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Eastwood

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Eastwood

  1. Yeah, my 10 Day is showing the “it’s never going to rain again” forecast.
  2. I know it's there, but it's mostly dog whistles and nudge, nudge, wink, wink. I want to be able to openly discuss Republican policy and talking points without having to tap dance around politics so I don't get report bombed for talking politics in DT. We need to find a solution that will make that happen in the CR. I want to be able to ask someone who was in the "Lock Her Up" crowd point blank "why not Lock Him Up now?" But I can't because they won't come to CR. And I could barely do it in DT because it is "political" when it really isn't. It is a fact-based analysis, not a political analysis, and I'm already catching an eyebrow raise out of Bob from the mere reference to Hilary in the Trump DT thread. I have heard crowd sourcing as the common complaint from right-leaning posters on this board. If they aren't materially contributing to debate and shit posting, posting links to known disinformation websites, or spewing hate speech, absolutely neg them out of the water. I don't know why AnimalTobacco hasn't been IP banned, for example. Him being here makes me doubt the system of community policing is even working, at all, if the mods aren't taking the final step for someone who has to constantly create new usernames to dodge rep bans. Everyone is bitching about DT being a Republican safe space (which it is) but no one is coming up with suggestions as to how to change that.
  3. That and Rs will be able to post in there without fear of being crowd sourced. I'm interested in hearing the Republican take on everything going on, but I'll never hear it because they won't go into the CR. Why do you think that is?
  4. Great, now it’s going to turn out he faked his death to blow up the entire eastern seaboard because Helobious had to give another one of his monkey paw cursed hot takes.
  5. If he’s truly spamming, then he gets banned. Otherwise, those threads are easy to ignore. Just don’t click on them.
  6. If the owners of this site want actual free discourse on political topics to be confined to the CR, then rep needs to be disabled in the CR.
  7. I just want to make sure it is abundantly clear that my reference to Hillary is used only to reference a point in time where the debate over whether the mishandling of classified docs is a crime was at its zenith on the old board. I said back then that politics had nothing to do with my stance, and I hold that position now. Politics has 0% to do with my post. I’m looking for intellectual honesty, not political affiliation.
  8. I’m referencing the hot button topic of James Comey announcing the investigation of Hillary Clinton just before the election in October of 2016 due to her storing State Department emails, some of which were classified, on a private server in an unsecured location. You’re giving a good argument as to why some situations are different than others. Cooperation and mea culpas do carry some weight here.
  9. I just want to hear from from the folks who swore up and down in October of 2016 that the mishandling of classified documents is a national security issue and the identity of the offender is irrelevant. Whoever they are, they should be punished to the full extent of the law. Politics have nothing to do with it. I was one of them. My position hasn’t changed. I’d be interested to hear from those whose position has changed. Conversely, I’d want to hear from the folks who swore up and down in October of 2016 that the mishandling of classified documents was not that big of a deal. I’d be interested to hear from those whose position has changed.
  10. I dated a girl who insisted on splitting everything 50/50. She was a keeper, but it didn’t work out. Nobody’s fault, but young people need to make the best decisions for their future and our decisions led us down different paths. We’re still friends and we both are doing just fine. People get too hung up on the transactional nature of relationships. It’s always there to some degree, but couples who make it the centerpiece of their relationship are doomed to fail. Things go a lot smoother when the expectations are low. Be with someone you would enjoy going to dinner with even if sex wasn’t in the cards after. Respect should be the centerpiece and only expectation. If you start out on that concept with every prospective partner you have, you’ll be fine.
  11. I have serious doubts that Russia would have used nukes already. I think there are two possible scenarios as to why. One being that it has been made abundantly clear to Putin that any nuclear explosion of Russian origin on European territory, even Russia’s own territory, would merit a nuclear response from NATO. The other being that Russia’s show of force has been to abysmal, so third-worldly, that Putin has serious doubts as to whether their nuclear arsenal is actually functional. If Russia had a failed nuclear attack that was an absolute dud or even a fizzle, then you would see their satellites start nibbling at the edges taking territory and likely Putin would be assassinated. Fear of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is way more powerful than that arsenal’s capabilities, at this point.
  12. If you look like a dork while using it, the tech isn’t ready, yet.
  13. Aviation subreddit speculates that the plane experienced a decompression/hypoxia event just before it descended for approach and the jets scramble because they were unresponsive. Plane did a 180 likely because that was the next waypoint in the nav. Ran out of fuel and plummeted to earth in a rural area. Best of a bad situation in that regard.
  14. Rant incoming. I had a quick thought on this but the words started flowing and I started feeling like I had to write it. I don't think it was MeToo. By the time the migration happened, MeToo had gone full cycle from informative and transformative to ridiculous. In the end, there is always a "bully" mentality that takes over any movement. Rather than stamping out bad behavior when they see it, they actively seek it and find it wherever they can and it becomes a hammer looking for a nail situation. After that, society generally shifts back to a reasonable middle that applies the true lessons learned from the experience. The same applied to MeToo. We learned a lot from it, but innocent people were starting to get dragged and that's where the shift started. We had that combined with a lot of posters coming forward and sharing why some of the language and attitudes we were using was harmful even though we weren't seeing a direct result of that harm on the board itself. Despite being rough around the edges, we were compassionate and understanding enough to get smoothed out a little. Our new normal was the "kinder, gentler" that we saw, but a lot of the old attitudes persisted. I know I'm crossing streams a little here by saying this, but we were ~2 years into the Trump presidency when we migrated over to Surly. The deeper we got into that administration, the more parts of society leaned into the bully mentality without a particular movement behind it. As long as you hurt the right people, you get a pass. And it isn't exclusive to one party or the other. True informative and explorative discourse is no longer the point. Pain is the point in a lot of our tribal social discourse these days, so the loudest and most brash of each tribe acts as the "champion" that people will rally around. If people are going to whine that I'm being political by observing and stating that, I don't know what to say. However, I think we are well into the "ridiculous" stage and I truly think the bulk of society is trying to find the new normal or middle. COVID is really, really complicating that, though. I'm of the strong opinion that COVID was a national tragedy that we haven't emotionally unpacked, yet. For ~2 weeks, the vast majority of society was terrified. We had no idea what was coming down the pike. China wasn't sharing any data and the rumors were the stuff of nightmares, it seemed like Italy was on the doorstep of the modern era Black Death, almost all the food was gone, economic collapse was a certainty, substance abuse skyrocketed, mental health plummeted, and the nation was emotionally and spiritually hollowed out. And it wasn't even April, yet. It was this generation's 9/11 without the national bonding after. Instead, it was a national tearing. Anger is the outlet of fear and there was, and still is, a lot of fear that is being vented as anger. Thus was born the tribal champions. Everyone is angry but can't shout at everyone they want to shout at. But their champions can. Elon is just one of them. We, as a nation, need to fix our anger problem. We need to start humanizing each other, again. Either we figure it out or the next disaster will figure it out for us.
  15. You gotta say it the way it was said over and over again during the impeachment proceedings. NATE Pawwl
  16. I don’t know a whole lot about the drones used, but they looked low and slow and loud. The drones were either traversing the Russian countryside for 10 minutes and their defenses couldn’t get ready or Ukraine got all the necessary equipment up to the Moscow city limits under Russia’s nose like a damn sight gag from a Harold Ramis or John Hughes movie. Either way, just another embarrassing display of Russian military capability. A sad state of affairs for Putin where an inside job would be the least embarrassing explanation of how that happened.
  17. USAA seems to be going through a nationwide technical issue. Myself and apparently a ton of people can’t login and are being told by the automated system their accounts don’t exist when trying to access them over the phone. Hope it’s just a server issue and not a breach issue.
  18. Ah, the good ol’ “you hate America because you’re pointing out its flaws and saying we can do better as a society.” We can, and should always strive to be, better.
  19. Well, that and their argument ignores simple economics. They whine about people benefiting off of social services without "paying" but don't realize that the business that they own/pay them large salaries requires, to various degrees, a lower wage-earning populace that needs to use those roads to get to those jobs and use those services to subsidize their low wages that benefit those companies. The analogy of the renter down the street who pays $900 a month benefiting from the same services as the home owner the other side of the street, even though they don't pay property taxes, is ignoring that the person who owns the real estate that is being rented to... wait for it... earn a profit. So, take that gripe up with the owner of the rental, not the poor person renting it.
  20. I always hated that argument. “They have access to the same resources as everyone else! Why are they so poor?” The answer is that it is systematic wealth and poverty. An analogy that I use for this has two 18 year olds. One grew up as a carpenter’s son and the other grew up without any exposure to carpentry. You take them to a workshop, give them all the same exact tools, materials, and working conditions. If you were to tell them “you have one week to build me a canoe. The one who can build the best canoe gets $250k for college,” who in the hell do you think is going to win that competition? The carpenter’s son is the odds-on favorite by a long shot. Sure, the other kid might win, but it would only be in absolute fluke scenarios. 99 times out of 100, the carpenter’s son wins that purely based on his exposure to carpentry growing up. The point is that mere exposure to households that have college graduates or hard working people or business owners sets a particular tone for a person as they go out into the world. So, what do we do with the people who grow up in abject poverty? The ones who grow up with a single parent on welfare? The ones who have deadbeat parents? Do we just toss them to the trash heap or do we give them an opportunity to compete with everyone that didn’t have to struggle growing up? The cynic in me says that the real answer is traced back to the haves and the have-nots. Those who have benefited from their institutional advantages don’t want to share. “I worked hard for this! Why do I need to help lazy poor people?” Well, you didn’t have to work as hard as that poor person would to get where you are. You had advantages that you can’t even perceive because they were so embedded in your upbringing. Something that is just every day for you would be absolutely life changing for a truly poor person. Take food security, for example. There are millions of children and teenagers that won’t know where their meals will come from over the summer. How in the world are they supposed to even think about their future when they don’t even know if they can eat in the present? There’s more than enough resources to go around. Progressive tax is one mechanism to spread those resources out. I’m not going to slap my paystub down on the table, but I do very well. I enjoy a lot of creature comforts and my kids enjoy a way better lifestyle than I did growing up. A flat tax would have me paying less, but I have no problems paying more with the hopes that the extra I pay will go towards bettering society. “Society grows great when old men plant trees knowing they will never enjoy their shade.”
  21. So TJ really wasn’t TPE. So much history in this community and we lose a little of it, bit by bit, every year. As he goes, so goes a piece of the HornFans/Shaggy/Surly lore. Vaya con Dios.
  22. On mobile, so can’t paste the whole thing, but now being reported on CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news/index.html
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