UnderpantsWeevil
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
- Comment on This is why we have a defense budget 3 hours ago:
I mean, scratch a Musk-stan and you’ll likely find a Weeb who is also a MAGAt. These aren’t exclusive.
- Comment on This is why we have a defense budget 3 hours ago:
There are a dozen teenage sailor moon cosplayers who likely have restraining orders to the contrary.
- Comment on This is why we have a defense budget 3 hours ago:
Chud in a jacked up F-350 with Molan Labe bumper stickers, Don’t Tread on Me License Plates, and a big Fuck-You QAnon themed MAGA Flag versus Weeb driving a Rice Rocket covered in horny anime stickers
- Comment on This is why we have a defense budget 3 hours ago:
harmless
wholesome
ecchi
Mods, ban him.
- Comment on Describe conservatives with one picture 23 hours ago:
Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: National Republicans Online Edition
- Comment on Full Circle 1 day ago:
I mean, the cycle started with the implementation of capitalism. Italy was functionally feudalistic (particularly in the southern territories) until the mid-19th century, with state power relegated to a hodgepodge of principalities. It’s only really been a unified country since 1870 and lagged on industrialization until the Cold War Era, when the US Marshall Plan made it an industrial and shipping beachhead for NATO-bloc manufacturing and trade (as well as a military base to strike out at North Africa and the Middle East).
The waves of Italian immigrants weren’t fleeing capitalism. They were fleeing the two World Wars and the industrial collapse of Europe. Americans, by contrast, won’t experience the same immediate socio-economic pressures to leave. So I suspect a lot of the reverse-migration we’ll see to Italy will be coming from an American middle class seeking to retire into a post-industrial retirement playground rather than an Italian underclass seeking gainful employment and safety from chronic civil wars and invasions.
- Comment on Full Circle 1 day ago:
I was imaging this meme just last week, while my wife finished renewing her Italian passport and stuffing a bugout bag full of Euros.
- Comment on Can you believe it? 1 day ago:
Too early in the morning for this…
- Comment on Anon is a statistic 3 days ago:
Be British
Go to the United States
Don’t Get Blown up in a Cybertruck
Don’t Get Shot up in a mass shooting
Don’t Get Robbed shirtless by a home invasion
Don’t Get Scammed broke by a crypto-coin shill
Do find the one person in the entire country who insists on doing knife crime
Marry her
Get stabbed to death
Post about it on 4chan
- Comment on Do this and enjoy life and stop being a victim 4 days ago:
I mean, some people just rub other people the wrong way. Like with cats and dogs. Cultural differences, aesthetics, body language and the reflexive responses, natural aversions… they all play a role in a first impression.
Politeness is about getting past those initial impulses and giving one another an opportunity to prove they’re more than what they appear at first blush. And about dampening your own eccentricities so as not to startle or offend inadvertently. But politeness is a learned skill, while reflexive responses are innate. People make whole careers out of diplomacy and decorum. You shouldn’t feel bad if you fumble it occasionally and you should be willing to give others an opportunity to redefine themselves if they come off clumsy or inept.
- Comment on Dont worry about your retirement plan, simpsons never fail 6 days ago:
Ryan Routh had Lee Harvey Oswald written all over him. He just showed up ahead of the second gunman and pooched it.
CIA fall guys just ain’t what they used to be.
- Comment on Dont worry about your retirement plan, simpsons never fail 6 days ago:
Probably more than three, tbf. We got to hear about the three that got close and not the Discord group where everyone realized they were part of the same FBI counterinsurgency group and then half of them got fired.
- Comment on Dont worry about your retirement plan, simpsons never fail 6 days ago:
American cockroaches live two terms on average
- Comment on Genius 6 days ago:
I mean, third reason, he’s labeled as “Homan” which seems pretty close to Human but just a bit off. And that’s simply too on-the-nose for the topic.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 week ago:
Obama, Reagan, Bush and Clinton weren’t fascists.
Obama and Clinton were neoliberal to their bones, which meant lots of Realpolitik and backroom handshake deals with fascists in order to drive down the bargaining power of labor and transfer enormous volumes of wealth to business aristocrats. Whatever you might say of their methods, the consequences of their militarism abroad and their austerity economics at home was a steady rise in global fascist tendancy.
Meanwhile, if Reagan and Bush weren’t strictly qualified as fascists, they ran as close up to the line as they could get. Religious demagogues who leveraged a business media vomiting up disinformation and race panic to cultivate a white nationalist base of support and overthrow basic democratic institutions at home and abroad. The Brooks Brothers Riot was a coup in every way that mattered. Iran-Contra involved attempts at the illegal overthrow of multiple governments. Extremely fascist.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 week ago:
Go outside, there are no bugs.
My neighborhood is alive with cicadas every night and there’s no shortage of mosquitoes biting.
I’m inside the Houston loop, too. Not out in the boonies. Spiderwebs in my garage. Toads in my drainage ditch. I assume they’re eating something.
I drove from Victoria BC to Fairbanks AK three years ago without washing my windshield.
That’s pretty normal in the winter. Try it again after a big rainstorm.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 week ago:
decades ago, houses were affordable, college was cheap, Americans weren’t crushed under mountains of dischargeable student debt, wealth disparity and effective wages were far better, and we had a far more functional political system.
For Middle Income White People in Certain States
But we also had the hanging threat of nuclear war, leaded gasoline in the air and painted all over the walls, Satanic Panic, an AIDS epidemic killing millions of people, several large market crashes that deindustrializee the Midwest, and $7/gal, and a Global War on Terror.
None of this was indicative of better economics or a functional political system.
I can’t think of much that hasn’t gone downhill since 2016.
mRNA technology premiering on the eve of a killer pandemic leaps to mind.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 week ago:
Women don’t want to be approached in public.
I think the problem is that men don’t want to be approached in public. Or in private, for that matter. Half the joke of this is how antisocial, short-tempered, and easily discouraged men are.
- Comment on Anon is worried about men 1 week ago:
I’m not interested in having kids because the world is ending
I’m hard pressed to point to any ten-year period in which some number of Doomers did not insist The World Is Ending.
Like, take your pick of any ten-year span during the Cold War. That butted right up against the OG World Wars, with a Great Depression breather. Before that you had plagues, famines, and economic crashes that shat all over '08 and COVID.
Westoids live in the wealthiest, easiest, most affluent era of human history. Then someone points out “hey, eating burger every day isn’t sustainable” and they conclude the world is over.
- Comment on We are so cooked 1 week ago:
Okay, but how do I personally monetize non-honey making bees? Sure, the general ecology needs this, but what’s in it for me, right this instant?
- Comment on Blood for the Line God! 1 week ago:
Far more socialism in practice than you’re giving credit. Even setting aside the 1/6th of the global population and economy that is governed by the Chinese Communists, you’re neglecting the plethora of state managed economies across the Middle East (the Kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the Revolutionary Republic of Iran, the theocratic republic of Afghanistan) and the socialist state functions of more traditional capitalist countries - NHS in the UK, the Baltic State sovereign wealth funds, state owned companies like Petróleos Mexicanos and The National Copper Corporation of Chile.
Musk is the kind of creature that crawls out of the swamp only after you’ve turned too much of your economy to private interests. He isn’t a global phenomenon. If anything, his ejection from South Africa and the continued revolutionary anti-colonialism that continues to flare up in opposition to people like him all along the Global South should signal how much of the world isn’t welcoming to his kind.
- Comment on ghibli posting 1 week ago:
But that doesn’t mean anyone actually likes AI art
Anyone in the business of churning out media slop at high rates and low quality loves it.
Low budget advertisers, propagandists, and click bait influencers are its primary user base.
- Comment on Blood for the Line God! 1 week ago:
One of the things that Americans loothe about the Chinese government is the rule that mainland owned and operated firms require a domestic partner, with legal access to the patents and property used in manufacture. This comes with subsidies and state support. But it creates a rich opportunity for those Chinese domestic partners to begin making fully local competitive alternatives.
The Chinese domestic EV market took full advantage of Tesla, siphoned out the best bits, and now allows the bad fruit to rot on the vine.
- Comment on Blood for the Line God! 1 week ago:
he can just fly in and start fucking shit up wherever he wants
In capitalist states, where politicians are explicitly beholden to international credit and industry.
State owned businesses are insulated against vulture capitalists like Musk, because they exist to deliver a service rather than turn steadily increasing profit for shareholders.
State run and independent citizen sponsored media are insulated against the influence of marketing firms and corporate propaganda, because the staff does not rely on a tiny cartel of ultra-wealthy private patrons to fund their journalism.
Elon Musk is a very American problem. He’s a creature of libertarian capitalism and colonial apartheid.
- Comment on Blood for the Line God! 1 week ago:
I hear world wars are good for the economy. A sharp increase in demand for instantly disposable munitions combined with a sharp downturn in the global life expectance does amazing things to Per Capita GDP.
- Comment on THE CLASS WAR IS BACK, BABY! 2 weeks ago:
Me, a liberal: “You need to understand that gender and ethnicity and religious tradition naturally divide us. But we can overcome all that with meritocracy. If we just stack rank everyone, we can skim the cream and anyone who works hard enough can join the professional class.”
Also me, still a liberal: “Yeah, we’re just firing all the women, the non-Europeans, and any out LGBTQ faculty member from the organization because we need to comply with new Anti-DEI rules. No, I don’t see what that has to do with their economic position or social standing in society. Maybe they all should have just worked harder.”
- Comment on ghibli posting 2 weeks ago:
its easier than ever to produce and share art
Anyone who believes the transition from pencils and paper to high end computers and software has made art creation easier… Go compare the staff and budget required for the original Disney’s Snow White relative to the latest Pixar film.
And as to sharing, that’s where AI is extra obnoxious. On the one hand, you’re trying to make yourself heard in a wholly artificial cacophony of procedural generated spam. And the current iteration of The Algorithm favors AI, so even your hack favorites like Ben Garrison and Jon McNaughton have to compete with Shrimp Jesus.
It’s not a bad thing, we can create whatever art we want with ease
You cannot. You can make requests to a computer and it can approximate a result that you accept or reject. But you’re not making art, any more than walking up to a sketch artist, slapping down a $20, and saying “Draw a picture of me looking silly” is making art.
Let’s not paint that positive reality like a bad thing.
When the future of art is just a computer pumping out caricatures, because its cheaper than commissioning anyone with talent and experience to employ perspective or creativity or even just something beyond the sixteen pre-defined style choices, that’s pretty bleak.
- Comment on ghibli posting 2 weeks ago:
Is digital art itself bad, because its not the human doing all of it?
It is bad primarily because it plagiarizes historical art in order to undermine the professional trade for future artists.
It forecloses art as a career, thereby depriving future generations of evolution in style and professional craft.
Gate keeping art is silly regardless
The gate being constructed fences off professional artists from the revenue their work produced. And in doing so, it defunds the schools and studios where professionals pass their craft from master to apprentice.
- Comment on Horror 2 weeks ago:
Oh no, the Groypers are here.
- Comment on Horror 2 weeks ago:
attach giant balloons to ships
