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pjwestin

@ pjwestin @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
576
Joined
3 yr. ago

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  • I don't think I could eat a whole house.

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  • Roaches infest your home and spread diseases. Butterflies live outside and spread pollen.

  • How has this not come up?

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  • But without hands, those shrimp people aren't going to be able to do much in the way of tool use...

    Maybe they have specialized claws that they use to fashion tools out of giant coal trees that grow out the planet's core. Maybe they have a form so foriegn we couldn't possibly imagine it. My point is, convergent evolution makes a lot of sense based on our understanding of how life evolves, but in terms of systems that produce life, we have a sample size of one. If we're wrong about some of the fundamental requirements of life l(ike carbon, water, light), and there are a plethora of systems that produce life, all bets are off.

  • How has this not come up?

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  • Yeah, this is a viable explanation, although it is dependant on life evolving mostly the same way across the galaxy. If life mostly evolves on ocean planets in the Goldilocks Zone frim the same basic elements, then sure, prokaryote, fish, tetrapod, biped could be an extremely common path. But it's entirely possible there are a wide variety of initial circumstances that can generate life, and there are tungsten-based hyper-intelligent shrimp people living in gas giants

  • 'They’re Lost, Dude’: Jon Stewart Torches DNC After Democrat With Massive Lead Says He’s Heard Zilch From Them

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  • Well, don't count Collins out yet. She's down in the polls, but she's bounced back from that before. Still, Platner is much better positioned to beat her than Mills ever was, and his campaign has already weathered a huge storm.

  • 'They’re Lost, Dude’: Jon Stewart Torches DNC After Democrat With Massive Lead Says He’s Heard Zilch From Them

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  • I view Platner as a sort of political Pascal's wager. Let's say there's a 10% chance of him being a secret Nazi or the next Fetterman. Hell, let's say it's 50%. The alternative was Mills, a centrist hand-picked by fascist collaborator Chuck Schumer, and Collins, a member of fhe fascist party. The loss of electing a secret fascist over a fascist collaborator or different fascist is minimal, while the gain of electing a genuine progressive is massive. You might as well make the bet that he's genuine.

  • Old scary movies aren't scary

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  • What is a movie you think is actually scary?

  • Old scary movies aren't scary

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  • It absolutely is a horror film.

  • What tv show has the best theme song?

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  • You might be able to get the point of the show across in 30 seconds, but it's hard to set the vibe. Think about how much atmosphere Batman: TAS built in the minute-plus intro. Besides, it's not like that time is going towards the episode length; TV shows have gone from 24 minutes in the late 80s/early 90s to 21 minutes in the 2000s, and all that extra time went to commercials. It would be nice if they could at least give 30 seconds back towards a good theme song.

  • What tv show has the best theme song?

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  • These answers are a testament to how much better theme songs were before the 2000s, especially for kids shows. You used to get a minute and a half of hype music to introduce new viewers to the show or psych up returning viewers. Now, even the best ones, like Gravity Falls, are less then 40 seconds.

  • What tv show has the best theme song?

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  • This is probably the correct answer. I don't particularly like or dislike Cheers, and it went off the air when I was five, but even as a child, that theme song gave me a deep, nostalgic yearning for something I cannot articulate.

  • What tv show has the best theme song?

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  • The extended version is a fucking banger. Guy makes duck sounds with his guitar. Hendrix might have been able to make a guitar sing, but I never heard him make it quack.

  • Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism"

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  • "When I agreed to work for a well known techno-facist to develop exactly the kind of surveillance tool a facist state would kill for, I had no idea this would descend into fascism!"

  • Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism"

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  • Really struggling to understand why they thought, "giant spying program indiscriminately gathering data on everyone in the wold," was ever a good thing.

  • Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism"

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  • Yeah, agree on all points. Personally, I've been getting a little sick of the discourse on the left about Platner. A lot of people's take has become, "fuck Platner, he's a Nazi, he's gonna be the next Fetterman," and it doesn't go any further than that. If you're skeptical of Platner, fair enough, but then you have to articulate a better alternative. Do you think Mills would be safer? Is there another leftist to support? If you don't have a better vision, that's just doomerism, and at that point, you're just doing the fascists' work for them.

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  • I can see a very intoxicated group of young marines in a foreign port making a poor decision and getting a cool looking tattoo together without really thinking what it means.

    Yeah, I think this the most likely scenario, I just don't believe it was never realized it was also a Nazi thing. There's even a deleted Reddit thread where they're discussing the totenkopf, and he comments on soldiers using the Punisher skull iconography without knowing where it comes from. There's just no way he didn't realize, at any point, that his tattoo was also a Nazi tattoo.

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  • Agreed that it's unlikely he's a secret Nazi, but given the tattoo, we can't rule it out entirely. I definitely think he's not telling the entire truth about it, though.

    The official story is that he got the tattoo in Croatia while he was a marine and he had no idea it was a Nazi tattoo until it came to light during the campaign, and I don't buy that for a second. Maybe he got it because he was a far-right extremist in his 20s, maybe he got it having no idea what it was, but there's no way he made it through 6 more years in the military and then the rest of his adult life without someone going, "Hey Graham, you know that's a Nazi tattoo, right?"

    And when I say, "some kind of Groyper," I mean, generally, a far-right troll. Platner's only a little older than me, and there were plenty of people getting pilled on 4chan when I was in my early 20s. I wouldn't be surprised if Platner made some regrettable posts on /pol/ when he was younger, but if he did, I don't think he believes them now.

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  • I'm least worried about the Reddit comments. I think he addressed them well by going through them chronologically and showing, "yes, I said some shitty stuff between 2009-2013, but if you look at the last 5 years, I'm clearly saying the opposite of that. These are shitty views that I outgrew."

    The Nazi tattoo has not been well addressed, to my mind. I can believe that he didn't know it was a Nazi symbol when he got it. I can't believe that he didn't find out, in 20 years of having it, that it was a Nazi tattoo. I think he might have been some sort of Groyper when he was younger, and while (like the things he said in Reddit) I think he outgrew that, I don't think he wants to admit it.

    That being said, Platner seems like a genuine progressive, but there is a small chance he is actually secret Nazi, while Mills is a centrist hand-picked by Schumer, who has spent the last two years capitulating to Nazis. Seems to me that there isn't much difference between a Nazi and a Nazi collaborator, so you might as well gamble on Platner being genuine rather than hand Schumer and the collaborators another vote.