most inhumane and least merciful or beautiful parts of the "Bushido Code". That was what the Japanese armed services operated under. Shit, it was it considered dishonorable to be captured when you were wounded or knocked out even! Mix in some early 1900's "Eugenics" politics (taken from other countries) that say its kill, conquer or be killed or conquered and you get a toxic brew. Add the conscripts general lack of knowledge or respect for other cultures, a lack of any training on how to behave (Besides our Christian and Enlightenment heritage as a a nation US Soldiers, even today are often given training on how to behave and the nuances of culture in different countries), the fact that the Jap government didn't sign The Geneva Convention and a great many bad things can happen. Add to that the total lack of a good logistics supply line for the Japanese army (basically they often have to 'live off the land' or the population of those they defeated in war) and abuses are pretty much guaranteed. Sometimes the atrocities were ordered from above, but the vast majority weren't. Mostly things were left to the individual consciences of Japanese NCO's or even common soldiers (Most of the Bataan Death March was run by grunts) and thus you get behavior one guard will overlook getting you beaten or killed by another. Most were brutalized, and some, possibly most, became nothing but brutes themselves. I'm not defending the Japanese Army or esp the government. I'm trying to UNDERSTAND it and yes, that does mean I do defend the terrorized insects (The Emperors insects unlike those foreign devils) that it ruled over and mislead. Mainland Japan was a place where shit like this could happen:

What is the point of all of this? Japanese society has always been run by an elite with their fancy codes as far as I can see and the authoritarian structure of the WW2 era was not particularly different in that regard. The rape of Nanking WAS ordered from above, besides, there is a point where the brutality is so endemic that it is a given that it is sanctioned from above. Nobody is suggesting that modern Nips go down on their knees, but they should at least consider that what happened arose from a peculiarity of Japanese culture, which included a subservience to tradition and authority, and be aware that such things can happen.

#872

Clarence wrote: ↑
Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:14 pm
It's also a complicated subject in many ways, because even if you taught Individual Japanese all of this (Japanese schools often avoid this topic altogether) all you would do is have current Japanese students judge a past generation for crimes that most in that generation had no say in, no knowledge of, and did not participate in. Recognition of this is, in part, why its so important to so many foreign governments that Japans government apologize and not any individual Japanese.

Firstly, WWII was hardly an obscure historical event and, secondly, it seems fairly prudent to teach future generations where and how Japanese culture can go off the rails. It doesn't require that this generation take personal responsibility for history, only that they be aware of how things can go wrong and know how much credence they should give to war crime deniers and apologists. Apart from anything else, how on earth can the modern Japanese relate to Tojo's victim nations without an understanding of why they are so pissed off?

#871

https://nypost.com/2021/03/04/ebay-appe ... from-site/

Too offensive to even be allowed on the secondary market.

#870

I was making a joke, not directed at you.

That dog scene was the first thing that popped into my mind when this topic came up.

#869

Lsuoma wrote: ↑ Diane Abbott biography. Anyone spot the anachronism in the cover?

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/diane-abbott

I Dunno.

Who's on first?

#868

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
Clarence wrote: ↑ Some of the soldiers that committed atrocities have apologized (or at least admitted to doing them) over time as well.
Sorry I massacred your village. Can I go now?

That's not what I meant. Obviously an apology doesn't magically make everything ok. What they did do is often appear on TV and tearfully tell their stories. Sometimes publicly apologizing both to those they hurt or killed and to the Japanese society (for behaving in such a way)Given that parts of Japanese society for the longest time (and heck some reactionaries STILL try to) ignored this stuff in hopes it would go away or even denied it, having soldiers admit to it is very important. Also, since most Japanese atrocities occurred in out of the way or otherwise obscure islands and small villages and such (most weren't ordered from up top but happened due to lower level decisions often by NCO's) there are many that if a particular Japanese doesn't tell a story, no one would even know about, and if nothing else it helps history by adding extra details. Anyway, the military superseded and largely was apart from the Japanese civil society, and what they did was no reflection on that society. Part of the Japanese training method was to brutally beat their conscripts often for little or nothing. Take the worst most inhumane and least merciful or beautiful parts of the "Bushido Code". That was what the Japanese armed services operated under. Shit, it was it considered dishonorable to be captured when you were wounded or knocked out even! Mix in some early 1900's "Eugenics" politics (taken from other countries) that say its kill, conquer or be killed or conquered and you get a toxic brew. Add the conscripts general lack of knowledge or respect for other cultures, a lack of any training on how to behave (Besides our Christian and Enlightenment heritage as a a nation US Soldiers, even today are often given training on how to behave and the nuances of culture in different countries), the fact that the Jap government didn't sign The Geneva Convention and a great many bad things can happen. Add to that the total lack of a good logistics supply line for the Japanese army (basically they often have to 'live off the land' or the population of those they defeated in war) and abuses are pretty much guaranteed. Sometimes the atrocities were ordered from above, but the vast majority weren't. Mostly things were left to the individual consciences of Japanese NCO's or even common soldiers (Most of the Bataan Death March was run by grunts) and thus you get behavior one guard will overlook getting you beaten or killed by another. Most were brutalized, and some, possibly most, became nothing but brutes themselves. I'm not defending the Japanese Army or esp the government. I'm trying to UNDERSTAND it and yes, that does mean I do defend the terrorized insects (The Emperors insects unlike those foreign devils) that it ruled over and mislead. Mainland Japan was a place where shit like this could happen:

#867

Clarence wrote: ↑ Some of the soldiers that committed atrocities have apologized (or at least admitted to doing them) over time as well.

Sorry I massacred your village. Can I go now?

#866

Lsuoma wrote: ↑ https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/diane-abbott

I hear the book signing was such a big hit, she ran out of crayons.

#865

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
KiwiInOz wrote: ↑ There are few things sexier than a rock chick.

FTFY

I love Alex the Seal.

#864

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑

Add to all of that Germany's steadfast postwar justifications and denial and the contrasting Japanese swift acceptance of guilt. Nothing could illustrate the difference better!

Japans Government has apologized too little, though it must be admitted it has apologized somewhat. Reparations were paid, some by the terms of the treaty when the US stopped occupying Japan proper ("Washington Treaty" IIRC) and some by Japan on its own behest. The Tokyo trials as well as trials in the Philippines and in China did ensure that some of the most guilty got their 'just deserts' or at least some punishment rather than none at all. Yes, there are still remaining issues to this day - the rapes and murders of women in Korea, some of the stuff that happened in China - but this is partly due to Japan being an "Honor" society and partly due to the fact that some of the same men and same factions that ruled Japan when the war started in China, were left in place AFTER the US occupation. In short, the Japanese government (while much, much improved esp over time) was only PARTIALLY
reformed when we occupied them. Some of the soldiers that committed atrocities have apologized (or at least admitted to doing them) over time as well. And let's not forget that due to Postwar Politics the US basically let most of the Human biological and chemical warfare Unit 731 off the hook, despite their horrible record of live human experiments (including US POWS) and some attacks on Chinese peasants and villages. I'm willing to defend allowing Von Braun and crew a second chance, but Ishi and his gang are a step or two too far for me.

It's also a complicated subject in many ways, because even if you taught Individual Japanese all of this (Japanese schools often avoid this topic altogether) all you would do is have current Japanese students judge a past generation for crimes that most in that generation had no say in, no knowledge of, and did not participate in. Recognition of this is, in part, why its so important to so many foreign governments that Japans government apologize and not any individual Japanese.

Meanwhile modern Germans disgust me because they flog themselves about World War 2 constantly. Those who feel ashamed of things they had no power to stop and did not participate in, I feel sorry for. But I suspect lots of them are just 'virtue signalling'. And while constantly decrying their own countries crimes, they often don't mention the crimes of places like say, Soviet Russia under Stalin. But all good Germans do know that "fascism is only a thing on the right" so it gives them the perfect excuse to pine for communism.

#863

Clarence wrote: ↑
Thu Mar 04, 2021 8:27 am

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
So the Nips were less guilty as a people than the Krauts, cuz they were more indoctrinated into their authoritarian ideology than the Krauts. Got it.

But you're right: assigning guilt/intrinsic evilness to an entire race is never appropriate. Unless it's the Uzbeks.
Not quite. That would imply they knew about the atrocities (shit , some were even kept from the Emperor himself though I have no doubt he knew or suspected most of them esp the Rape of Nanking) which they almost certainly did not. Not knowing, how could they approve or disapprove? It was much harder to hide Nazi atrocities from the German people, crap, some of them happened in the homeland, and prior to and at the start of the war there had already been well known Nazi crimes against Jewish people (Krystallnacht, the move to the Ghettos, the purging from Universities). Not so in Japan. Dissenters tended to keep their heads down,and when they were found out often just 'disappeared' into the Kempeti's (military police) clutches where they were often tortured to death. The Wartime atrocities happened in distant lands and almost never were covered by the Japanese press. Please also remember that Japan was a more stratified society than Germany. Unless you were one of Hitler's 'undesireables' in terms of race, positions were sometimes segregated by sex, but were otherwise open to everyone. Not so in Japan, so it was harder for "Institutional" secrets to get out to the general Japanese populace or even spread among those who were (different and often competing) parts of Government. You do remember the Imperial Japanese Navy even tried to keep news about Midway from the Army don't you? Surely you've heard or read about that somewhere? Japan was the last thing to an open society. Anyway, the other part of my argument that you either didn't get or chose to ignore is that you can't hold people responsible for a Government they had next to no say in even establishing. While not a majority, a minority of German voters had given the Nazi party some hold on power (they were the largest single party in the last elections though they weren't the majority), and while the desperation of the times (Depression, near anarchy due to weak government, Stalin's thugs fighting Hitlers thugs in the streets) partly excuses that (NO ONE voted for Hitler to be dicatator it must be acknowledged as well), fact is some of what the Nazi's did was due to popular vote. The Japanese people never got to vote on Military government at all, and force was used to actively make sure they never would. That, and the other two things (lack of information, total dominance of govt propaganda and no competing alternatives) lead me to say, yes, the Japanese people were far less responsible for what their government did. They had no knowledge and no say (short of revolution). I don't know what is hard to grasp about this or the fact that Germany and Japan were two entirely different situations.

Add to all of that Germany's steadfast postwar justifications and denial and the contrasting Japanese swift acceptance of guilt. Nothing could illustrate the difference better!

#862

https://bitebackpub.s3.amazonaws.com/up ... 906039.jpg

#861

Diane Abbott biography. Anyone spot the anachronism in the cover?

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/diane-abbott

#860

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑ That was from the article wot FashTits linked.
Oh you mean the first one on that list:
https://www.openculture.com/2014/08/dr- ... ww-ii.html

Yeah, it's rife with mistakes. Who has time for an History elective college, when there's so many Gender Studies and Anti-Racist requirements?

Check out the cartoon above. It shows an arrogant-looking Hitler next to a pig-nosed, slanted-eye caricature of a Japanese guy. The picture isn’t really a likeness of either of the men responsible for the Japanese war effort – Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo. Instead, it’s just an ugly representation of a people.
Actually, Seuss truly captures Hitler's visage. And although it is more exaggerated, I think that's supposed to be Tojo, not Hirohito.

In 1953, Geisel visited Japan where he met and talked with its people and witnessed the horrific aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. He soon started to rethink his anti-Japanese vehemence. So he issued an apology in the only way that Dr. Seuss could.

He wrote a children’s book.

Horton Hears a Who!, published in 1954, is about an elephant that has to protect a speck of dust populated by little tiny people. The book’s hopeful, inclusive refrain – “A person is a person no matter how small” — is about as far away as you can get from his ignoble words about the Japanese a decade earlier. He even dedicated the book to “My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.”
There's no atonement in Wokedom, no forgiveness, only either a perpetual Struggle Session or Cancellation.

And here we are in total agreement.

#859

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
So the Nips were less guilty as a people than the Krauts, cuz they were more indoctrinated into their authoritarian ideology than the Krauts. Got it.

But you're right: assigning guilt/intrinsic evilness to an entire race is never appropriate. Unless it's the Uzbeks.

Not quite. That would imply they knew about the atrocities (shit , some were even kept from the Emperor himself though I have no doubt he knew or suspected most of them esp the Rape of Nanking) which they almost certainly did not. Not knowing, how could they approve or disapprove? It was much harder to hide Nazi atrocities from the German people, crap, some of them happened in the homeland, and prior to and at the start of the war there had already been well known Nazi crimes against Jewish people (Krystallnacht, the move to the Ghettos, the purging from Universities). Not so in Japan. Dissenters tended to keep their heads down,and when they were found out often just 'disappeared' into the Kempeti's (military police) clutches where they were often tortured to death. The Wartime atrocities happened in distant lands and almost never were covered by the Japanese press. Please also remember that Japan was a more stratified society than Germany. Unless you were one of Hitler's 'undesireables' in terms of race, positions were sometimes segregated by sex, but were otherwise open to everyone. Not so in Japan, so it was harder for "Institutional" secrets to get out to the general Japanese populace or even spread among those who were (different and often competing) parts of Government. You do remember the Imperial Japanese Navy even tried to keep news about Midway from the Army don't you? Surely you've heard or read about that somewhere? Japan was the last thing to an open society. Anyway, the other part of my argument that you either didn't get or chose to ignore is that you can't hold people responsible for a Government they had next to no say in even establishing. While not a majority, a minority of German voters had given the Nazi party some hold on power (they were the largest single party in the last elections though they weren't the majority), and while the desperation of the times (Depression, near anarchy due to weak government, Stalin's thugs fighting Hitlers thugs in the streets) partly excuses that (NO ONE voted for Hitler to be dicatator it must be acknowledged as well), fact is some of what the Nazi's did was due to popular vote. The Japanese people never got to vote on Military government at all, and force was used to actively make sure they never would. That, and the other two things (lack of information, total dominance of govt propaganda and no competing alternatives) lead me to say, yes, the Japanese people were far less responsible for what their government did. They had no knowledge and no say (short of revolution). I don't know what is hard to grasp about this or the fact that Germany and Japan were two entirely different situations.

#858

KiwiInOz wrote: ↑ There are few things sexier than a rock chick.

FTFY

#857

MarcusAu wrote: ↑ Anyone know where I can get an illustrated history book on the Rape of Nanking.

Something appropriate for children - as I would like to donate it to a local primary school.

Or is it elementary?

Dr. Seuss wrote one, but guess you're SOL now.

#856

Anyone know where I can get an illustrated history book on the Rape of Nanking.

Something appropriate for children - as I would like to donate it to a local primary school.

Or is it elementary?

#855

Keating wrote: ↑ https://s.yimg.com/aah/yhst-83547458988 ... atue-1.jpg

Phwoah.

#854

https://s.yimg.com/aah/yhst-83547458988 ... atue-1.jpg

#853

There are few things sexier than a rock chick.

#852

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑ That was from the article wot FashTits linked.

Oh you mean the first one on that list:
https://www.openculture.com/2014/08/dr- ... ww-ii.html

Yeah, it's rife with mistakes. Who has time for an History elective college, when there's so many Gender Studies and Anti-Racist requirements?

Check out the cartoon above. It shows an arrogant-looking Hitler next to a pig-nosed, slanted-eye caricature of a Japanese guy. The picture isn’t really a likeness of either of the men responsible for the Japanese war effort – Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo. Instead, it’s just an ugly representation of a people.

Actually, Seuss truly captures Hitler's visage. And although it is more exaggerated, I think that's supposed to be Tojo, not Hirohito.

In 1953, Geisel visited Japan where he met and talked with its people and witnessed the horrific aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. He soon started to rethink his anti-Japanese vehemence. So he issued an apology in the only way that Dr. Seuss could.

He wrote a children’s book.

Horton Hears a Who!, published in 1954, is about an elephant that has to protect a speck of dust populated by little tiny people. The book’s hopeful, inclusive refrain – “A person is a person no matter how small” — is about as far away as you can get from his ignoble words about the Japanese a decade earlier. He even dedicated the book to “My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.”

There's no atonement in Wokedom, no forgiveness, only either a perpetual Struggle Session or Cancellation.

#851

Clarence wrote: ↑ C) In my opinion the Japanese civilian populace is LESS guilty than the German populace for the warcrimes of its government and army - but before I start I should say I hold neither as intrinsically evil or totally responsible. In both cases these are people living under totalitarian governments where even the slightest dissension can get you tortured, imprisoned, or killed - or all three. The reason I hold that the Japanese civilians largely weren't responsible is that they 1) were even farther removed from the battlefields and thus even more exposed to propaganda about the war and nothing else and 2) Had long had far fewer political rights than the Germans who (at least partly) did after all vote Hitler into a position of some power.

To add to my first reason: It was easier to smuggle in and get competing information about the war and the world in Germany than in Japan. Japan was an isolated Island country with a rather small Japanese language base outside of Japan. Pretty much all of Japans 'news' from the outside world was brought in via radio where the Tokyo censors got hold of it before any of it was passed to the general populace. To say information leaked in and out of Nazi Germany like a flood EVEN during their 'victorious' years, is an understatement. Also Germany was exposed to Allied bombing and propaganda leaflets almost from the beginning, whereas Japan was untouched by allied bombers (let alone any pamphlets) until late 1944, almost 3 years into the war with the USA. The Doolittle raid being the sole exception.

To add to my second reason: Japan had long been ruled by its military (under the Shoguns) and any fledgling democracy was crushed in the 20s and 30s by assassinations committed by ultranationalist members of the Japanese military on various political figures and private individuals thus reestablishing military rule even though there was the laughable pretence of the parliament. I'd also argue that Germany, though authoritarian at its very start, still was less so than Japan. After all, Germans were often exposed to contrary philosophies in their higher education, at least till the Nazis took over. Very few Japanese, on the other hand, had any kind of foreign education, and those that did, for the most part, had a military or technical education. Basically, compared to Germans and most Europeans Japan was a country of "country bumpkins" who didn't understand other peoples at all.

So the Nips were less guilty as a people than the Krauts, cuz they were more indoctrinated into their authoritarian ideology than the Krauts. Got it.

But you're right: assigning guilt/intrinsic evilness to an entire race is never appropriate. Unless it's the Uzbeks.

#850

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
Wed Mar 03, 2021 8:00 am

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑
Lsuoma wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 02, 2021 6:35 pm
https://www.google.com/search?q=seuss+r ... s+japanese

Also check out Dr Seuss Goes To War

American propaganda makers depicted Germany in a very different light than Japan. Germany was seen as a great nation gone mad. The Nazis might have been evil but there was still room for the “Good German.” Japan, on the other hand, was depicted entirely as a brutal monolith; Hirohito and the guy on the street were uniformly evil. Such thinking paved the way for the U.S. Air Force firebombing of Tokyo, where over 100,000 civilians died, and for its nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The survivors of historical events in Dresden and Hamburg might find the argument a bit incendiary. I suspect that there was more than just racism playing into perceptions of the Japanese. They didn't have much of a reputation for being gracious in victory, did they, and I think the prospect of losing countless men to millions of nutters with sharpened sticks may have had something to do with the nukes. Wish writers of this kind of thing constructed their opinions from all of the facts instead of using just some of the facts to support their opinions.
Who wrote that?

That was from the article wot FashTits linked.

On the issue of why the Nips were nuked, the standard arguments assume that Japan was down to the dregs of an airforce and navy and pointy-sticked peasants were their secret weapon. In reality Japan had shifted aircraft production to unreachable underground facilities and were producing a lot of aircraft. Those aircraft included some very sophisticated designs including jet fighters and what were essentially high speed piloted missiles. Their failure in the air to that stage was down to pilot attrition but you don't need that skilled an air force to crash into things. They could conceivably have wrecked an invasion attempt although whether the Allies knew that is another matter.

#849

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑

Back in the early eighties, I got into it with historian John Toland at a book reading. He’d asserted that the Japanese people had actually been really nice people the whole time during the war, while it was the Germans who’d been uniformly evil. I asked how this jived with 38 attempts on Hitler’s life vs. 0 on Tojo’s, on the execution of Jews committed in secret by special nazi units vs. the Rape of Nanking committed by regular army troops under orders, etc. His answer: his wife was Japanese, and his in-laws were really nice people.

The USAAF firebombed Japanese cities for the same reason Bomber Command firebombed German medieval city centers: they were highly combustable, and precision bombing had been an abject failure.
I'll add a bit here.
A) There was a racial element - on both sides- between the US and the Japanese that was not present with the Germans/Nazis and the US, except, to an extent with American service members of Jewish extraction. In short, both the Japanese and the Americans had many people, maybe even majorities, who regarded the other race as inferior.
B) Another reason we firebombed the cities was the Japan had decentralized much of its wartime production. Tons of small factories, often in civilian houses were making electronics, rifles, clothing and other things for the Japanese military and it was often impossible to tell a factory in a house from a regular house.
C) In my opinion the Japanese civilian populace is LESS guilty than the German populace for the warcrimes of its government and army - but before I start I should say I hold neither as intrinsically evil or totally responsible. In both cases these are people living under totalitarian governments where even the slightest dissension can get you tortured, imprisoned, or killed - or all three. The reason I hold that the Japanese civilians largely weren't responsible is that they 1) were even farther removed from the battlefields and thus even more exposed to propaganda about the war and nothing else and 2) Had long had far fewer political rights than the Germans who (at least partly) did after all vote Hitler into a position of some power.

To add to my first reason: It was easier to smuggle in and get competing information about the war and the world in Germany than in Japan. Japan was an isolated Island country with a rather small Japanese language base outside of Japan. Pretty much all of Japans 'news' from the outside world was brought in via radio where the Tokyo censors got hold of it before any of it was passed to the general populace. To say information leaked in and out of Nazi Germany like a flood EVEN during their 'victorious' years, is an understatement. Also Germany was exposed to Allied bombing and propaganda leaflets almost from the beginning, whereas Japan was untouched by allied bombers (let alone any pamphlets) until late 1944, almost 3 years into the war with the USA. The Doolittle raid being the sole exception.

To add to my second reason: Japan had long been ruled by its military (under the Shoguns) and any fledgling democracy was crushed in the 20s and 30s by assassinations committed by ultranationalist members of the Japanese military on various political figures and private individuals thus reestablishing military rule even though there was the laughable pretence of the parliament. I'd also argue that Germany, though authoritarian at its very start, still was less so than Japan. After all, Germans were often exposed to contrary philosophies in their higher education, at least till the Nazis took over. Very few Japanese, on the other hand, had any kind of foreign education, and those that did, for the most part, had a military or technical education. Basically, compared to Germans and most Europeans Japan was a country of "country bumpkins" who didn't understand other peoples at all.

If anyone is interested I do have a good idea (based on years of reading and being fascinated by this subject) of WHY the Japanese military committed so many war crimes, but I won't get into that now. I'll just say the average Japanese on the homeland had a far smaller political voice in establishing the regime they lived under than the average German (in both cases I'm talking prior to the establishment of the Authoritarian governments) and also access to far less information on how the war was going, was conducted, etc and thus to me, far less responsibility in total. The Japanese people on the home islands were almost as victimized by their own government as the peoples they were ostensibly 'liberating' from Colonial rule.

#848

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑
Lsuoma wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 02, 2021 6:35 pm
https://www.google.com/search?q=seuss+r ... s+japanese

Also check out Dr Seuss Goes To War

American propaganda makers depicted Germany in a very different light than Japan. Germany was seen as a great nation gone mad. The Nazis might have been evil but there was still room for the “Good German.” Japan, on the other hand, was depicted entirely as a brutal monolith; Hirohito and the guy on the street were uniformly evil. Such thinking paved the way for the U.S. Air Force firebombing of Tokyo, where over 100,000 civilians died, and for its nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The survivors of historical events in Dresden and Hamburg might find the argument a bit incendiary. I suspect that there was more than just racism playing into perceptions of the Japanese. They didn't have much of a reputation for being gracious in victory, did they, and I think the prospect of losing countless men to millions of nutters with sharpened sticks may have had something to do with the nukes. Wish writers of this kind of thing constructed their opinions from all of the facts instead of using just some of the facts to support their opinions.

Who wrote that?

FDR’s pathological hatred of Germans, stemming from a snubbing by some Junckers as a teenager, permeated American propaganda and policy.

FDR, following the July, ’44 Hitler assassination attempt:

The Gestapo and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as ‘good’ Germans after the war… It is to our advantage therefore that the purge should continue, since the killing of Germans by Germans will save us from future embarrassments of many kinds.

On treating Germany post-war:

We have got to be tough with Germany, and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You either have to castrate [them] or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can’t just go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.

In the UK, the influential Lord Vasittart consideread the German people, “a nation of killers.” “Eighty percent of the German race are the political and moral scum of the earth.”

Germany’s first world war cost mankind by and large, directly and indirectly, 25 million lives. And the second, before we are through, will have cost two, three, perhaps even four times as much. Now, a clique can’t do that. The disease is national, and the cure must be national.

Everyone who thinks that the Germans are as other people, only misled, is an enemy of other people…. [W]ho twice tried to strangle humanity? The answer is : all parties in the German nation. Here "is the proof and the story. Its facts show clearly the monster that we shall confront for many years after this war, the prolonged effort and vigilance necessary to tame.

This propaganda never stuck among ordinary Americans or Brits. The sowing-of-salt approach was quickly abandoned, in part because FDR was dead, but also because the propaganda that the Soviets were our slightly more socialist friends quickly wore of.

The hatred of the Japanese as a people in the US was real, and well-earned by the Japanese — though the concept of a ‘nation gone temporarily mad’ certainly applies. Still, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES contains an interesting exchange between the character who’d fought in the Pacific and his son, who parrots the propaganda about the Japs not valuing life as much as Westerners.

Back in the early eighties, I got into it with historian John Toland at a book reading. He’d asserted that the Japanese people had actually been really nice people the whole time during the war, while it was the Germans who’d been uniformly evil. I asked how this jived with 38 attempts on Hitler’s life vs. 0 on Tojo’s, on the execution of Jews committed in secret by special nazi units vs. the Rape of Nanking committed by regular army troops under orders, etc. His answer: his wife was Japanese, and his in-laws were really nice people.

The USAAF firebombed Japanese cities for the same reason Bomber Command firebombed German medieval city centers: they were highly combustable, and precision bombing had been an abject failure.

#847

Lsuoma wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 02, 2021 6:35 pm
https://www.google.com/search?q=seuss+r ... s+japanese

Also check out Dr Seuss Goes To War

American propaganda makers depicted Germany in a very different light than Japan. Germany was seen as a great nation gone mad. The Nazis might have been evil but there was still room for the “Good German.” Japan, on the other hand, was depicted entirely as a brutal monolith; Hirohito and the guy on the street were uniformly evil. Such thinking paved the way for the U.S. Air Force firebombing of Tokyo, where over 100,000 civilians died, and for its nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The survivors of historical events in Dresden and Hamburg might find the argument a bit incendiary. I suspect that there was more than just racism playing into perceptions of the Japanese. They didn't have much of a reputation for being gracious in victory, did they, and I think the prospect of losing countless men to millions of nutters with sharpened sticks may have had something to do with the nukes. Wish writers of this kind of thing constructed their opinions from all of the facts instead of using just some of the facts to support their opinions.

#846

Would anyone here have second thoughts about going down to their local library to read Huckleberry Finn to a pre-teen audience?

You wouldn't even have a wear a dress to do it.

Just wondering where the line should be drawn on free speech - or alternatively, on what should be made available to children.

(From what I've heard the Asterix & Tintin books had problems in America due to their racial characterization & some of the early Disney & Warner Brothers cartoons have been restricted for decades).

#845

https://www.google.com/search?q=seuss+r ... s+japanese

Also check out Dr Seuss Goes To War

#844

My gametes may be small, but they’re strong swimmers and there’s plenty of them. If the US is having a problem with decreased sperm count, they should give me a call. I can save America 🇺🇸 . I’m willing to sacrifice for my country, it’s what patriots do.
And no...I don’t have Dr in front of my name and PhD behind it.

#843

I want to have more sex than just twice

#842

OK guys about sex and gender. Seems to me that the two get conflated wheras:

Gender - You can have as many as you want. I do not care.
Sex - Male & Female (either big gametes or small) and If you try to make this a spectrum you can fuck off in all directions.

We good on this?

#841

HelpingHand wrote: ↑ https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/us/dr-se ... index.html

Was one thing when it was just a school district decoupling a (Dr. Seuss inspired) reading day from Dr. Seuss. Now the very organization with rights to Suess's work is permanently removing six books from publication. Permanent in the sense that I assume the crazy will die down some decade.

The list includes a personal favorite: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street

Curtis Yarvin points to this academy award winning short film, based on work by Dr Suess:

#840

The Dr. Seuss article used the word 'Orientalism', which caught my eye because Edward Said was a celebrity professor at Columbia U when I was there. He coined the term 'Orientalism' in a book by that name. It's not-just a word for "racism against oriental people". But, rather, it describes a euro-centric (British Empire) wrong-idea that there was something common from 'The Near East' to 'The Far East'... and everywhere in-between. Edward Said said it was silly to make sweeping generalizations about people from Morocco to Afghanistan to India, Tibet, Japan.

Fair enough: except the one way it IS somewhat-fair to make such generalizations is from a specific point-of-view. Such as, say, Britain. "People in those other places Aren't Like Us" is a reasonable statement. It's more of a comment on that 'Us' have certain unique traits, than a comment on all the 'Thems'.

The biggest lasting influence of Said's thesis-- seems to be that it's considered incorrect to call people 'Oriental' now. 'Asian' is substituted in a mindless 1-for-1 swap, and almost everyone who would correct you for saying 'oriental' can't explain Why it's supposedly wrong. At best, they say 'oriental describes things-- like a rug-- Asian describes people.' So it's "offensive" to use a word which reduces people to things. But that strikes me as making-up a rule just so you can be offended when it's broken.

The Seuss article says "That study, published in 2019, examined 50 books by Dr. Seuss and found 43 out of the 45 characters of color have "characteristics aligning with the definition of Orientalism," or the stereotypical, offensive portrayal of Asia." ...a sentence which itself conflates Asia with Asians. And reduces the definition of orientalism-- to racism-against-orientals.

Ironically, the woke shitheads are guilty of actual orientalism: by using the one-size-fits-all term 'Asian' to describe everyone from Muslim rape gangs in the UK, to Hindus in Bombay to Chinese commuist rapists, and their Uyghur rape victims, Hmongnards, and Japs in Japan, and Yellow Americans With Slanty Eyes.

It's politically correct to claim all 'People of Color' share some unified experience & agenda & perspective. And whites are excluded from that, and different. And it's politically incorrect to make the same claim.

#839

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/us/dr-se ... index.html

Was one thing when it was just a school district decoupling a (Dr. Seuss inspired) reading day from Dr. Seuss. Now the very organization with rights to Suess's work is permanently removing six books from publication. Permanent in the sense that I assume the crazy will die down some decade.

The list includes a personal favorite: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street

But Dr. Seuss had a long history of publishing racist and anti-Semitic work, spanning back to the 1920s when he was a student at Dartmouth College. There, Dr. Seuss once drew Black boxers as gorillas and perpetuated Jewish stereotypes by portraying Jewish characters as financially stingy, according to a study published in the journal "Research on Diversity in Youth Literature."

"In ("The Cat's Quizzer"), the Japanese character is referred to as 'a Japanese,' has a bright yellow face, and is standing on what appears to be Mt. Fuji," the authors wrote.

The study also argues that since the majority of human characters in Dr. Seuss' books are White, his works -- inadvertently or not -- center Whiteness and thus perpetuate White supremacy.

#838

Lots of fun points is prior messages.

Regarding technology.... and the comment that we always develop the technologies that we can and never ask if we should. Well... yeah. There is nothing to be done about this problem... because we are not smart enough to know what will really happen. Take the A-bomb as an example. Many people think it never should have been invented. They claim it will inevitably destroy the world and life on earth.. and mankind... etc. Well... no one can prove this. We are not dead yet... and while people are pretty fucked up, perhaps we are not fucked up enough to destroy the earth. I don't know... and neither does anyone else. I can also say this.... the nuclear standoff has created more peace than almost anything in history. There has been no period of general peace like we have seen since the end of WWII. Now... this is not absolute proof of anything, but it is suggestive that the A-bomb was perhaps not a bad thing. Complicated stuff.

I am also not so convinced things are going down hill as suggested. Sure... people are stupid and media/technology are messing with us. But, people have been messed up all along. It is not like there was some golden age of truth and justice. Hell.... remember the Satanic Panic? or how about the period of people claiming they had repressed memories. People were imprisoned because their daughter went to a shrink and came out thinking she had been abused by daddy. We don't have this problem right now. We have other problems. Stuff like "words are violence", or "children can decide their gender", or "gender is a social construct... but I am really a boy." There is a bunch of random fucked up shit. But we are not doomed and the current tech trends are hard to predict.

One of my favorite books is Frankenstein. It expresses that general fear that something will go wrong because man keeps trying to be more and more like a god. Well... really... nothing has gone wrong in a general sense. Sure, we have problems to fix... but... we fix them. And I feel like we really suck at predicting what will go wrong with any particular technology. In general, we figure out what is wrong and we fix it.... eventually.

On the abortion and "I have bodily autonomy" topic. The most fun I have with this discussion is how every woman who has an abortion is thought of as a victim. Either she is a victim of poverty, or a victim of a man, or a victim of being young, or a victim of having bad parents.... etc.... etc. If a woman wants an abortion the accepted emotional response to to say "Oh... that is so sad for her." If you want your friends to get really mad... when they say..."Oh, it is so sad she had to get an abortion.".. try saying... "Well, I hope she has figured out that she should stop sleeping around!" Haha. Great way to liven up a room.

I will end on a story about my wife and I. So, we were chatting, and I said "Wow... do you remember... back in the 90s... there were claims from some women that they had repressed memories, and some dads were sent to prison by their daughters.... after they were hypnotized... haha... do you remember that?" and my wife says... "Well... it wasn't just women." Haha. Out of that whole sentence she picked out that fact that I said it was women. And I said "Well... It was women." and she says "Well I am sure it was men too." and I said "I don't remember any men doing it... but maybe." So.. this is how it goes.

#837

2 or 3 times in the last few days... I'll be puttering-around, my mind on some mundane task (Where did I leave that packet of guitar strings? It was in my hand a moment ago)...

and a non-sequitur political thought will pop into my head, fully formed, not part of a prior train of thought.

One was this: "The debate over whether there are only 2 genders assumes the 2 genders are male and female. A funny twist would be to enter a debate, arguing 'there are only 2 genders', but then divide gender into 2 parts-- some other way, which the opponent can't dispute. Such as 'There are only Things Which Have Gender and Things Which Don't.' Or 'There are only 2 genders: Cis and Trans'.

Maybe that's clever. maybe not. But it's an odd thing to suddenly receive, like a telegram from Gawd. It didn't come in words, like an inner monologue. It was like a light switches on & you see a whole room. Describing what you see in words is an after-the-fact process.

Another one: "Only libertarian women should be allowed to have abortions."

Or maybe I should write it as: "Therefore, only libertarian women should be allowed to have abortions."

With nothing prior to the 'therefore'. A punchline with no set-up. I had to consciously backtrack & assemble the train of thought which would lead to that odd conclusion. It goes like this:

I've always thought that bearing a child was a huge imposition on a woman, if she doesn't want to be pregnant. It's not a minor thing to tell-her she -must- bear the child, then raise it or part-with-it... by taking-away abortion as an option.

BUT... most chicks who think it's a travesty to force a woman to endure an unwanted pregnancy... are very comfortable demanding that others endure unwanted impositions. They demand someone else pay for their birth control devices, their abortions, their health insurance, their daycare, their kids' education, their housing. If they find it acceptable to demand impositions on others/ then they forfeit their right to not be imposed-upon themselves. Why didn't that ever occur to me, before? Therefore, only libertarian-minded women should be allowed to have abortions.

==
I guess there's a 'normal' way I'm used-to my conscious & unconscious mind interacting. Sometimes they interact differently & the change is an odd surprise. A couple years ago, for a few weeks or months, I started misreading words. I might see the badge on a VOLVO as EVOLVE or ILOVE... and do a double-take.

#836

John D wrote: ↑ Joe B is not "dumb". Neither was G H W Bush. Neither was Trump. I wouldn't call any of them dumb.

They all have a talent for telling the story that people want to hear. I do this kind of thing on my job all the time. I work as a program manager, quality manager, and other roles. I don't lie.... well not exactly... and I don't know all the facts I am talking about... but I frame things in a way where my listeners agree with what actions are needed. Joe and Donald and George are better at this skill than I am. They also have a lot of cronies who push others to follow along... following the party line.

Trumpsters... and Biden fans... etc. are all fairly stupid. They want to be led and they don't want to understand the "facts". They want the story. It makes them feel good. They are watching a TV show.

I can agree with everything you said-- but it would only be true for that-specific definition of 'not dumb'.

Doesn't change the all ways Biden IS dumb.

Just like your talent for gladhandling decision-makers at work. That only gets you so far. It's no substitute for actual quality control... when the cars burst into flames, or roll-over, or the brakes don't work.

Sophists still can't fancytalk us out of genuine crises, just like in Plato's time.

#835

Chest-feeding ad ran during the Golden Globes. Representative of how Hollywood imagines the US population, two of the four dugs are black:

#834

Fiction is great at presenting a narrative.

Not sure how woke the Chinese are though.

#833

Great points. When done well, science fiction asks all those questions. Every robot revolt/tyrannical computer story ever was about rushing for convenience and luxury while ignoring unintended consequences. I recall a short story called "The Iron Chancellor" about a home security/housekeeper robot that kept its rich, suburban family forever imprisoned after it went haywire and conflated them leaving the house with an intruder crossing in. It also fed them nothing but dry toast.

No wonder that wokists would produce science fiction where tech advances only have upsides, and where tweaking on parameter does not perturb the entire system.

And now I read that Facebook thinks adding facial recognition to glasses is a grand idea. What could go wrong?

#832

Interesting essay. One thing that comes to mind as objectionable, is what I call the Jurassic Park problem. Ian Malcolm's claim "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." I think this is a real problem with the way the world works, and a particularly strong argument against the moral framework that is presented in the original Star Trek as outlined in that essay.

The best example I like is that we know the USSR tried to cross Ebola and smallpox. While this undoubtedly requires a significant amount of intellectual prowess, it also clearly lacks wisdom. I've come to fear that all technology suffers from this problem. No one would have predicted, for example, that automobiles were such a fantastic means of producing carbon dioxide. This is not to say that discarding all technology and living in Michael Piller's utopia is appealing - I hated the fawning over the insipid Ba’ku too - but, it isn't obvious to me that we can actually achieve good outcomes through reason alone. This seems to be particularly true when new technologies are based on flaws on our evolutionary heritage. Take Brive's insufferable diet posts: He has a real point that food technology has had unintended consequences. Our taste for sugar is almost certainly an evolutionary hack for the nutrients we actually had difficulty finding in antiquity, and is pretty disastrous in the modern world. Social media is another example, hacking into our social requirements in a similar way that seems to have similarly disastrous effects.

I'm not saying that I want to ban Facebook and Coca-Cola, I'm just saying that Huxley's Soma fueled slavery is just as big a problem as a Orwell's tyrannical Big Brother. What's really required are Men with Chests and a consistent means of producing them.

We do have serious technological questions coming up in our future that will have far more profound effects than the development of nuclear weapons. Generalised Artificial Intelligence and human genetic engineering. I have no doubt the Chinese will be producing genetically engineered super humans within my life time. I really don't know how we respond to this in a sensible way. It seems to me a net good if we are able to eliminate genetic diseases prior to birth, but the Gattaca world is definitely not one I'd want to live on or bequeath my descendants.

#831

Stumbled across this well-written article on how the Star Trek franchise devolved from its original true liberal roots into moral relativism, then might-makes-right nihilism:

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the- ... star-trek/

#830

Jen... Jen... Jen.... and your little red bottom...

#829

Joe B is not "dumb". Neither was G H W Bush. Neither was Trump. I wouldn't call any of them dumb.

They all have a talent for telling the story that people want to hear. I do this kind of thing on my job all the time. I work as a program manager, quality manager, and other roles. I don't lie.... well not exactly... and I don't know all the facts I am talking about... but I frame things in a way where my listeners agree with what actions are needed. Joe and Donald and George are better at this skill than I am. They also have a lot of cronies who push others to follow along... following the party line.

Trumpsters... and Biden fans... etc. are all fairly stupid. They want to be led and they don't want to understand the "facts". They want the story. It makes them feel good. They are watching a TV show.

#828

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑ It's a quasi-religion.

Hard to sort the genuinely-stupid true believers in the religion/ from the opportunists who know better & are playing-dumb for strategic reasons.

==

Joe Biden is genuinely dumb, tho.

A couple days ago he went to Texas in response to 'the emergency' and spoke for 20 minutes about Covid/ not about the recent freeze or it's causes or effects. He just talked about 'the emergency' he wanted to talk-about, not the one he didn't.

I was struck by a moment in the speech-- where Biden declared he was going-to defeat Covid/ as if saying-so makes it true. Then he proudly declared his greatest achievement was going to be to defeat Cancer. It's not an 'achievement' until you do it. But he's already taking a bow. Then he interrupted himself with a stray thought: maybe his amazing defeat of Cancer isn't even his greatest achievement: he's even greater than he thought! After all, he just landed a rover on Mars!

video:

Of course, that Mars rover was on its way to Mars before Biden took office. And so was fighting-covid and fighting-cancer. But this retarded story is like all the other times Biden improvised a grandiose brag-- Mandela thanking him for getting arrested in South Africa. Biden's 'top of the class' success in college. Biden's imaginary participation in civil rights sit-ins and marches. Dunning-Kruger.

Some of Biden's supporters genuinely believe his b.s. And some pretend to believe, to support The Cause.

#827

Harrison Bergeron was off by sixty years.

Boston Public Schools Will Suspend Advanced Classes Because Too Many Students In Them Are White Or Asian

#826

It's a quasi-religion. So long as the dogma is affirmed, it's double plus good, damn the internal logical contradictions. In the same way christians gush over Alvin Plantiga's circular reasoning and assorted sophistry, pretending he's the demigod of epistemology.

#825

Holy Tip-of-the-Iceberg. I can't name a better site for anti-Biden news... than TYT curating official Biden Admin statements.

Check out Kamala's weird shit about "Covid's toll on WOMEN". ...which is actually a description of how Lockdowns and School Closings screwed women.

And Biden's solution? Those "$1400" checks and tax credits for families-with-children. Neither of which is specific to women.

(Unless only women can bear children. Oh, the transphobia! The bigotry!)

Why did they produce this video at all? Better to stay silent than call attention to to their failed lockdown policies, pandering to the teacher's unions, and their broken $2000 promise.

#824

YouTube offered me clips, posted by The Young Turks, with saucy titles, suggesting these would be slam dunk moments for Jen Psaki and the Biden Admin.

I'm not seeing it. I see evasion, condescension, failure to own responsibility. Blame-Trump-or-Covid for everything.

What does this mean? Has TYT sunk to the level of pure clickbait? Not caring whether their content matches the title, as long as you click?

Or maybe far-left TYT knows these aren't really 'psmackdowns' and they're being passive-aggressive against Republican-lite Biden?

My concern is-- that TYT & their audience really-do think these are highlights. If so, I think they just like her hair or her know-it-all tone. The superficial package looks ok to them & they don't notice the lack of substance. If Biden's empty hand bluffing succeeds, that suggests a major voting bloc of blue-pill addicts. So eager to be told what they want to hear, that they'll accept that instead of demanding real results. Politicians will gladly exploit this-- all talk/ no solutions, while the nation crashes.

Same could be said on the Trump side: I know many MAGA fanboys loved Kaleigh McEnany because she looked like a porn star. And Trump's speeches were piles of purple adjectives, often with a void where substance should have been. Plenty of MAGA hat wearers enjoyed cheering-on-cue, without scrutinizing the message. Taking outlandish swings, indifferent to whether the punch even landed-- was Trump's brand.

But-- I see a difference. Trump actually represented a declassé populist base, which he-himself assembled. Whereas Biden seems like a carpetbagger-- eager to half-ass shapeshift into whatever populist faction he can pander-to. Obama's coattails, Tough-on-crime and/or ACAB abolish the police and/or gun grabbing, Wokeness, Boomer centrism, Green New Deal, teachers unions, tranny hitlers.

#823

Haven’t listened yet. But Dunning has declared Dyatlov a non-mystery so I guess that’s sorted. 👍
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/s ... 0510804981

Btw for easy listening (but competently assembled) British colonial and Napoleonic military soft-history “Redcoat History” is a good crib. British guy. Living in South Africa. Ex military. Incl some interviews with the British Muzzleloader Group.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t ... 1464633664

#822

Service Dog wrote: ↑
Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:13 am
Speaking at a Jewish event in Delaware in 2015, a few months after Beau Biden's death, Joe Biden told a Joe Biden story, about trying to seduce a girl: "“I was the Catholic kid. She was the Jewish girl. I still tried. I didn’t get anywhere." That girl grew up & had daughters. And grand-daughters.

Joseph Robinette Biden The Third (known as "Beau Biden")-- forever trying to live-up to Joe Biden's bragging about Joe Biden-- married one of those daughters. And, after Beau died, Hunter Biden moved-in with one daughter, rented a house with the other, and did sexytime with both.

And, according to Beau's widow, Hunter was also sexually inappropriate with the under-age granddaughters. Texts show that Jim Biden & Joe Biden told Hunter they would "shove it down her fucking throat" in response to the concerned mother's 2018 claim.

Texts also show Hunter discussing 'folding clothes' in a Whole Foods Bathroom with the 14-year old grand-daughter. 'Folding clothes' is slang from a 2017 J. Cole rap song about sneaking-away to have sex.

A reaction that accords with the defensive and very aggressive responses he is prone to giving when put on the spot. Never did buy the kindly uncle PR, it's a bad fit. His general demeanour leads me to give some credence to stories like this one https://www.theunionjournal.com/investi ... vestigate/ while keeping in mind how easy it is to get taken in by smears. Joe's public stance on his son is really inadequate. After the laptop went public with all of it's revelations of debauchery all he could say was that he was proud of Hunter? He saw no problem with the Burisma gig? He either snaps back angrily or just brushes off questions on the subject, never giving any real explanation. Questioning him is probably going to become punishable by complete cancellation so he has no worries, at least until Harris wants him disappeared.

#821

If a girl turns you down, wait 50 years and make-out with her teenage grand-daugher.

https://i.imgur.com/tJs9Ap0_d.jpg?maxwi ... ity=medium

#820

And Joe took showers with his teenaged stepdaughter. Who's now completely fucked in the head, cheated openly on her husband, and is continually pulled over -- but let off -- for drunk driving.

The Biden clan saga ranks up with the imperial accounts of Suetonius.

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