ReallyActuallyFrankenstein @ ReallyActuallyFrankenstein @lemmynsfw.com

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1,504

Joined

2 yr. ago

I'm American - you don't want to be here right now. Nobody sane wants to be here right now.

I agree with your criticism of "intrinsic." "Intrinsically" as I thought of it means that there's been a consolidation step that builds in all of the cultural baggage into the "carried" meaning of the word. I think even if there's no absolute "intrinsic" meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word. But of course every word can change its meaning, no debate there.

I think it's a little academic to say "any offensive word" can be said in an "inoffensive manner" - yes, words in a theatrical play do not convey an offensive meaning against the audience; words said ironically as a criticism of the word and user of the word can be used satirically, but we'd then need to debate what it means to "use" a word in an offensive context versus another. (In any case, "inoffensive" use is not what Elon is doing. He's following adolescent edgelord troll rules, which is using it unironically while exulting in other people's offense, and playing the victim of woke culture when called on it.)

I have no idea how close the movie Spotlight got to portraying Marty Baron, but this certainly suggests they got the portrayal right.

If he can't back out, he'll bring a random offspring to the taping to use as a human shield.

Raise your hand if you believe this was all started because Putin told Trump it was a good idea.

Honestly looks like a lost 90s arcade game.

I think you're being intentionally reductive, and you think that that reductionism is appropriate (i.e., only physical pain is valid pain). But I don't agree, and most people wouldn't in 2025. Psychological pain is pain, and you can likewise inflict it in a morally culpable way. You probably agree with that premise - you wouldn't defend someone being actively abusive, like a psychopathic partner - but we're just debating where the line is.

There's still a valid debate about the limits of freedom from mental pain in the public sphere and our corollary duties to each other - I get that, it's not "any pain is too much," nobody reasonable thinks that - but this is entirely foreseeable, preventable and to doggedly insist that you have a right to inflict it doesn't mean that it's right to inflict it.

You can both give someone armor to fend off blows, and also raise people to understand you shouldn't inflict those blows, both help. But calling someone "retarded" is not something a good person does.

Nobody is making the word bad. The word is intrinsically bad because it inflicts unfair and callous pain on others. A person's right to inflict that pain is debatable, but is also immaterial, because what we're saying here is that using those words without regard to the other person and causing that pain recklessly, makes one in some real sense a bad person. They can say the pain inflicted is "not their intention," but that's also immaterial if they are recklessly disregarding that pain. And accountability for being a bad person is just a natural result.

Look, I was a teenager in the 90s, and I too probably used "retard," "gay" and plenty of other words in ways that were offensive in 2025 (or even 2010, or 2000). But as we live in the world, most of us, you know... grow.

While Elon, Trump and all of these other crazy people complain about sensitive liberals, in reality they are the ones feeling triggered by the fabric of reality constantly reminding them that they continue to have the emotional intelligence of a 90s teen (at best). When someone tells them not to say "retard," they say "NO, 90s ME WAS NOT WRONG, YOU'RE WRONG."

But Elon, if you haven't developed enough to feel superior to your 90s self, to treat your 90s self like a different person you're allowed to disagree with, something is wrong with you. It's all just emotional, infantile contrarianism to avoid admitting that they have no capacity for self-reflection.

So did they have to pinky swear they were going to come back for their trial, or did they not even have to bother?

To be honest, I want to do a calculation how much it would take to live without a job but baking/cooking everything from scratch, and other simplified life things.

I feel like most retirement calculators assume you're going to be living exactly as you were, but food, transportation, many living costs are higher to save time that a job takes up. So it's partially a self-reinforcing cycle.

Instead, I think in retirement my costs would go away down, and I'd at the same time be doing things that feel meaningful, like baking my own bread. But maybe I'm delusional.

How about reinstating all of the employees, since they were fired illegally?

Maybe this has a 1% chance of passing instead of a 0% chance for "all," but democrats should stop building policy around republicans' expectations. This watered-down crap does nothing in the end.

No shade on what anyone chooses to do with their body, but the reason for that is probably botox. There's a puffiness around her features that doesn't move with changes in expression. People think it makes them look younger, but to me it just makes them look uncanny (and this isn't just one gendered comment - Sylvester Stallone is another example).

Why someone in their late twenties would get botox is beyond me, but then, she's voluntarily doing the bidding of a man who prefers to look like he just snorted a pile of Tang every morning and prefers staff who look like they're from "central casting," so maybe that explains it.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House would now determine which outlets will be members of the press pool, the smaller group of journalists who are allowed in to events in the Oval Office or travel with the president on Air Force One.

For decades, the White House Correspondents’ Association has handled the logistics of the press pool, including determining which outlets will be assigned for duty and when they will participate. The set up designed to prevent an administration from retaliating against journalists whose coverage they disfavor.

Oh, gosh, they're dismantling a system set up to prevent an administration from retaliating against journalists whose coverage they disfavor, after a group of journalists covered them in a way they didn't favor? Surely they have innocent motives here.

Thank you for this. I plan to look at the authentication part more closely, but that's the part I can't quite figure out (being an amateur at this stuff but still trying), since I'm nervous with just a password accessing it remotely or from the phone.

Authelia, NGINX, there is so much that's confusing to me, but this might help.

I'm sure you intend this to highlight the alternative reading of the article, but just being frank and no offense, I actually don't see the difference. Most of the things you highlighted are things I explained why they are implicitly actually legitimizing Musk and his actions, some seem random, and none of them contradicts my theory.

But yes, there's are competing ways to interpret this. That's why I call it a "fluff piece" rather than a outright authoritarian sycophancy.

I mean, it's open to interpretation, but the reason I said that is because the author uncritically accepts a lot of Musk's and Trump's premises which legitimizes Musk's actions, while consistently avoiding any clear criticism.

E.g.:

Musk, the self-appointed Trumpian king of government efficiency, is also not only taking a hardline approach to trimming the federal bureaucracy.

Frames that Musk actually is seeking to "trim the federal bureaucracy" in the author's voice.

Of course, this all aligns perfectly with President Trump’s broader goal of cutting government spending, with Trump even suggesting that Musk should get more aggressive. That’s right — Musk’s plan to weed out slackers thus far somehow hasn’t been “extremely hardcore” enough for the president. So, in classic Musk fashion, he’s gone all-in, demanding rigorous reporting, cutting contracts, and looking to save a cool $1 trillion along the way.

Bold mine. This paragraph together has a lot of tells. The phrase "weed out slackers" implies there are real "slackers" that Musk is fairly "weeding out."

Musk's "demanding rigorous reporting" also legitimizes and normalizes Musk's harassment of these employees. The author's use of "classic Musk fashion" with this legitimized language implies the author also has a positive opinion of Musk.

"Looking to save a cool $1 trillion" is breezy casual language that could be argued to restate Musk's goal, but use of "save" is a positive connotation word, and subtly implies waste. "A cool" before money is meant to make the number more impressive.

Meanwhile, over at DOGE (the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency), employees are reportedly working 120-hour weeks and sleeping in pods to keep up with the billionaire’s demands. Will this lead to a leaner, meaner federal workforce, or just mass resignations and bureaucratic chaos? Either way, I think we all know how Musk would answer his own What would you say you do here? question: He led the DOGE team in hacking through the federal government like a caffeine-fueled lumberjack at a piñata party.

The closing paragraph is meant to look neutral but again, this seems to lionize DOGE by making them look like hard workers (no need to verify or be skeptical of the 120 hour claim?), and frame it as Musk having a killer response to the Office Space question.

Read the article through the lens of a MAGA and maybe that will convey it better - this seems like hype, loosely coded for mainstream.

Freemium dark patterns are also enshittification. It's slight clickbait/ragebait, but not far off.

Office Space parodied these feckless "efficiency consultants" but of course neither Musk nor this fluff piece writer see the irony.

I guess the world has become so stupid, satire couldn't survive.

Just a reminder that, especially for Trump and those who staff his new media-manipulation-savvy regime (Fox News defectors), Friday night is when you take action or release things that you don't want people paying attention to. Friday night, we're all exhausted and/or distracted. By Monday there will be a new news cycle.

Installing loyalists in the top military positions is one of the things that is signal, not noise.