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PhilipTheBucket

@ PhilipTheBucket @quokk.au

Posts
21
Comments
124
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Oh My God, TAKE IT DOWN Kills Parody

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  • Matt and Trey really don't give a fuck. They tried to show Muhammed in multiple cartoons, and when the network vociferously shouted them down about it (because it might get them killed or their offices attacked), they snuck him in anyway in multiple places and just didn't tell anyone. When one of the foundational members of their cast didn't want them to trash Scientology, they trashed it ten times harder and told him not to let the door hit him on the ass on the way out. They made out with each other for a long time in "Baseketball."

    However valuable or not you feel like their message / their humor is, they are among the very few voices in mainstream media who are simply unafraid and doing their own thing, completely without reservation.

  • What are some events in history that most people would be surprised happened in parallel or at least within the same time period?

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  • I mean it makes perfect sense. From her perspective, I would just pull it out of my pocket and start gently rubbing it carefully with my finger, or prodding softly at it. She just thought it was weird. Why are you doing that? Okay, your device's principles are strange.

    She actually never got completely used to "buttons" as she called it, any kind of machine that you had to use a separate control setup for other than just the direct valves or levers involved. Turning the steering wheel makes sense, turning the knobs on the stove makes sense. Any time she put something in the toaster oven, though, with its multiple modes and controls, she would just savagely twist or push any knob she could find until the thing started making heat, and then when she was done, she would remove the object and leave the door open to let the thing gradually figure out things out on its own and shut off. "Life is short, man, don't bother me with your goddamn buttons, I don't care."

  • What are some events in history that most people would be surprised happened in parallel or at least within the same time period?

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  • Read about Kitty Hawk in the newspaper at 16 years old, in 1903. Watch men walking on the moon on your TV, at 82 years old.

    Fuckin' unreal. Hang out with people who lived through the 20th century, if you ever can, though they are reduced in number now. The perspective they have on things is hard to match. I knew a woman who grew up with black servants in the house who couldn't vote, then marched with MLK, then watched Obama get elected president. And that's everything. Every single aspect of human life, basically, except for a few of the very basics. She was always sort of surprised and amused that I had a "phone" that was a smooth black rectangle that I would control by "stroking" (as she called it) this smooth black surface.

    I watched her meet a new person of her generation. First question: Was your husband in the war? Answer was yes. Second question: Did he live? He's not trying to give offense, he just wants to know your situation. He was in the infantry...

  • What are some events in history that most people would be surprised happened in parallel or at least within the same time period?

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  • Thanks, corrected, IDK what I was thinking.

  • What are some events in history that most people would be surprised happened in parallel or at least within the same time period?

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  • Yeah. Super sad. There will be more good ones, other skies and stars, but these good ones are gone, they will now not shine again.

  • What are some events in history that most people would be surprised happened in parallel or at least within the same time period?

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  • I feel like this is bait for one specific answer... okay, fine, I'll be the one.

    MLK Jr, Anne Frank, and Yasser Arafat were all born in the same year (1929). They were all born after Tom Lehrer, who died yesterday, 97 years old.

    Edit: Math is hard

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    Why is Chicago so violent?

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  • Another really interesting thing is the way they conduct themselves in the comments during a back-and-forth. It's a separate set of behaviors from the low-effort cover comment "mode," but it's still a very recognizable way of interacting.

    1. They never come off the main point. It basically doesn't matter what anyone says, they'll basically just stick to the same script of two or three main arguments, and they'll just keep saying them over and over (and they don't seem to be interested in stopping, ever).
    2. They frequently tell other people in the conversation what the other people believe. Of course, plenty of real human Lemmy users do this too, the weird accounts don't have a monopoly on it. But these go to it a lot more shamelessly and consistently (often just straight-up ignoring other people's statements completely.) Look at the whole exchange that starts with "Are you trying to say chicago doesn't have a problem with violence?" "No." and really just kind of study the pattern of the conversation. It's almost like a Magic 8 Ball, where one participant is just repeating a variety of the exact same thing, over and over, without regard for anything else going on in the conversation. Well, it's not "almost like" that, it is that. And, crucially, they're filling in both sides of the argument that's taking place in their half of the comments, which means they don't even have to pretend to respond to questions or real arguments.
    3. Their non-cover-argument participation almost always lines up with some kind of stock talking point or other, and there's usually a variety. Again, just look at the profile, and this time focus on the talking points: There's social media censorship, big cities are violent and dangerous, Democrats are bad, it's like a little bingo card. But they don't argue for them. They just repeat them, forcing them into the mental landscape, in a little waiting-on-hold-message type loop.

    This one's actually a little bit unusual in that their messaging is lining up with traditional MAGA messaging. I honestly have no idea what's up with that. Most of the time, they're on a little bit of a different script (like Russian ones will talk about "deindustrialization," they'll be mad about green energy, they'll obviously have stuff to say about Ukraine and NATO and BRICS, they also don't like Democrats, and so on.)

    I spent way too much time arguing with dbzer0 people yesterday, and I never once got the impression that anyone I was talking with was any kind of propaganda operation. It's not just that someone's "not with me" and so I jump to that they're obviously one of the weird accounts. But, yes, this is definitely one of the weird accounts.

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    Why is Chicago so violent?

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  • Okay, so there's a super instructive thing that can be done with this user. Look over their profile. Just sort of let your eyes wander over a couple screens worth of it, let it sink in (especially on the comments side). It gives a really good flavor of what kind of "cover" comments these accounts like to spread around to dilute their payload of weird MAGA-friendly talking points. There's some generic tech stuff, there "imma smoke a bong fellow kids," you know, but there's just a very particular flavor of kind of low-effort one or two sentence messages, with no followup intended or desired, that starts to get recognizable after a while.

    Of course not every user that doesn't try to make a masterpiece out of every comment is automatically a troll. But, in combination with the inevitable:

    It will reveal more democrats that shouldn't be in office.

    ... type of comment, it actually does start to look recognizably different from the type of "human voice who is typing a comment because they care on some level about what's being talked about" comment that most people leave most of the time.

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    Why is Chicago so violent?

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  • No. They're trying to say its problem with violence is substantially lower than all those places with substantially lower violent crime rates. That's how crime rates work, in fact it's why they are useful.

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    Why is Chicago so violent?

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  • You remind me of a boss I used to have at a startup, who could not fathom why our phone bill became very high when he didn't pay the bill for quite some time. I actually got frustrated enough with the conversation to go back and do the math, and come back and show it to him, and all he could say was, "It just feels like it's too high."

  • What's the most "oof" or wtf fact you know about an everyday object?

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  • Yeah. They don't penetrate an unlimited distance into the food, the center of some stuff won't get heated. But they penetrate a lot further than the 0 distance that ambient heat from the outside does, conducting heat straight to the skin of the food and then letting it work its way in from there.

    No idea what this person's issue is, I sort of suspect that it's just Lemmy in action, doing its thing.

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    Why is Chicago so violent?

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  • Other cities may have higher crime rates

    Lol

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    What habits of your cat or cats annoy you?

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  • "It's a little space made just for me, how convenient"

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    How the fuck did Henry Kissinger win a Nobel Peace Prize?

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  • Yeah. There's a reason why, out of a long tradition of American war criminals, he was for-real worried about getting arrested for his war crimes and didn't leave the US all that much after a certain point because of it.

    He was also just generally stupid and weak. The people at Harvard thought he must be qualified because the people in Washington respected him, and the people in Washington thought he must be qualified because the people at Harvard respected him. But he was generally just kind of a bumbler, if you couldn't tell from that "reporters will hear you" line of argument.

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    What habits of your cat or cats annoy you?

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  • I once knew a person whose cat, when she was on the toilet, would come in and climb into her pants and chill there, like "Yep we besties, I'm glad I can hang out with you during this pooping time."

    She didn't hate it, but she definitely didn't love it either.

  • What's the most "oof" or wtf fact you know about an everyday object?

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  • I used to have a really smart hamster. But something... happened... to him.

  • What's the most "oof" or wtf fact you know about an everyday object?

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  • Oh, it's for the baby. Okay, got it, carry on then.

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    How the fuck did Henry Kissinger win a Nobel Peace Prize?

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  • He took the humans out of one side of modern war. Obviously. So now it's 50% done, now we just need to take away the villagers he was bombing, and there'll be no more death and destruction anymore. That's a huge progress.

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    How the fuck did Henry Kissinger win a Nobel Peace Prize?

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  • The thinking was that, because he had negotiated an end the Vietnam War which he had been busily escalating for several years, he and the lead Vietnamese negotiator both deserved to share the prize. The war hadn't ended, or anything, they'd just signed an agreement (which both sides more or less ignored.)

    Every single person at the time thought it was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard. Even the New York Times could see that something was amiss; with their usual bold commitment to justice even when it contradicts the whims of American empire, they declared that it was "at the very least, premature." Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese man who he was meant to share the prize with, angrily declined his half of the prize. Kissinger almost declined the prize... not because even he could see that is was an absurd joke, but because he was offended that they were going to give it to Le Duc Tho also. You know... peace-man logic.

    When Kissinger entered the conference room, nobody spoke to him. Sensing the hostile mood, Kissinger speaking in French said: "It was not my fault about the bombing". Before Kissinger could say any more, Thọ exploded in rage, saying in French: "Under the pretext of interrupted negotiations, you resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, just at the moment when I reached home. You have 'greeted' my arrival in a very courteous manner! Your action, I can say, is flagrant and gross! You and no one else strained the honor of the United States". Thọ shouted at Kissinger for over an hour, and despite Kissinger's requests not to speak so loudly because the reporters outside the room could hear what he was saying, he did not relent. Thọ concluded: "For more than ten years, America has used violence to beat down the Vietnamese people-napalm, B-52s. But you don't draw any lessons from your failures. You continue the same policy. Ngu xuẩn! Ngu xuẩn! Ngu xuẩn!" When Kissinger asked what ngu xuẩn meant in Vietnamese, the translator refused to translate, as ngu xuẩn (in Chữ Nôm: 愚蠢) roughly means that a person is grossly stupid.[43]

    When Kissinger was finally able to speak, he argued that it was Thọ, who by being unreasonable, had forced Nixon to order the Christmas bombings, a claim that led Thọ to snap in fury.

    They weren't great friends. Of course, in the end, Kissinger decided that he owed it to himself to collect his prize, although he didn't come in person because he probably would have been protested (and maybe arrested, I don't remember the timeline.)