Civil servant, manga reader, pianist, and drummer, in no particular order. Earth Supremacist, Space NIMBY.
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You can have density and streamlined permitting processes without putting the school and dentist's office in the same rooms as the brothel and black market organ transplants or stuffing everyone in apartments the size of prison cells inside a giant fire hazard cube.
For the same reasons, I get really annoyed by seeing some urbanists wax nostalgic about Kowloon Walled City. Even if they're only being humorous about it, that nightmare was the exact kind of thing good urban development should seek to avoid.
There are lots of things to like about Hong Kong, but I'd refrain from overindexing on them as a model to follow when a severe lack of available apartments, outrageous costs for the few going, and inhumanly cramped living conditions were a big contributing factor to the 2019–20 protests.
This, but for accepting grade-separated cycle roads and parking meters being added to Main Street.
Need a generation of after-school specials, comics, civics textbooks and religious education emphasizing the value and importance of welcoming new neighbors and businesses into the community. Come to think of it, reruns of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ought to do the trick.
I can see a state-level way out of the West Coast housing shortage, long, hard and painful though it may have to be; I don't see any way to address New England's housing woes that doesn't involve Jim Crow South-level federally enforced de-nimbyfication.
CA nimbies rightfully get all the attention thanks to their destructiveness in numbers, but New England nimbyism really is on another level altogether. They've been perfecting their art form for four centuries—*no one* can match their parochial pettiness.
Fight Club and its consequences have been a disaster for the male self-image.
happy labor day everyone. now more than ever we got to remember what it's about.
Less staring into the sewer, more staring into the open reactor core.
easily defeating Bronze Age Pervert with my superior iron pornography
Americans can still have Real Gerontocracy at last, if they summon the courage to elect President Sanders (D for Dead—VT) in 2028 and 2032.
Important to remember life expectancy in the USSR was 65. Imagine if Trump and a majority of representatives and senators were pushing 90. Only then can you really begin to get a picture of how insane the Soviet gerontocracy was.
If they declare the desiccated corpse of Bernie Sanders to be the 2028 nominee and Eternal Leader of the Party not unlike Kim Il-sung for North Korea, and change the primary to a vote to select his VP, will they vote in November then?
Dude went to the Korno theater
Vipers are cool and all, but if you have to pick, go for the car that won't try to kill you every time you drive it.
I'd go for that instead then.
Plus plenty to spare, of course.
Have you the money upfront? Then do.
ジャック 謝琥
Jack, from a pet form of John, from the Hebrew Yohanan meaning “God is gracious.”
I really don't like myself finding how often I think every 2024 Trump voter and non-voter should be summarily executed.
Also, people say “4chan” like they're talking about the whole site when in this context, it's really only referring to /pol/; even the other boards, toxic as they could be, knew to stay away from that cesspool until it broke containment in the mid-2010s.
I talked about this before on the old site, but white supremacists really are a core, primordial demographic of the Internet, alongside Trekkies, computer scientists (duh) and, of course, furries. Not to imply they're four discrete groups—there's obviously a TON of overlap among them all.
Stormfront, Jew Watch, a million other long-forgotten hate sites, and the Usenet hate groups they sprung from, on the other hand, had very much been a thing for years by the time Something Awful and 4chan appeared.
You *can* be formal and captivating, it's not an either/or. But it requires someone who can speak faster and louder than 30 wpm at 40 dB.
The problem wasn't with the wording of their communications, it was that they didn't have a spokesperson to deliver them anywhere near regularly or forcefully enough.
I demand a moratorium on white trash lecturing about Black English and ESL speakers until they've made it five years without aping all his embarrassingly childish and idiotic mannerisms in every conversation.
Can we all stop for a moment to talk about her utterance of "big beautiful face?"
It's the Philippines today, and it's our future tomorrow.
Realistically, what was there to be taken from a 1953 Bel Air besides the hubcaps or the car itself? But a 2024 Tahoe? Guaranteed to be loaded with goodies the owner has generously left unattended. Especially if they're the kind of person to advertise the free gun they've left inside.
I think crimes like burglary, muggings and car break-ins are still higher than they were ca. 1955, though I suspect most or all of the difference is down to everyone now having way more items for stealing on their person and in their cars and homes.
Yes, they don't want free market capitalism, however much they might claim to. They want a system where they always win at everyone else's expense; they're neo-feudalists.
You want efficiency in government spending, there may be no better example than good environmental and ecological protection acts. Repeal or reform the laws that claim to do the above but really exist as tools for upholding nimbyism, and they'd be the perfect demonstration.
That's still stupid since the Clean Air Act has possibly the best return on investment for any piece of legislation ever signed into law. Trillions of dollars in damages have been saved since 1963 thanks to it.
There's the thing: they do. The current crop of sophist hacks really is the best they have to offer now.
The organizations everyone associates with the 60s, and their predecessors, were all very much active by no later than the mid-50s, they didn't just suddenly emerge ex nihilo.
Everyone was quiet and knew their place for years, until one day the (((Washington elites))) orchestrated a plot to bring it all down. Because if there's one thing governments love, it's massive civil unrest.
This one is especially nutty because one of the first things the EPA did was extensively photograph and document the *horrid* environmental degradation of the early 1970s so future generations could know what they'd been spared from. The public did not like unregulated air and water pollution!
Yeah see this is why apologism for the Iranian regime is bad
I'd assumed it was referring to poker (which tbf also sums up The Rampage quite well.)
My most Soviet political conviction is everyone needs to be made to know way less about every single last crime happening where they live. Hyper-awareness of every bad thing going on in their area has helped turn the populace into bloodthirsty control freaks.
Thank the fucking Lord Nextdoor, ShotSpotter, Amber alerts and the like didn't exist during the 20th century crime wave, if they had, Americans would've elected GigaHitler for life and beyond and committed about half a dozen more domestic genocides by now.
A real “bad times make good art” decade.
They're even fucking dumber than I'd imagined.
Wait… do they think civil rights, second-wave feminism, the Chicano movement, student protests, etc. were ALL top-down, fed-engineered psyops pulled off with the assistance of a limitless pool of Latin American and Asian immigrants?
They want to keep ancient feuds going with the family of Slovabovius the Pigfucker the The Terrible/Great XVIII, who allegedly kidnapped and impregnated their family's secret ninth daughter in 1158, and resent their ancestors for choosing to leave it in the past and get out.
They want to be part of an Authentic Volk who've been squatting in the exact same shithole since before Charlemagne, and have to accept their ancestry where they live now going back no further than four centuries, usually involving lots of travel and resettlement.
With all the legalized rape such a change would entail, they'd have a full-on fucking rally if it happened.
You fight for as long as you can, as hard as you can, because as soon as you don't, it's the first day of the rest of your life.
You and your ilk are exactly the types who get turned out on the first day.
As was the norm throughout the 1800s.
They already bombed on the 10/7, Ukraine, and Syria tests; what's one more test of character for them to unanimously fail horribly?
i have friends, very famous rich friends in beverly hills, and they can't even drive down the street because somebody keeps painting cartoon tunnels on the walls and they drive into the walls thinking it's a tunnel, really successful people, and they ruin their cars with the cartoon tunnels
Yeah, wasn't that the point? "See? Your 'god' is nothing more than a common criminal!"
And the National Guards of today want to have another Kent State on their hands about as much as the LAPD would like a new Rodney King.
And before anyone invokes the usual American analogue: there was *no* chain of command responsible for ordering the shootings at Kent State University—someone on the ground panicked, and it spiraled from there.
The gentry class has never gotten over the capitalists bringing an end to the economic arrangement where they were at the top of the hierarchy for all time, and see the present moment as their last best shot at revenge and a return to the old ways.
People keep insisting this & it is not true. Antisemitism parasitically thrives off (& not-infrequently fuels) hostility to Israel, but is not a result of Israeli policy. People already have strong antisemitic cultural programming, & when they're mad at Israel they indulge it bc it feels strong.
The average millennial seems to think of Harry Potter, Linkin Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek, and the Game Boy Advance as "90s media," but not American Psycho, MC Hammer, Extreme, Dangerous, Dances with Wolves, The Wonder Years, Mega Mans 3–6, Final Fantasy III, or Ultima VI and VII.
🇨🇿🇺🇦 If the principle of inadmissibility of changing borders by force collapses in Ukraine, it will collapse everywhere, - Czech Foreign Minister Lipavsky. ▪️Borders should not be changed by military force, and nations should be free to choose their alliances.
Why haven't any of them done this? Are they stupid?
It's simple, really. If the Democrats, Labour, Liberals, and other center-left parties wish to be taken seriously on crime, all they have to do is stop enforcing rules and laws against middle and upper class-coded antisocial behavior while permitting none of their negative externalities to manifest.
The Tyranny of the Bored Suburbanites
"Criminals" being "vagrants, cyclists, blacks wearing anything less than a $10,000 tailored suit and with a BMI outside the 21–24 range, all Indian, Arab and Latino immigrants, and anyone attempting to change the built environment in any way at all."
When it comes to crime, the average person demands fully legalized corruption in all its wonderful forms, no enforcement of white-collar or cybercrime (except for "scammers"), anarchy for anyone at the wheel of a private vehicle, and Communist Romania-level totalitarianism against "criminals."
Nah, if handed a "you become East Germany, but also all homeless people and immigrants are exterminated on the spot" button, the median voter would press it 75% of the time, later convincing themselves they didn't, and the ~40th percentile voter would smash it 1000 times out of 1000 with no regrets.
It probably isn't good for maximizing votes or whatever, but I do genuinely hate most people, especially most Americans for letting the last decade happen.
Most submissions, like housing, public transit or policing, are issues where public opinion has actually been shifted since 2010 or could possibly be moved in the future. But if I tried running for office on *my* proposal, I'd be assassinated by a conspiracy of Nintendo Adults and GunTube watchers.
And I'm talking, like, a *minimum* of 33%. Delivery fees need to have a floor of $50. New games should be $100 or more. Insurance costs alone for big dumb SUVs ought to be pushing four figures a month.
Sumptuary taxes for video games, delivery apps, online video, and ICE vehicles, in particular SUVs and pickup trucks.
Despite the best efforts to describe the present era of American psychosis using anything else (Trump, COVID, treatlerism, etc.), in the end, they are still—for now—living in the Long 9/11.
No fewer than four of the belligerent states in World War I had ceased to exist by 1922, either replaced by a whole new constitution and government or smashed into a dozen little pieces.
Where did these people get this idea that wars always end with negotiations? Wars often end with total moral collapse of a side. Surrenders. Total military defeat. A coup or change of government to sue for peace or surrender. Sometimes even the complete collapse of a state.
The mastery at walking this tightrope in its prime is a factor in the immense cultural staying power of The Simpsons.
The most forgettable entertainment is anything you can only “really” enjoy in childhood or adolescence; memorable works are usually best consumed in adulthood; but the rarest and hardest type to pull is only fully appreciated from all perspectives, each for completely different reasons.
If you “had to be there” when something released to truly understand its greatness, it's probably not the masterpiece you've built it up to be in your head.
Which means it's really just a severe form of arrested development. And unfortunately, there is no government program in the universe that can stop you from getting old.
Whatever your age, it has *never* been easier to revisit the many touchstones of your childhood, particularly with any form of mass media. The problem is that they don't actually miss, say, playing Doom at a LAN pizza party until 3 AM—they miss *doing that at the age of 17.*
"Reactionary nostalgia for things that can still easily be enjoyed today" has played an extremely outsized role in the populist wave of the past decade.
This is one reason the Beach Boys' “Wouldn't It Be Nice” is among the greatest pop songs ever recorded.
We need more propaganda media about how being an adult and having responsibilities is Great, Actually, and being a child is mostly boring as shit.
“If Republicans want to have a future beyond Trump, they have to stop talking like literal children and start learning how to say and use words with four or more syllables.”
You can make your peace with the inevitability of change, the human dislike of total stasis, and ultimate impermanence of everything, or you can spend the rest of your days miserable and lashing out at the world.
The most powerful voting cohorts all over the first world are in a fight to the death with the very concept of linear time itself.
This is the one thing the Romney nostalgics, whom I otherwise find insufferable, have been absolutely right to rub in everyone else's faces for 11 years and counting. Declining to see Russia as a black-and-white Enemy by 2012 was, at best, suicidal naivete; after 2014, it was fucking criminal.
lmfao in what world was Obama tough on Russia tho? I may be fairly criticized as an "outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in 5 minutes" hawk, but come on. Obama presided over some very serious and lasting shows of weakness vis a vis Russia. Stronger 2014 response=no 2022 invasion for instance.
“The median voter can relate to Republicans because they speak like third graders.” No. *Trump* speaks like a third grader. The average Young GrOyPer working his and others' comms teams speaks like they haven't spent three consecutive waking hours off /pol/ or Twitter since at least 2015.
And if you think the up-and-coming crop of *Republicans* don't have this issue, it can only be because you're an 85 IQ longhoused mudshark who'll believe anything the Cathedral tells them.
Why did The Grand Tour end? Richard Hammond: We're old Jeremy Clarkson: Because the security guarantees and stability of Pax Americana did
I had to write a mini-thread against the exact mindset above because I'm sick to death of seeing it.
Shamelessly stolen from:
Refusing to attend the 30 minute anti-sexual harassment slideshow should be a fireable offense, or at least punishable by a week's withheld pay, in the Wide Awake Era.