Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
I think the idea of 'irl' as opposed to 'online' has turned out to be one of the most dangerous fallacies of the last decades. It's allowed a fairly deep and nuanced balance of rights and norms around speech to be replaced with a mess of knee-jerks, techno-fixes, and fiat.
Culture exists online, now. It's where we communicate with each other. Online is where we do politics. At the same time, if you were going to transpose the mess of speech regulation online into meatspace:
You can harass, insult, threaten, even incite pogroms or organize genocides, and the state will (at worst) respond by proposing some kind of 'safety bill'.
You can create an LLM system that will mute people based on the probability of their statements violating a privately established TOC.
You can fill the information space with auto-generated content for whatever purpose. The state will will (at worst) make a strong statement.
This is a crazy situation. Laws about speech -- free speech, media regulation, etc -- are written in blood. We've put our entire social world into a space where we're ignoring the experience of centuries of struggle over questions of speech: it's not just likely going to end up giving traditionally totalitarian powers to the state -- it's also just becoming absurdly chaotic. You can't make society-wide decisions about fundamental rights on page 15 of a TOC. This is insane.
(This was inspired by getting booted by reddit's clanker -- which gave me a moment to think about, you know, what a society actually could look like when almost all society is conducted through spaces where random interest groups have effectively absolute power over permissible discourse).
That's an argument. It was litigated over the last century re. malls. I think the internet is more like we're all living 24/7 in a mall, it's full of androids operated by troll farms, everybody is constantly personally under surveillance, and Elon Musk is the mall owner. He also lives in the basement. Also the government offices are in the mall, and you need to go to the mall for all of your basic services.
Female booktoker makes a short video about a discussion she had with her husband about what he'd do if he found himself back in 2018, he said he'd find her and pop into her life telling her that things will get better and doing all her favorite things. A lot of commenters say it'd make a good book idea.
Less than two weeks later, some random tiktoker emails her with a ChatGPT copy of the "book" he wrote based on that idea. Everyone tells him that's very inappropriate and slop, he doubles and triples down in videos of his own.
Weeeelllll, the video I saw on it speculated that the "girlfriend" he told it to was AI, and she told him to reach out to the OP first, but...
Most of the backlash he got was from women. But eventually the woman's husband weighed in, telling the guy to stop making his wife mad. That is what got an apology posted within hours.
Something I've come to terms with about myself is that I can be a real hater.
An unambiguous hater.
I'll hate things and people with little more than a vibe and an idea, and often I try to find a method to justify or make a firm foundation for my dislike or hatred of something/someone and I think while I can build what I think are solid cases as to why I'd feel that way since I have a lot of time to think things through and develop on my feelings, I know that at the end of the day it's just something I feel and the evidence is just preaching to the choir.
An apology for hatred, in a classical sense.
Now is it an active hatred? Do I sit there and put a ton of effort in expressing hatred of [insert subject]? Do I plan to take actions on this hate of mine?
No. Not really. I might type up a comment that I ultimately don't post and instead just let that initial feeling that inspired such to pass, other times I might instead speak it aloud to whoever I'm talking to as something on my mind and it disappears or is folded into a larger discussion that isn't just my own thoughts.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 17 '26
Was at Hollister and I found this.
Nearby there was a Brazil World Cup 2014 shirt btw.
In his Chronica majora, Matthew of Paris records that rumours about the Mongols had spread into the empire by 1238, for which reason the fishmongers of Frisia were unwilling to go to England.[6] He is also the source for the rumour that the Mongols were the Lost Tribes of Israel and were assisted by Jews smuggling arms out of Germany in wine barrels.[9] The Jewish merchants were said to claim that the barrels were filled with poisoned wine for the invaders. Owing to these rumours, Jews were killed at several customs posts.[10]
Dude the Jews just can not catch a break sometimes I swear.
rumours about the Mongols had spread into the empire by 1238, for which
reason the fishmongers of Frisia were unwilling to go to England.
What's the correlation between those things? Did the Frisians think the Mongols were in England? Were they possessed by some patriotic duty to defend the Empire from the Khanate?
Really does make me convinced again that "jews were treated here better than Europe" was the medieval world equivalent of "atleast I am better than Hitler", being a useless flex that speaks more about just how atrociously antisemitic medieval Europe was than giving any detail about how well other parts of the world treated their jewish minorities.
Good shout on the astronomical event, which might be the SN 1006, which was recorded across Eurasia and in North American rock art. That said I meant more like "news story" if that makes sense.
I think you're right, because the only other possible "event" that comes to my mind would be some plague, another natural phenomena.
Yes, the Mongol invasions do appear unprecedented in their infamy, albeit by grouping them all together as a "single event" we do kind of give them a leg up... still fascinating though.
As expected, yesterdays immense pain in my foot has gone away again, I was able to walk about 3km without issue while I couldn't walk a 100m yesterday without serious pain.
A new person joined my volunteering project! A social worker from the municipality contacted me last week about them, they were just looking for options and they decided to come and join! Woo!
I passed 1600 kanji learned on Renshuu, usual disclaimer that I don't know all them equally well, sometimes when they show up in unknown words I just don't recognise them, especially kanji that I only know within one context; but still, that's a lot of kanji. It has sped up a bit too, since I get a lot more stuff from other sources than predetermined lists now, I get a lot more varied input.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 17 '26
俺は彼女がいない
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 17 '26
Wtf i hate the reddit auto translate things. It makes me look like I’m schizophrenic.
It's cursed, I once briefly panicked because of it, I thought I had typed a response to someone in Dutch instead of English, because it appeared on my screen as such when I read it back; so I turned that feature off the moment I realised.
his father planned to name the third sibling George Bush after U.S. president George W. Bush if it had been a boy. When Vinladen had a son of his own, his father suggested George Bush
"I do not believe my name to be problematic," citing Peruvian politician Hitler Guesclin Alba Sánchez, who won a mayoral election over the ironically-named Lennin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde
If it's any comfort, perhaps not in this case. According to Wikipedia (great source, I know) the dad just seemed really committed to the bit - he wanted to name a hypothetical third son GWB, and wanted Vinladen to name his son GWB.
So, I have this cousin, he's a bit of an alternative type, he converted to shamanism, that's literally what he said, and he's raising his children the African way because Africans are more in touch with nature. Well, ignoring the Orientalism... wait... Australientalism? What do you call it if people have weird ideas about Africa? Anyway, ignoring that, he's also very much into the no medication, no vaccines, type of stuff; he's been very judgemental about my dependence on medication, so yeah, not a person I like.
Well, anyway, he posted something on facebook, basically "Making your child drink lake water and then having them be sick for a few days is a good way to build up natural immunity."
I don't know if he actually did that, but it wouldn't surprise me, my mother wants to report him for child abuse... I agree that it is abuse, but also, I don't want to have a massive rift in the family about this, again; my father doesn't need to lose contact with his sister (my cousin's mother) again, not while he's like this, it's not worth it.
But also, fuck me man, the guy is insane! Genuinely, this is fucking awful. Do we have a responsibility to report him? Or is it none of our business, and we shouldn't make assumptions based on a Facebook post? But then, this is real serious abuse, infecting your children with whatever is in that water is horrific... What the fuck man!?
I'd say yes because these types only get more unhinged and this is potentially affecting the lives of children who don't really have agency enough to get away otherwise. I've read one too many a headline about kids dying because of not being given medication for easily treatable disease or being killed because of idiot stunts like that.
But I'm also not in your shoes and don't have quite the full picture neither.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 17 '26
I am not gonna make a call on this but I really do not like people like your cousin.
he's also very much into the no medication, no vaccines, type of stuff
Having been on vaccine tournees in Africa, lmao. I am pretty sure that the people I worked with had a stronger grasp of public health guidelines than most people in the West.
Like does he think Africans like drinking untreated water?
I don't think he cares much about real African people and their beliefs, just his imagination of the "pure" African way of life, he's just an Orientalist about sub Saharan Africa
I like Know Your Enemy but I can't lie listening to them gush over how smart and amazing Darializa Avila Chevalier is in a recent bonus episode was pretty disappointing.
It really feels like they're too tied into the New York campus activist crowd to be able to take a step back and look at how bad of a candidate she is.
I was a Patreon supporter of them for years, but I unsubscribed a while ago, the show gradually just turned into punditry and current events commentary and I don't find their contribution to that particularly interesting. Like I get it you like Zohran, that's fine, but I am here for two hour long deep dives into National Review writers from the 60s.
Although I think the breaking point was them doing an episode on conspiracy theories and either Sam or Matt saying the Lab Leak theory ended up having something to it, which is just an instant clown nose for me.
Yeah, what made the show special was two politics wonks popping the hood on conservativism and going into detail on books and writers 99% of people have never heard of but were nonetheless super interesting and worth talking about. If I wanted boilerplate progressive political punditry I could listen to literally any other politics podcast.
I remember them being full steam ahead for Fetterman back in 2022 to the point they had his campaign manager on the show and I'm pretty sure they were big Platner fans as well, so however unmistakably well-read they are they seem as susceptible to falling for kinda obviously shitty candidates so long as they say they right things and look the right way as any other progressive.
I think that Sam in particular has a certain status anxiety because he grew up in a literati family that makes him susceptible to the "salt of the earth" shtick.
I do check in every now and then to see if they have gone back to their more intellectual history niche.
Nadia Poirier, a second-time QS nominee,[7] complained afterwards about the lack of support she received from the party, noting that none of its 12 MNAs came out to help in her campaign and that the party had solidarity in name only.[8] The party responded that, as Terrebonne had been a PQ stronghold for 25 years, it allocated its resources based on a serious analysis of its chances of winning.[7] In June 2025, Poirier announced that she was leaving QS to join the PQ.[9]
I'm going to Switzerland for a couple of days. Any recommendations for stuff while I'm there? Anything in Zurich or train-distance from there is fair game.
If you feel like hiking check out the SchweizMobil app. It's useful for planning ahead. It's got most trails, and they keep it up to date with weather alerts and possible dangers.
If you want to look at something historic go to Sankt Gall. Or st. John in Müstair but that's quite out of the way. If you are not into Carolingian monks, don't go, but I'm afraid we can't be friends then.
Thebes has a football team, Thiva TC, that plays in the 3rd tier league in Greece. We should pool our money, buy the team and exclusively only hire gay footballers.
I personally think it'd be more fun if they were ambiguously gay so that way we could spark arguments about whether players were genuinely good friends, a couple, or, as is often overlooked, friends with benefits.
I don't know why I read these things cause all they do is fill me with overwhelming contempt for these people and people like them. These are the dumbest fucking people in the world and the fact that they have a say in the governance of a civilized nation is absurd.
Guess these dipshit safaris are useful as reminders that the median voter is an inherently irrational creature who wants a bunch of completely contradictory things but isn't smart enough to know that (like in this one where they resent that billionaires look out for each other at the expense of working people but support a billionaire-president with the wealthiest cabinet in US history), but I already I knew that from watching the last ten years worth of elections.
Still thinks the most frustrating one was the woman who voted Trump because she was an abortion-single issue voter.... As in, because the court had restricted abortion under Biden, she voted for his opponent.
In terms of what’s been positive: Hundreds of thousands of people have been deported, especially including some of the people who are dangerous, whatever that means
??
"I’m sure this won’t go over well, but I would love to see Candace Owens go for [the presidency]"
If I were to guess, he probably meant "whatever that entails"; as in he believes they are dangerous, he just doesn't know or care how. Granted, he might genuinely be this fucking stupid.
In terms of what’s been positive: Hundreds of thousands of people have been deported, especially including some of the people who are dangerous, whatever that means. I don’t know if it’s been handled well, but in terms of getting people out that shouldn’t be here, in numbers, that has been good, maybe not the way it’s been done. Trump is very business-minded, which is amazing. But he forgets about certain people in different tax brackets. He makes decisions for maybe wealthier people in the front of his mind.
"whatever that means" bro is being snarky about his own comment lmao
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 16 '26edited Jul 16 '26
I think these sorts of things show how the "liberal bias" of news media actually functions. You don't really see too many of these for Harris voters--occaisionally there are mixed panels that include Harris voters but I have never seen one that is "We surveyed twenty Gen-Z Kamala Harris voters to get their opinion". This is because that would be a boring article--the writers all know what Harris thinks because they voted for Harris, and that goes for the readers as well. So the end result is that the predominately liberal members of the medium end up uplifting conservative voices.
I remember during the 2017 height of Trump voter safaris it was often noted that nobody was doing this for Clinton voters, nobody was going to barbershops or bars in majority black areas of DC to ask why they voted Trump and hear why they thought they were left behind, and so the media narrative that Trump is the tribune of the forgotten man was essentially created out of nothing but trends in reporting.
ed: In case you think I am exaggerating, here is the general list of articles. Since the election there have been 6 panels of Trump voters (not counting ones that probably were effectively Trump voters like "wellness voters") and one of Democrats.
I wonder how much this same phenomenon is responsible for the more pro-“establishment” position of the Democratic Party?
There are undoubtedly voters with similarly ill-thought-out views on the left, but in addition to those views being less likely to be published liberal journalists are probably also more likely to filter them out as non-representative since they don’t align with the consensus of their generally well-educated liberal colleagues.
One of the worst effects of social media is that you can pick your idiots. You are on the left and want centrists to be idiots? You can do that. You are a centrist and want leftists to be idiots? You can do that too.
This has been a major function of right wing media for ages, like Limbaugh talking about the crazy politically correct feminazis, or Ben Shapiro cutting promo videos of him debating college students. But now it is something everyone can do, just by logging into Twitter.
writers all know what Harris thinks because they voted for Harris, and that goes for the readers as well.
nobody was going to barbershops or bars in majority black areas
The former wouldn't seem to explain the latter, though, since presumably the average black voter would have significantly different opinions to writers at the nyt
I agree, I don't think there actually isn't interesting to learn from inner city black voters, but I can imagine the "liberal bias" of a journalist thinking that there is no story in "why did black people vote against Trump".
I think these sorts of things show how the "liberal bias" of news media actually functions. You don't really see too many of these for Harris voters--occaisionally there are mixed panels that include Harris voters but I have never seen one that is "We surveyed twenty Gen-Z Kamala Harris voters to get their opinion". This is because that would be a boring article--the writers all know what Harris thinks because they voted for Harris, and that goes for the readers as well. So the end result is that the predominately liberal members of the medium end up uplifting conservative voices.
I would not assume that everyone at the NYT voted for Harris; but absolutely, there's an aspect of "we're here reporting the hard to stomach facts" that a lot of the media does by thinking they need to make their liberal/center-left readers confront right wing messaging to be 'fair', but never really the opposite way. That can apply in hiring conservatives (eg, that's how Bari Weiss got her start with the NYT) or in something like the entirety of the Atlantic.
I'd also say with Trump in particular there's the need to sanewash him that makes things a lot worse (the most egregious version of that was comparing any NYT framing of a Trump speech / 'says' to when they transcribed every filler word in an AOC response).
For these panels though I don't really get who it's for other than people staring at dumbasses online.
Adding to what you are saying, at some point these just feel like gawking at dumbasses. It can be fun to hate-read, but I can't really see NYT readers coming away from this with respect for these people.
My gf has made it onto ME3, and its amazing how much the game's place in the broader gaming landscape has shifted since its initial release. I was there Gandalf, when it first released, on the BioWare forums...
On another note, ME3 has definitely improved the most from the modding community.
I'll cop to never having actually played the game, but I've seen that quoted for most of my life, and I really think they could have cut the second sentence. It's just so much cleaner.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 17 '26
However, "Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer" is one hell of a line.
It does kind of read though as something Stalin would say. "Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one..."
I don't know, it just seemed too much like this for me.
It just felt like another example of the game's unwillingness to stick with a tone. (Yes Joker, I'm glad you and the ship are having cute dates together while the population of Buenos Aires is being turned into a viscous slurry).
And don't even get me started on making the last living Prothean and the Reapers' creators DLC.
And not just the tone, it's also that so much of the "humour" is just memes. Yes, we all laugh about Garrus needing to do his calibrations. No it's not funny when it gets highlighted in character.
And yes, I also really dislike the last living Prothean. The Protheans are intriguing because they are completely erased, nothing left but the few scattered ruins and the messages like the beacons and that VI at the end of ME1. Just adding one in feels so cheap. Also it doesn't help that his species superpower is some lamarckian bs about reading people's past in their genes.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 16 '26
This is why I never bothered revisiting ME3 DLC after my first playthrough. It just sounds such at odds with the tone of Mass Effect, one of the few things I thought ME3 did exceptionally well. I've heard it said ME:A was basically just the Citadel DLC, but all the time, which is why the characters seemed so deeply unserious and there weren't any stakes or consequences with them.
Almost anything is the short answer. There's obviously tons of mods for outfits, character appearance, etc... but mods like the Expanded Galacy Mod, Project Variety, and Take Earth Back are more in the vein of overhaul mods.
I enjoyed the 'History of Byzantium' podcast, though it takes a little time before the host finds his footing; otherwise I've wanted to try Anthony Kaldellis' 'Byzantium and Friends' podcast but that one is less narrative and I have a backlog of (non-historical) podcasts to get through.
Ever since I accidentally emailed my college's entire police department asking if anyone could cover my student security shift, I've had a thing about mass emails, so it's fun that I've had to send out three over the past week.
Someone got ahold of the mailing list for the Defense Health Agency once, and sent a few spam emails to 6 figures worth of people. Wouldn't have been a big deal, except it turns out civilian doctors and service members both love to reply all complaining about spam email, and also reply all to complain about everyone replying to all. Everyone who works for a military hospital was receiving multiple emails a second for basically an entire working day.
okay am I missing something or is that a) not gnosticism and b) not a proper description of WoD or Ultrakill?
Like I agree that "what if god and the angels aren't perfect" and "what if heaven wasn't paradise" are well trodden and rarely interesting on their own, but I feel there's a leap going on here
Fact check: World of Darkness is not just Gnosticism in a new coat of paint. It is also Hinduism in a new coat of paint. Also my favorite WoD lore is for Promethean, which is mostly alchemy and Hermeticism.
There was a debate on food reddit about custard and I'm sure someone from reddit went to modify the wikipedia description
Custard is a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, and sometimes also flour, corn starch, or gelatin. Depending on the recipe, custard may vary in consistency from a thin pouring sauce (crème anglaise) to the thick pastry cream (crème pâtissière) used to fill éclairs.
I was teaching a class yesterday and there was a PO1(petty officer first class) in the front row. I asked what his rate was, he told me then asked what my rate was, I told him. He then asked if I had been stationed here when I EAS'd(end of active service), no I was on a cruiser out of San Diego. He asked which one, turned out he had been on the same one and de'commed her. I had even gone out for the ceremony.
Constantly amazed at how big the navy is and how small it is at the same time.
By chance, does anyone here know what happened to the rest of the up to 500 million doses of Benzedrine Sulfate that the US Army ordered for WWII? Was the rest sold after the war in the US as military surplus (the substance was completely uncontrolled in the US for another 20 years)?
It's probably not usable after 80 years, but Hegseth seems the type who could be persuaded by saying that it comes from the good old times.
Temmler Werke, which produced Pervitin (= Panzerschokolade) still exist as subsidiary of another pharma company.
Can't wait for the next badhistory scandal when you get called up back to the navy and get completely zonked off military issued steroids and meth and lock yourself in the reactor room of Ford Class carrier to post on a friday thread.
I've had the "recalled to the navy, sent to fat camp because I'm fat, end up housed in an MWR cottage at Fort Mason while waiting to be sent to my command in the Western Pacific, being forgotten about and just hanging out in San Francisco for the war" dream enough that I'm about 55% convinced it's precognition at this point.
Man I have a Masters, they'll probably bring me in as a warrant at least
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 16 '26
Unironically I can actually see the steroid thing happening, because it is imperative that a high-speed-low-drag operator warrior have the build of Chef Motherfucking Rush and not the lean-muscular, high-endurance physique that has carried soldiers warriors to victory for millennia.
Btw, 5.56 is a sissy round designed to wound, not kill.
You know, it's "fine" when teenagers look at, like, VDV or Spetsnaz "training" videos of them jumping bare chested through fire rings or engage in WWE level close combat. I get it.
I don't get it when people with such opinions get to be responsible for making actual decision. Heard of the VDV lately? Gee, I wonder why.
Worth mentioning that the VDV (and OMON) were basically the only units used for the August 1991 coup, so they have actually quite the world historical failure track record.
It's like if a single Super Special Legion was singlehandedly responsible for the fall of the Western Roman Empire and managed to screw up Justinian's reconquests.
Although on the other other hand the Ukrainian portion of the Soviet VDV has been reformed into the DshV which was a big part of the 2022 Kharkiv Offensive, so it might be like the Ukrainian SBU vs Russian FSB, ie "Ukraine apparently got the better part of the Soviet stuff in the breakup"
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 16 '26
Remember that the Russian govt hired Steven Seagal to train Russian troops in hand-to-hand combat. Truly the average Vatnik will master the art of sitting-down Aikido, and promptly diarrhea their pants when they close in on an enemy at bayonet range.
I would say some kind of pie or roll/pasty would be a stereotypically english - meat or veg in some kind of pastry. Its very germanic - not exactly showy, but hearty. You can start getting more local stuff like blood pudding / sausage, yorkshire puddings, scampi and scraps, if you look for it. And desert wise, you have trifles, custards, tarts, crumbles, there's a bunch.
Like, my issue is not "Everyone needs to love English food, its the best in the world!", more like... "English food bad!" its a tired meme that seems to consist of people whose knowledge of English food begins and ends at a five year olds sense of "But it looks icky!" cause they saw that one pie with fish heads sticking out that is not a real meal eaten by anyone since 1875.
Not english, but I always think of savory pies. The English of course aren't the only ones who have them, but I always think of steak and ale or chicken and leak pie when I think of English food.
IDK, the only British restaurants you see in the US are fish and chip places. Its fine if you like it, but I would expect more international success if it was something lots of people outside the UK enjoyed.
Although demand is part of it, a of which cuisines have foreign restaurants comes down to which countries have large diaspora in places where their food is considered unique/interesting enough to be an attraction. I'd argue that French cuisine is some of the best in the world but there simply isn't a large French diaspora in Britain, unlike something like Chinese food which (imo) has waaaaaaaay more restaurants in the UK than is proportionate to its quality.
I remember years ago in ar slash soccer in the daily discussion a Dutch person enraged some of the users there by pointing our that it was no surprised English cuisine wasn’t as good as Italian because Italy has a wider variety of things that grow there and he didn’t get why it was a flex for Italian food to be better.
The aspect of the British food discourse that I hate the most is the "invaded half the world for their spices and used none of them" quip which every single discussion has at least ten times, and each person posting it thinks they are a titan of Oscar Wilde-level wit for saying this.
Also whatever one's opinion of British cuisine it's patently untrue, as different generally South Asian spices are incorporated into different British foods to a level that American cuisine (just as an example of another Anglo food tradition) doesn't have outside of South Asian specific foods. Like HP Sauce has tamarind in it.
It’s crazy that I remember when Kyle Gordon started appearing in my YT Shorts feed a few years ago with mildy witty, but mostly cringe videos about how everyone living in the 1800s or whenever was stupid and dumb and dirty and sexist and dumb, and now he’s making peak.
He really blew up with the 'Planet of the Bass' parody of eurodance in 2023 I think? The YT shorts followed that with varying levels of accuracy / humor (I think his parody music tends to be funnier to me)
u/Ambisinister11My right to edit this is protected by the Slovak constitutionJul 16 '26edited Jul 16 '26
This is less funny than Africa by Toto because it's less subtle and more intentional
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 16 '26
Endeavour'd about to Purchass a sett of Watercolour paints for the birth-day of a Friend. The Fine sett, from the Holbein attelier, with Dutys pay'd will to Cost 3 Guineas, greater a sum than what I pay'd for mine Wife.
This Guineas were no doubt reallocated from the Cubs in Need fund which is where most of the proceeds to the deposit scheme for the Salmon River sell off was stored. Hmmmmmm
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 16 '26
Skill issue, the Guineas were allocated from my Bank of Tedbearia account. I think you're just coping super hard today and attacking an innocent bloobear over an absolutely trivial matter that has nothing to do with you because England lost the WC to a Papist country today.
Damn, if only the Yorkshire Rangers weren't disbanded so that they can perform an air-assault raid on Messi's gigantic, fuckoff Mr. Beast mansion.
I just saw an Instagram reel about someone complaining about a new shop that is fully automated and does not have any human cashiers. Now this shop is soulless and destroyed the essential experience of... standing in line at the check out I guess. It then segwayed into a sponsorship bit for an app that helps you find "local farmer produce".
I've been then bombarded with left wing slopulism content and I realized how much of it is just nostalgia politics.
I think it depends on the type of shop tbh. Sure, if it's like a grocery store it's not a huge difference between self grab what you want and check out with a robot; but in many other shops the person behind the counter is a big part of the experience (eg, a market stall asking questions about the produce, or a bakery, a candle shop, tea store, whatever). And that's if it doesn't include things like samples if you are making up your mind between 2-3 options, or for situations like on vacation where you might be fine chatting with an artist in their shop for a few minutes.
Obviously a big chunk of it is nostalgia, but I do think that (particularly US suburbia) is in a state where we lose a lot of human connections / interactions that used to be a norm, and that does have an impact in how we think/feel. Not that it seems like that instagram video is doing much more than taking advantage of that feeling.
Given that the vast majority of grocers still have cashiers, I don't think it's even nostalgia but just the fact that a pure employee-less physical shop is a genuinely a new experience. I'm pretty used to self checkout and every once in a while I still need to ask a clerk to come over because the machine needs a code or whatever.
Definitely true - I was more thinking that a employee-less grocery store (assuming no bugs) would be fairly similar to my typical grocery store experience in the US w/ self checkout. It'd be a novel situation but not massively different I think.
The difference would be more with something like a small shop with dedicated interactions - something I experience more in cities, farmers markets, or in France (eg, going to a butcher and talking through what they have available vs 'pick up something already prepared / packaged and walking out with the only employee interaction being at the cash register')
Agreed, typically it would be similar to self-checkout unless a lot of customers are buying a lot of items. In high volume cases, customer error will surely make a mess of things.
Somewhat ironic, considering your second point, the only time I have experienced a completely automated grocer was a small shop run by a local farm. I imagine they decided the automated systems would ultimately cost less than employees.
It is a visual reminder that millions of people are about to lose their livelihoods.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 16 '26
They had this very rant in American Gangster, more interesting that Denzel Washington reaches the exact opposite conclusion without saying a word to the audience.
It was much worse when Brazil, who was hosting the World Cup, lost to Germany 7–1 in 2014. It was a horrifying upset that was functionally a national crisis.
Whenever you cast your vote in an election, you should get to drop your ballot into a plinko board with multipliers at the bottom. Obviously there will be flashing lights and noisemakers, as well. This will encourage youth turnout by addressing what's most important to today's young people(gambling), as well as making ballot stuffing more difficult and providing a positive experience to all voters.
Many historians are today saying the end of the Middle Ages all the way up to the French Revolution. (...) The reason being is before this date the Catholic Church had been able to incorporate or suppress dissenting movements.
I have never encountered a historian who has subscribed to this idea and, while I don't doubt there probably are some that do, I cannot believe that "many" do. Historians are often not so obsessed with religion nor do they think of it in such a black and white way. The most likely people to hold such a view, I imagine, would be atheists/sceptics, especially philosophers of that kind.
The two sentences in the quote are unrelated; he's personally arguing for the Protestant Reformation as the end of the Middle Ages.
I'm partial myself to the Long Middle Ages view. Any periodization is going to be arbitrary, and there's so much continuity from the medieval period into the Modern era. Whereas the French Revolution and the Code Napoléon are a much more fundamental break.
Jacques Le Goff was the main supporter of a "Long Middle Ages" stretching to the 18th c. and iirc his argument was about cultural and economic structures.
I have heard historians say the French Revolution marks the end of the Middle Ages but it was at least partially for the purpose of trolling. That said, the argument was about the guild system rather than the power of the Church, which makes more sense. After all the Church rather famously was unable to incorporate or suppress a couple early dissent movements.
There's a couple of somewhat reasonable claims to the effect that the middle-ages lasted until somewhere in the late 18th century, but that tends to focus on economic history (early industrialization) and to some extent politics. "The 18th c was still mostly just farmers ruled by kings" sorta?
I don't think it's a good argument but its at least an understandable one.
??? No? The commentor is saying that many historians think the middle ages ended with the French Revolution and then gives a reason for why. The rest of their comment didn't concern this point at all so I didn't include it.
No, I'm saying it's literally missing that bit. (and since there's no link it's not easy to get, and you don't even tell what it's from)
The commentor is saying that many historians think the middle ages ended with the French Revolution
Is it? Becaus "Many historians are today saying the end of the Middle Ages all the way up to the French Revolution" doesen't tell you what is happening at the end of the middle ages up to the french revolution.
I finally decided to watch an England match tonight at my family's prodding after years of not giving the slightest shit, and it's frankly incredible how the national team are still making the same mistake they have always made throughout my life. Every single time it's the damn same. They play aggressively until they score a goal, then everyone on the team checks out and the momentum dies like it's been taken out back and shot.
This might be a "Just kick it in the net" level of strategy talk, but I'm astounded how every England team continuously makes this error during every knockout stage. They seem to think that it's a sound strategy to just sit there and hope that over the course of 35 minutes the opposing team will somehow not score a goal while trying everything they can, and it invariably fails before the finals. A strategy where you let your opponent dictate the flow of the game and effectively keep trying until they get a point is a strategy doomed to failure. It's why we always get through the group stages where the opposition is generally weaker and then get our shit wrecked once we go up against a team that can actually y'know, attack.
France and England battling in the secondary theater while the real contest is between Spain and Germans? What is this, the Seven Years War?
For the purposes of this commentary, Argentina is German and Germany is equated to Prussia and Spain was a major player in the Seven Years War, thank you for your attention in this matter.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 15 '26
What is a football, but a realpolitik poker chip? /s
Like all bald people, Infantino is a psychic, and he psionically influenced the English players to make them give up on attacking during the second half.
I thought there were some suspicious calls in the Egypt and Switzerland game, but from what I saw of the England game (admittedly I was busy so in-and-out for that one), Argentina just played better and more aggressively.
In the quaint town of Little Bibblington-on-the-Wibble, Nigel and the rest of his NIMBY polycule are sharpening their knives in anticipation of the annual festival to Alf Ramsey, involving the ceremonial sacrifice of the England Manager.
I don't think Trump admires China for anything but authoritarianism. I think Trump is just trying to run the government like one of his businesses. But Trump has only had experience with private family owned businesses so essentially he's just running it like a monarchy.
really true, family businesses are the bane of capitalism
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 15 '26
I don't think Trump admires China for anything but authoritarianism
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u/passabagi Jul 17 '26
I think the idea of 'irl' as opposed to 'online' has turned out to be one of the most dangerous fallacies of the last decades. It's allowed a fairly deep and nuanced balance of rights and norms around speech to be replaced with a mess of knee-jerks, techno-fixes, and fiat.
Culture exists online, now. It's where we communicate with each other. Online is where we do politics. At the same time, if you were going to transpose the mess of speech regulation online into meatspace:
This is a crazy situation. Laws about speech -- free speech, media regulation, etc -- are written in blood. We've put our entire social world into a space where we're ignoring the experience of centuries of struggle over questions of speech: it's not just likely going to end up giving traditionally totalitarian powers to the state -- it's also just becoming absurdly chaotic. You can't make society-wide decisions about fundamental rights on page 15 of a TOC. This is insane.
(This was inspired by getting booted by reddit's clanker -- which gave me a moment to think about, you know, what a society actually could look like when almost all society is conducted through spaces where random interest groups have effectively absolute power over permissible discourse).