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Goredho

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Goredho

  1. I had a bad dream before the election. In my dream, the election aftermath (it was a "stolen" Trump loss) was used to engineer a crash of the US economy/dollar and a huge gain in bitcoin. It shook me up enough that I went ahead and signed up on coinbase and bought an emergency fund worth of bitcoin. Well, none of my dream happened (thankfully), but my crypto buy is up 21% in roughly 2 weeks. I think I am going to keep it going with a target to get to 4 months of living expenses in crypto just in case. If its still growing beyond that, I'll re-evaluate whether to let it ride or start pulling some gains out. I have a feeling there are a lot of people like me driving what is happening. People who aren't mentally or fiscally going all in on crypto, but who see pro-crypto forces coming into power, some significant economic turbulence ahead and who want a place other than cash or stocks to park some emergency reserves into.
  2. Yeah, this is a symptom of being left alone to wander the intardnet without guidance/controls. Porn is just one of the hawkers vying for young men's attention in their hours spent online.
  3. Haven't personally seen that as a big issue with the youngins I drew my observations from, but I don't doubt that isn't a major issue for many.
  4. I mean, voters made it clear that they weren't buying any of the warnings about the dangers of a vote for Trump. Its all hypothetical fear mongering to win an election... until it isn't. The shit being warned about is going to have to be made manifest before it moves the needle with a critical mass of people. That doesn't mean those fears are guaranteed to happen or that anyone should take joy from it if they do, but it is the reality of where we are at. Its all up to Trump and his party now. Are you who you say you are, or who the democrats said you are? I don't need anyone's expectant opinion on that. We are all going to know pretty quickly.
  5. Yep, we're dismantling a system all of us were born into. I don't think any of us has direct firsthand experience with the alternative to government providing a baseline of education, some sort of a social safety net and protections for marginalized people. There's not much to be done at this point except to A) prepare to take care of you and yours B) help out elsewhere where you are able and C) allow downstream pain to emphasize the need so that maybe people come back around to seeing the benefit of these institutions.
  6. So very related to the dismantling of the department of education are the policies that the TEA enacted affecting special ed throughout Texas in the aughts. Details here, but tl;dr Texas arbitrarily capped special ed services at 8.5% in violation of federal law which led to a great number of kids with needs getting nothing. Texas eventually was sued by the Dept of Education to remove this cap. The Dept of Education won and Texas was forced to revoke the cap and return it to being completely needs based. If the Department of Education goes away or is made toothless, well, its gonna suck for any kids in need of special ed services. As for anyone with a kid with an IEP that voted for it...
  7. So I haven't fully read this thread, I am just going to share what I see happening in my nieces, nephews, my own kids and those in their social circles. Not everything I mention is a super powerful force, but it is part of what I see funneling young men to dark places. 1. There is a tremendous swell of positive mainstream content featuring empowered young girls/women. Barbi shows an empowered woman navigating a less than perfect world, etc... 2. There is somewhat of a vacuum of positive mainstream content featuring young boys/men being good and navigating the world around them. Even something like Deadpool vs Wolverine that likely appeals to young men more than young women, A) not exactly a model of behavior and B) not applicable to the modern world a young man lives in. 3. Most families have both parents working with kids of all genders spending more time alone and more often than not, that time is spent online 4. Pandemic isolation became a multiplier to the above context and drove more kids to be even more engaged online 5. These kids basically are free to allow their mind able to wander an online world without supervision. Its the psychological equivalent of dropping your kids off at the edge of Hong Kong and telling them to be home by supper. 6. For boys, that online world is full of bad actors who are willing to fill the vacuum of parenting and mainstream content shaping to influence how boys and young/men think 7. Young boys/men who are tolerant and respectful as individuals are being lumped in with all the young boys/men who are not and treated as part of a homogenous "Patriarchy". They feel dammed if they do and dammed if they don't and it reinforces the bullshit getting injected into their heads online. At that point, the young men are left to wonder -- is it really bullshit? Basically, a lot of young men are being abandoned into a confusing vacuum. And as they try to make sense of it, people who are looking at either making a buck, countering the feminist movement or both are happy to step in to fill the void of parenting and mainstream reinforcement to give those young men an ethos and purpose.
  8. You get rep for this statement alone.
  9. Yep, you and yours are free to view it that way and make that choice. Others mileage may vary.
  10. You are missing the point. A young lady has been made to live in fear when she was targeted as someone powerless to protect herself if push came to shove. Well, she does not have to accept that position of powerlessness, and her dad/husband/boyfriend can’t be with her 100% of the time.
  11. You should help her become comfortable with a gun and to get her concealed carry license. Not that she would have been justified in using it in this case, but because it will give her some peace of mind that she can protect herself if someone like that wants to get serious. It’s without a doubt the American way. These jackasses like you describe want to make everyone else uncomfortable. So people like your step daughter are beset with fear and either retreat to the kitchen to quiver or flee the area so it becomes more of a MAGA monoculture. Her being capable of defending herself will go a long way to allowing her to exist with peace of mind in the world she has found herself in.
  12. I am guessing the logic was that there were ~25% of Republican primary voters who didn’t want Trump and voted for Nikki Haley and they were hoping to sway a significant number of them to carry that over to a vote against Trump in the general election. It obviously didn’t work.
  13. But we said they could eat cake! I don't understand?
  14. You are probably both better and worse off for that.
  15. These are the two Reverends I still have. A short scale Dub King bass and a Charger 290 that is hot hot hot. Great instruments for the money or otherwise. Their guitars tend to have a “bass contour knob” that is a bass cut to go with the treble knob and makes them pretty versatile. I can make the P90s sound like a Tele with it.
  16. I've owned 3 reverends, still own 2, and they are great guitars. Probably my favorite brand at the $1000 new price point.
  17. Yep. What I am observing are small business owners in small towns and everyone downstream from them on the local economic ladder. Not just the guy that owns the plow service, but the drivers that work for him. Not just the excavating company owner, but the workers he hires. Or not just the souvenir shop owner, but the employees that man it. Life isn't better for them than it ever has been here in the mountains of Colorado. I am not making that up for internet points or whatever. They are struggling more today than they were pre-pandemic and they voted for change -- any change. That is the reality here. Your mileage may vary.
  18. I am not trying to piss you off. "Intardnet" was not meant to be disparaging to you personally, its my generic term for the internet these days. And I am making a proverbial you statement about people sharing their limited experiences on the internet like its gospel. It applies to me, too. Your observations are your observations and I am not saying they are wrong given what you are observing, just that they don't align with my observations. If you interacted with the people I am around, you would have a different set of observations and potentially a different opinion. If I interacted with the people you are around, I would have a different set of observations and maybe a different opinion. I still love and respect you, bud, but will go fuck myself as requested. Now to find some good pr0n...
  19. That's the sum total of it for the vast majority of Trump voters. Not all, but most.
  20. Um, I'm pretty sure Prima Nocta has been your mom's platform for quite awhile now 😜
  21. Agree, good post.
  22. How do we know that isn't happening? I mean, the dildo thread is full of unsubstantiated memes like this. Who knows where they are coming from? It could be a racist piece of shit emboldened by Trump, could be Russia using his win as an opportunity to sow chaos and fear, could be someone just in it for the lulz or it could be people on the left taking a page from the Trump playbook to use manufactured fear and anger to try to fuel a movement. The scariest part? I don't have a strong sense of which of those is most likely true. We live in a post-factual world now, and the disinformation genie is not going back into the bottle.
  23. :shrugs: I guess your experiences are very different from mine. As for my "mansplaining", I don't know how what I am saying from my own observations is any different from what you are saying from your observations. At any rate, you can tell me how many people are living better than ever, but that does not align with what I personally witness in what is essentially a rural white ghetto. It does align with the lives of people in my professional circles, and the people I know back in urban areas with relatively healthy economies. So I'll have to continue to trust my own direct observations vs your intardnet posts. Feel free to respond to my posts or not, I don't really care. One thing this election cycle certainly shows is that Surly is a really poor lens through which to keep tabs on and understand the broader world.
  24. Yeah, this is a big part of the problem. People like you (and I) want to tell people how they should feel about the reality they are living. I am not saying Biden/Harris caused their problems or Trump is going to fix their problems, but you are saying, "Yeah, they don't have a problem." I over the top vehemently disagree with that position. I see a very different daily life experience for many, many people than what you describe. Not for the lawyers, doctors, engineers and other relatively wealthy professionals that dominate the conversations here. But for the person trying to make it in a small town with a small business. You can say their lives are great all you want, but... it's just not for a lot of people. I have tangible, first hand experience witnessing a reality different than what you choose to believe in. Anyway, I am not trying to convince you, you are fine to preserve your opinion, but sitting in a house on the hill and looking down at everyone in the valley below and saying they've never had it so good is a HUGE part of the problem. If you are truly interested in understanding what's going on in this country, I would encourage you to drive to a small, economically depressed town and going to the locals coffee shop. Get a coffee, be quiet and still, and just listen to the conversations around you.
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