UnderpantsWeevil
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
- Comment on Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over 2 hours ago:
One of the appeals of Bluesky (for now) is the Followimg feed that presents comments exclusively from people I follow, in chronological order.
- Comment on Only the biggest ones, folks, trust me! 5 hours ago:
Only the biggest dicks. Huge dicks. Many people have been saying, they come up to me and say, “You look like you could take an incredibly big dick, Donny”. I’m not saying I do it, folks. But I have had a lot of people who think I should.
- Comment on The pipeline 7 hours ago:
Are you complaining about the efficient supply chains and low cost-per-unit of production?
Or are you complaining about the high degree of profit-taking and the denial of public benefits to the working class?
- Comment on The pipeline 7 hours ago:
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly.
That’s the western liberal line, certainly. The victory of the Leninists and Maoists transformed oppressed into oppressor by virtue of no longer having an aristocracy capable of oppressing them.
About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections
The elections failed to deliver the promised reform. Their biggest promise on taking office was to exit the war and withdraw the troops. And the first thing the Mensheviks did was double-down on defeat. Milyukov’s refusal to exit the Eastern Front kicked off a protest half-a-million men large, right in the heart of the Russian government.
The next three months saw the elected government ordering police into the streets to slaughter hundreds of the people who voted for them. They topped it off by bombing the Bolshevik offices and chasing Lenin back underground for the unconscionable crime of leading peace marches. Bolshevism surged in popularity the following month, to the point that General Lavr Kornilov threatened to bring troops into the city to conduct a full pogrom. Only mass defection within the lower ranks of the military spared Petrograd from an outright holocaust.
This is the democracy you’re defending? Christ. No wonder so many liberals seem perfectly content to see the modern wave of college students being disappeared by ICE.
- Comment on The pipeline 14 hours ago:
“Authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron.
The definition of “Authoritarianism” seems to be bound up in the libertarian view of free markets versus unfree governments.
There’s a book I like called The People’s Republic of Walmart. It describes how much of the Command Economy practiced in the 60s and 70s by “authoritarian” socialist states was picked up and integrated into the corporate model in an effort to improve efficiency of supply chains and reduce the cost of industrial manufacturing. Walmart’s vertical integration follows a model that any Socialist government would laud. It just hordes the surplus for shareholders, at the expense of its employment base.
When the Socialists were making cars in Yugoslavia with a highly efficient regional distribution of manufacturing and assembly, it was horrifying infringement on the rights of the business community. When Ford and Nissian picked up on these practices and imported them to the US and Japan, it was The Miracle of Free Market Innovation that delivered huge returns to investors.
Liberals love to cringe and wring their hands when they hear about Lenin’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. After all, how can we be free if worker’s council get to dictate our housing stock or our employment opportunities or our transit corridors or our retail inventory? But they’re utterly blaise about living under an economy whose function is dictated by a handful of corporate boards and banking executives making all the same decisions because… freedom?
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 15 hours ago:
For the same reason any athlete’s performance is heavily promoted in sports media.
These are all just ads. All sports media is fundamentally advertisement.
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 15 hours ago:
And no one writes stories about who won the fencing match.
Because it’s the same story that’s been running for the last century. Pro-Wrestling shows are just stories you haven’t seen before. And reviews of new performances are written about regularly.
Wrestling takes things to a ridiculous level
Sure. The exaggeration and the very deliberate kayfabe is a big part of the appeal. But then you see that in Cosplay and at the Renaissance Faire all the time. Running onto the tournament grounds and shouting “These aren’t real knights! They aren’t really jousting!!” is still considered gauche. And it breezes past the skills you need to ride a horse, maintain a kit, and put on the display without hurting yourself or your partner.
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 1 day ago:
In the ballet and other examples, the difference to me is that they’re not pretending to be in a ballet competition while dancing the ballet.
In the Nutcracker, at least, they’re pretending to fence, in a choreographed dance. A first-time naive viewer who came out of the show offended when they discover skill at fencing has nothing to do with whether the dancers playing the Nutcracker or the Rat King wins would sound silly.
I do think that the kayfabe is what sets wrestling apart from more traditional performance art. The carnival-barker lying-to-your-face aspect of the performance is what makes it feel extra circus-y. But when you accept that the kayfabe is just part of the performance, you stop feeling offended by it and start recognizing degrees of commitment to the bit as part of the artform.
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 1 day ago:
The outcome of the match is predetermined while the participants pretend that it isn’t.
The adventure is in the journey, not the destination. I don’t care whether you win or you lose when I came to see two roided out giants do backflip kicks into one another’s torsos while their friends spray silly string to distract the combatants from the sidelines.
That is why there are constant arguments about whether or not it’s “fake”.
There is absolutely no question that the outcome of the matches is predetermined, in the same way that there is absolutely no doubt that the Rat King is going to get killed by the Nutcracker at the ballet. But both wrestling and ballet are athletic endeavors.
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 1 day ago:
wrestling has the storylines that the circus doesn’t
Every Cirque-du-Soleil I’ve been to has had a storyline.
The Jerry Springer like drama and feuds that people really get invested in with the same level of chair throwing.
There’s a ton of hype that builds up around the actual events, in no small part because the events themselves are physically exhausting and the producers need to fill hours of time with minutes of match.
But we see the exact same kind of shit during the Olympics. Two talking heads reading out an athlete’s life story for half an hour, right before you get to see a three minute floor routine or a sixteen second bobsled run.
- Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason? 1 day ago:
I’ve heard the soap opera comparison before. But I think “circus” is technically more accurate. You’ve got these very obvious professional athletes performing a well-rehearsed routine that is physically demanding and dramatically delivered.
Like, would you call a tightrope walker or a trapeze artist “fake”? If a dozen clowns pile out of a car and start performing back flips and somersaults and climbing into human pyramids and spraying one another with seltzer bottles, would you dismiss it as an obviously scripted display?
Would you go to a Harlem Globetrotters game and complain when they pull out a springboard and start doing stunt slam dunks?
It’s a show! It doesn’t need to be competitive in order to be fun.
- Comment on Bill Gates Bought His Daughter A $16 Million Horse Farm As A Graduation Gift — But Ex-Wife Melinda Says The Kids Were Raised Very 'Middle Class' 1 day ago:
being purposefully deceitful
Warren Buffet keeps around the house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska in 1958 and brags about how little it is worth. The man travels on private jets and sleeps in hotel high rises, surrounded by an army of aides and adjuncts and a smattering of medical staff. But he’s still got the title to that old homestead from sixty years ago, so he’s perpetually middle class according to business talking heads.
- Comment on lion 2 days ago:
- Comment on I'm so vegan I could eat a burger and still be a vegan 3 days ago:
vegans today will be like we look at abolitionists like Alexander Hamilton back during the 18th century
Alexander Hamilton very deliberately and strategically married into a family of wealthy New York slave owners, then proceeded to cut deals with Virginia slave owners in order to enrich his northern friends through a publicly chartered bank that profited off of increased slave traffic and slave territory expansion.
To call Alexander Hamilton an abolitionist is about as rational as calling Donald Trump a feminist.
- Comment on I'm so vegan I could eat a burger and still be a vegan 3 days ago:
Vegans continue to exist, to eat delicious food, and to mention their diet to other people.
And I find this unforgivable.
- Comment on lion 3 days ago:
While you were earning a living
I was learning the blade
- Comment on Angry, disappointed users react to Bluesky's upcoming blue check mark verification system 4 days ago:
Networking Effect
- Comment on Angry, disappointed users react to Bluesky's upcoming blue check mark verification system 4 days ago:
ARE WE LEARNING HOW “SOCIAL MEDIA” WORKS YET HUMANITY?
Apparently not, because people keep feeling surprised and offended when the Networking Effect happens.
- Comment on Angry, disappointed users react to Bluesky's upcoming blue check mark verification system 4 days ago:
I can’t believe the guy who originally administered the creation of Twitter would do all the exact same things that originally made him billions of dollars selling the company to Elon Musk.
There’s no way he’s just speed-running what he did last time in hopes of another $44B buyout.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 4 days ago:
Glorifying a system can never be the answer.
Systems and institutions are what we rely on to provide a secure future for ourselves and our loved ones. You don’t need to glorify them, but you do need to value them on their merits.
Keeping a critical eye on the status quo is the only way to develop a better future in any system.
There is a huge difference between being critical and being cynical, particularly when it comes to domestic reporting of “enemy” nation-states. What we have in the US rhetoric directed towards China (and Iran and Cuba and North Korea and now increasingly Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico and Lula in Brazil) is best described by the historical scholar Michael Parenti describing the US attitude towards the USSR.
The anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
Criticism of these foreign - often significantly more stable, free, and prosperous - nations is nonfalsifiable orthodoxy. They are always simultaneously engaged in crushing authoritarianism and riddled with legions of angry insurgents. It somehow manifests all the worst aspects of capitalism because its state orthodoxy is socialist.
Until you actually fucking go there and talk to people and realize this isn’t a nation of Machiavellian lies and Potemkin villages. It’s just a place where a larger number of people have found a better way to live, absent an American telling them how to do it.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 4 days ago:
Talk to people that live within the system is all I can tell you.
You mean the relatives we were visiting?
China isn’t perfect either.
I’ll never understand the absolute terror Americans have for “imperfect China”
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 5 days ago:
none of this discussion is about nuclear power or thorium and just about people wanting to feel morally correct about something and snarling back and forth at each other
I’m posed to snarl because I’ve seen this so many times before, as a justification to invade and destroy advanced industrial states that don’t bend the knee to the US State Department.
The reason you get thorium reactors out of China and Mars landers out of India comes down to two words “Peace Dividend”.
Our species is so cooked.
There’s a brighter future on the horizon. But you don’t get there by taking Marco Rubio at face value.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 5 days ago:
The UN inspection committee could not find evidence to support your claims.
Why are you asserting the existence of a genocide in Xinjiang while endorsing the engineered famine across the border in Afghanistan?
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 5 days ago:
foreignpolicy.com/…/michelle-bachelets-failed-xin…
The Western response to UN officials investigating Xinjiang and failing to find confirmation of the salacious rumors is to call her a failure.
The same criticisms hurled at UN investigators attempting to confirm these accusations today are mirrored by IAEA efforts to find nuclear weapons in Iraq. You’ve got Christian nationalists pushing far-right warmongering and fear mongering, in an attempt to curb China’s growing economic clout in the region. And it has culminated in the Trump presidency, and the full collapse of the US as a credible source of intelligence.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 5 days ago:
Sometimes a country will inflate the appearance of problems in an enemy nation in order to stoke resentment at home and justify military action abroad.
In Iraq, we made up a bunch of lies about soldiers murderimg babies in incubators. After Vietnam, we had Cold Warriors repeating the POW/MIA lies that suggested they were holding hundreds of American hostages for decades, in order to justify continued sanctions and embargos. The slanders against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Iran have been relentless, all while the US conducted insidious guerrilla wars that have raped, mutilated, and killed countless civilians.
At some point “Both Sides Are Bad” doesn’t cut it. You have to address your own nation’s sins - the lies, the sabotage, the assassinations and us sponsored genocides - before a rational listener can take criticism of your political rivals seriously.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 5 days ago:
I can’t speak to Shanghai. I’ve only been to Hong Kong, Beijing, and Zhuhai - just outside of Macau - and with family (my eight year old niece isn’t much of a clubber yet).
But all the youth culture I experienced there was thriving. Not exactly going up and asking people their preferred sexuality, but there were plenty of groups that had all the iconography of queerness. There’s still a social stigma against queermess that’s held over from prior generations. But there also isn’t mass shootings or vehicular manslaughter targeting queer communities.
My father in law (a diehard libertarian Cold Warrior type) was taken aback at how clean the cities were and how safe he felt the whole time he was there. Might be due to his overexposure to Western cinema that paints China (and Mexico and Brazil and South Africa and really any country without a critical mass of white people) as dens of vice and violence. But for some reason, having streets devoid of poverty in the US is aspirational. Having them devoid of poverty outside the US is dystopian.
The low homelessness might have something to do with China’s stellar public housing policy. The dedication to clean streets and regular maintenance of buildings may have something to do with their prioritization of long term durability over short term profits. And the degree to which they’ve adopted industrial technology makes these enormous, low cost mixed use urban centers possible. It isn’t just random people being wisked away to El Salvador at the whims of a partisan government.
Humans are all different, if you want to consider everyone’s opinion it takes a lot of time (which China did not have in the last few decades).
Chinese civil government doesn’t operate in the same adversarial climate as in the US. You don’t have Crossfire hosts screaming at each other or Palestine protesters and Zionists brawling on college campuses. You don’t have bloggers and AM Radio guys stoking stochastic violence against minorities in order to generate private fortunes or billionaires buying up major publishers in order to suck up to or strong arm political leadership.
Mass Line theory of government tries to be more scientific in it’s approach to polling public sentiment, reaching public policy, and mass marketing changes to traditional views. China’s approach to domestic reform is slower, more small-c conservative, and focused within the party rather than between parties.
Americans don’t understand that system, so it frightens them. But Americans have made an industry of frightening one another. So Sinophobia is just one more buggabo.
- Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ 6 days ago:
Every time I read a headline about how there’s a genocide in Xinjiang, it’s in the same newspaper that insists Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself and Yemen needs to be bombed to powder.
At some point, it reads like liberal agitprop. An excuse to scare liberals into hating a foreign country so we can justify… what? Tariffs? TikTok bans? Nuclear war?
Same with LGBTQ rights. We’ve got a DOGE department doing a pogrom on “woke” government workers while I still get an earful about how mean China is to minority groups?
What am I supposed to take away from this?
- Comment on Tesla odometer uses “predictive algorithms” to void warranty, lawsuit claims 1 week ago:
Sure. But then you’re still relying on an accurate odometer. I assumed the question was how you do it when disputing one.
In the case of the article, the plaintiff is using prior vehicle mileage rates as countervailing evidence.
- Comment on Tesla odometer uses “predictive algorithms” to void warranty, lawsuit claims 1 week ago:
I couldn’t tell you my average monthly usage.
Open up your Google Maps (or navigation app of choice) and you’ll likely have a record of how far you’ve traveled within a given time period.
Subtract off any cab rides and rides in friends’ cars, and that’s your number plus or minus some distance in driveways or parking garages that the app can’t accurately measure.
- Comment on Tesla odometer uses “predictive algorithms” to void warranty, lawsuit claims 1 week ago:
Hinton’s lawsuit alleges that Tesla “employs an odometer system that utilizes predictive algorithms, energy consumption metrics, and driver behavior multipliers that manipulate and misrepresent the actual mileage traveled by Tesla Vehicles” and that his car “consistently exhibited accelerated mileage accumulations of varying percentages ranging from 15 percent to 117 percent higher than plaintiff’s other vehicles and his driving history.”
Here comes Big Government, trying to constrain cutting edge innovations in accurately counting how many times the wheel rotates.
I hope DOGE is able to save California from itself by defunding whatever court system might be involved in persecuting hard working odometer engineers with this flagrantly Woke and Soy legal case.
