Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I am afraid you are “fucked” if you think AJ is an example of independent media and that YT numbers are enough proof for media suppression. Most people on this planet do not watch YT. And the ones who do tend to be influenced by their algorithms that continuously change. That makes YT numbers as slippery as an eel in a lubricant factory. By which I mean unreliable to start a conspiracy theory about a poor, cash strapped, impeccably impartial artisan media outlet from Qatar. Slash s.



  • Why isn’t this a popular thing? Because the majority of people on this planet does not care about time zones and either doesn’t have to deal with them at all or doesn’t see a problem when they do. It’s tradition, it’s convention, it’s well-established, and it just works for most people. We should abolish DST but otherwise this ship has sailed.

    We should use the aftermath of a civilization killing meteor hit or thermonuclear war to decimalize time keeping - it would need a catastrophic, cataclysmic event like that. A day is now 100 jiffies long. Each jiffy has 100 centijiffies. Now, if we could alter the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun to something more even that’d be great.




  • Perp walks. Teachers in school in front of class. Other kids in school being mean. Public dress downs at work. I’m sure there are more. Not all perps walked reoffend. Kids get their shit together because they don’t want to be made to look silly in front of their peers. I think for some employees this works similarily.

    Shaming only works if the shamed feels any. The doublers-down are often the ones who don’t feel shame. So it was the wrong tool for the job. Won’t work on 47 if you know what I mean.

    Just to clarify: I would personally put this tool in the “break glass in case of last resort” section of the tool box. But I’ve worked with bosses who didn’t put these restrictions on themselves and it can work.

    You could question their leadership qualities if you wanted to. That’s a benefit of arm chairing this stuff in an internet forum.


  • Just by origin of the word polyglot means you have many tongues. Tongues is of course well established as a stand-in for languages. If you can speak more than one, you fall under the definition.

    I think people have attached more to the term than just that though. I’m thinking of well traveled and culturally sensitive as well. Somebody who would be alright no matter where you dropped them.

    How many languages can your better half say good morning in? She might just be trying to pay you a compliment and you with your humilis gloriatio are not having it. In any case, I wouldn’t recommend going back to her with arguments obtained from a random group of internet users to settle your interpersonal disagreement.



  • So I wonder what “you” you, and from here on that means you personally unless otherwise stated, are referring to. Are you ascribing idiot-shouting behavior to me personally? Or are you referring to the neutral “you,” which can be replaced with “one?” The reason I’m wondering is that I have given no indication that I shout at idiots but your reply could be incorrectly construed in such a way that I do. Which then doesn’t make the motive warning any clearer also. Because it could be a interpreted as meaning I like to be “dominance-humping” and I ought to reflect on that. Or that my reasoning is too Darwinistic. Or that I shouldn’t judge tight calls by small statistical margins. Or that I like correcting people? Etc. It just isn’t clear.

    If this was pointed at my personally then you in particular and one in general should keep in mind that the person answering a binary question of the calibre “Which is worse, the plague or cholera?” doesn’t necessarily need to be suffering from either disease to make an assessment. So looping back to your OG query: I would say it’s better not to shout at anyone in general. But I’m also sure you and I after careful deliberation could agree on some exceptions relating to your query that aren’t monkey business. E.g. the idiot could be in danger, the idiot could be a racist abusing the marginalized, the idiot could be hard of hearing, etc. This sort of longer discussion isn’t encouraged by a binary prompt.





  • Can you back this up with anything but personal observation? There is nary a country in Europe that is under threat of a Russian invasion as much as Poland, now that they’re already in Ukraine. Right wingers all over Europe are very pro-Russian - except in Poland. History looms large in a country whose neighbors split it 3 times. It’s obviously possible that Polish younglings, unburdened with things like history, like the culture. You are well within you rights to separate the culture from its people’s history or what the current government is like. But I have a hard time imagining this as more as a passing fluke at best, or propaganda at worst.


  • I think there may be a paradox hiding in your question. You cannot believe in free will. You have it or you don’t - I would postulate you need a neutral third-party observer to tell you. For us humans, a Martian might do. Believing is an act of faith. Faith tends to bend will to its dogmas. I would go so far as to say belief is the natural enemy of a free will.

    We are distracted animals. All things being equal, the Martian observer will after years of careful study come to the conclusion that humans have free will. But it’s constantly battered by short attention spans, a tendency to go with the herd, presupposituons in our heads that we don’t often or never question, etc. We are a smartphone full of bloatware running on too little RAM. It takes skill to operate. Some are more skillful than others.

    You could of course counter that by saying that’s what you believe. It’s paradoxes all the way down.




  • You have to consider a few things here. You’re not the only one with social anxiety at that event. Your reaction is not to go in the first place (my MO as well) or to sit quietly hoping it shall pass with haste. Others talk too much. School reunions are such a rich vein for neurosis because you’re guaranteed to be judged by your peers. Peers who knew you very well when you weren’t a more well put together person yet. Few people behave like themselves there. So if the woman says she cheated a million times lol, her neurons may be on the fritz as well because she’s more thinking about how she dunked Sharon’s head in the toilet in freshman year or whatever. And that memory is haunting. And she’s sitting just over there! WHY HASN’T SHE SAID ANYTHING? … So you need to have a salt shaker handy for anything you hear.

    Also, some people like attention and will say anything to get it. People like to construct a public persona around their worst character traits, the ones they’re unable to change. It’s like they’re putting a cool leather jacket on, aviator shades too. To distract themselves from their inner monolog, which very well might be telling them what a piece of shit they are.

    And cheating is common. In my social group I know of a handful of cases. Drunk and horny, sober and crushing - the motivations are on a scale. In some relationships these secrets never get revealed, in others they’ve made the bond stronger, others have broken up. I would say very few people brag about it but hey, we contain multitudes. Some people end up in an unhealthy game of hurt oneup(wo)manship. Relationships are hard fucking work.

    It is also a different picture when you have children with your partner. The willingness to forgive infractions increases for the good of the children.

    And while centuries of indoctrination of monogamy and loyalty to your spouse can make this hard to accept: some people make open relationships work. I think it’s more often than not the last stepping stone to disaster but if you can make it work, vaya con dios. I have a hard time with it but I’m trying not to judge.

    None of this needs to change how you feel about cheating though.


  • Scale is the factor here. You could say that small places can benefit from a sort of benevolent authoritarianism. I’m thinking Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco. None of them are bigger than a postage stamp and the population will go along with it. The bigger the country, the more injustices authoritarianism accumulates, the harder it is to keep people in line, the more suppressive it becomes.

    Ideally, democracy trumps everything. It is the only system that has the built-in power to cancel itself. It needs all the people to be aware and to participate accordingly. It’s not perfect. It’s not always fair either. But I’d rather live in a system that can decide to end itself than in a system that would try to end me if I wanted to be critical about it.


  • In terms of communism, as dreamt up by Marx and Engels, you can only turn a completely capitalist economy into a communist one. This has never been achieved, shortcuts have been taken. All communist states in existence have either turned authoritarian or to dust. So in my view, there aren’t many communist movements left in the world. They may use the word but either M&E wouldn’t like them or they don’t really have a lot of support behind them. No support, no money. Capitalists have a lot of money. People with a lot of money tend to have the ear of their leaders. If an investor is interested it’ll be real hard to go for an employee-owned model (excluding models with free publicly traded shares). If investors are not interested, the business may be failing and employee ownership is the last hurrah before the end. Capitalism tends to come up on top.