Rottcodd @ Rottcodd @kbin.social

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275

Joined

2 yr. ago

So at this point, I'm just wondering - traitor, lunatic or moron?

He's obviously at least one of the three, but which one(s)?

Ah... the venerable old "make a 'loan' then forgive it" strategy for paying bribes.

At this point Thomas might as well have a tattoo across his forehead that says "I am corrupt."

If he had even a speck of integrity, he'd resign.

I don't really blame them, or at least not primarily.

They're just desperate and frustrated and looking for someone or something to blame for the fact that what should be a great nation is instead a festering cesspool of greed, corruption, violence and stupidity. Like most, they won't or can't consider the part they play in that, so they look for some "other" to blame.

There is actually an "other" to be blamed - the wealthy and politically powerful few - but most of American history, and human history for that matter, has been built around establishing and protecting the privilege of those few, most often by manipulating public sentiment in such a way as to direct anger and frustration away from them and instead towards others of the common people.

So they're really just the latest in a long line of people feeling wholly justifiable anger and frustration that's been misdirected by self-serving shitheels. I guess they're rightly faulted for failing to recognize that they're mad at the wrong people, but really, that's true of far too many people.

Now all that said, on a personal level there's almost nobody that fills me with more rage and disgust than the bigoted right.

Still though...

Not that it makes any real difference, but I wonder how many of them are so stupid and/or blinded by ideological bias that they voted that way because they sincerely believed that the election was invalid and how many of them voted that way because they're cowards with no principles or integrity who were trying to suck up to Trump and his army of violent morons.

At this point, that's one of the only things that provides even a hint of interest about an American right-wing politician - wondering if they're an actual delusional psychopath or if they're just LARPing as one to get votes and/or not get death threats.

Again, not that it makes any real difference...

And again - no matter how much money he might have so what the reality might be, whenever I visualize Musk posting to used-to-be-twitter, I see him as a greasy teenager in cum-stained sweatpants, hunched over an off-the-shelf desktop PC on a rickety desk in a room with fake wood paneling and green shag carpet in a trashy suburban tract house, furiously tapping away at a grimy keyboard and giggling to himself.

Mom's a great character - she comes across as stern and distant and intimidating, but we get to see what's underneath that.

And it just hit me - I don't recall a specific reference to where her dad is now, but I'm willing to bet that he's in Tokyo, and we're going to get to meet him soon.

If you're new to the series and/or lost (not unexpected for Dowman Sayman), the scanlators, Profiterol, also just released updated versions of the first three chapters, based on the tank chapters instead of the original magazine chapters, so this is a great opportunity to start at the beginning.

And maybe still end up lost...

Link Here

And there it is.

Just to note - the mangaka has already said that he has plans that will keep this going at least until January, so we're not even close to done here.

I'm looking forward to it.

I prefer a much simpler solution: the threadiverse remains decentralized, with all that that entails, and all of the people who can't cope with that leave.

Ah - I thought to explain the connection, but didn't want to belabor the point if you already got it.

First and most broadly, Fujimura is a tsukkomi completely surrounded by bokes, much like Alvin.

More curiously though, there's a side character who's just called Helmet because he's never seen without a full-face helmet, just like Alvin. And even to the point, again like Alvin, that in the rare event that he isn't wearing his helmet, his face is pointedly hidden anyway.

On the one hand, that's a sort of meaningless detail, but on the other hand, it's a meaningless detail that matches up between the two. It seems too insignificant to be deliberate but too obscure to not be.

And yeah - it's good. It's mostly the same sort of boke and tsukkomi humor as this, and with really good characters (the fmc - Eri - is still one of my all-time favorite manga characters). And it's also a surprisingly effective harem series, since the girls are all bokes of one sort or another, which is an alternative reason for them continually pestering Fujimura, and he can't help but tsukkomi, which explains the otherwise awkward harem contrivance of the MC generally not figuring out what's going on. It's not so much that he can't figure it out as that he can't take it seriously - he thinks they're just sort of deranged. And he's not entirely wrong.

I keep wondering how much, if at all, this was inspired by Fujimura-kun Meitsu. It's sort of as if Helmet got a spin-off manga and was promoted (or demoted, as the case might be) from boke to tsukkomi.

And right on cue, unintentional irony.

This from someone who self-evidently thinks that labels and stereotypes are fit substitutes for arguments.

Yes - I understand that your blind partisanship requires you to believe that opposition to one party requires absolute, unqualified, uncritical and unthinking obedience to the other, but though it's apparently beyond your own grasp, it is possible to both support a party and criticize it.

In fact, in a healthy representative democracy, that would arguably be the norm - the parties would be shifting to accommodate the criticisms of the people rather than presenting themselves as fait accompli and demanding unthinking loyalty and condemning criticism.

But of course, this is anything but a healthy representative democracy.

And that's not a coincidence.

But unlike Republicans, Democrats have a vested interest in a functioning government and serving the people.

I don't think that's true.

Exactly like the Republicans, Democrats have a vested interest in just creating enough of an appearance of serving the people to get re-elected, but not so much that it interferes with their actual goal of benefitting themselves and their wealthy cronies and patrons.

Republicans can do that fairly straightforwardly, by spinning lies about "deregulation" and "privatization" and such - by overtly pushing for legislation that will benefit the rich and just dressing it up in a sort of costume.

Democrats have a harder time of it because there's no easy way to make legislation explicitly designed to benefit the oligarchy look like it's designed to benefit the people at large. So Democrats' role is mostly just to provide the illusion of opposition - to stand against Republican proposals but not quite manage to defeat them, and to make proposals of their own but not quite manage to pass them.

And as far as that goes, this is a perfect opportunity for them. They can, and certainly will, just make ineffectual noise and accomplish nothing of substance, then blame the Republicans for the failure to accomplish anything of substance.

My objection to it is that it seems that its subject and its target audience are essentially the same people.

I was going to say this, but I figured I could just scroll until I found where someone else inevitably said it.

By the end, I was just letting the drama wash over me and not even trying to sort out which version of who was doing what in which timeline.

And honestly, I suspect that that's the best way to appreciate it anyway.

Or you could just not care so much.

If you post memes that are likely to offend someone somewhere, then there's a risk that one of those someones is going to be a mod, and they're going to delete it. And really, that's just the way it goes.

Certainly you might prefer that they have explicit, precise and closely followed rules so you can accurately predict what they'll do, but there's really no requirement that they do so - if they want vague rules arbitrarily enforced, that's their prerogative.

And really, what are you out if they do delete a post? It's not like you paid for it or you have some sort of quota you have to meet. You just toss things out into the internet, and some of them float and others sink.

I'm always curious - what is it that leads you to believe that you should be able to decide what other people may or may not do with their own bodies?

I've never been able to wrap my head around that whole idea. There's just no angle on it that makes sense to me.

If I presume that people do have the right to decide what other people can do with their own bodies, then we end up with self-defeating chaos, since different people have entirely different, conflicting and even contradictory, views on that.

But if I decide that they don't have that right, then... they don't have that right.

I don't see a chain of logic that can possibly lead to the conclusion that anyone does have that right, but it seems I can't turn around without running into yet another person, like you here, who blithely presumes that they do.

So really - how does that work? Inside your own mind, what's the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that you, rather than the actual people who actually inhabit the other bodies around you, should be empowered to decide what they may or may not do with their own bodies?

I just can't make sense of it.

So seriously - who's peddling this anti-vaping propaganda and what's their goal?

Vaping is easily the most effective way to stop smoking that's ever existed. Certainly we don't want kids to start doing it, and kids are the basis for much of the propaganda, but it's never just restricted to trying to make it so kids don't start. All of the propaganda efforts are directed toward stamping out vaping entirely, and that means that millions of people whose lives could literally be saved by switching from smoking to vaping will be denied that opportunity.

Why? Whose interests are served by denying adult smokers access to the most effective smoking cessation product ever?

For me it's "v".

IfvI'mvnotvcarefulvIvgetvthis.