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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. To be fair, Joe Rogan is impressed by the talking Zoltar fortune telling machine.... "HOW DID HE KNOW THAT??"
  2. This. The decline in American religious life and the negatives it brings aren't so much about a "loss of faith" as they are a "loss of community." People's "church group" and "church friends" are important in keeping people grounded, and believe it or not, even offer some diversity (more than you have in much more insular community). I grew up in a Catholic parish, and am involved in a Presbyterian church today. In both groups were people of different experiences, different socioeconomic groups (grew up with some pretty rich kids, and some whose families were just scraping by, but we were all at the church picnic and our first communion together). But the point is, they were a community. Our "Bowling Alone" problems have only become more acute, impacted by both the COVID experience and the increasing ability (and incentive) to engage online only. Having a church community is a counter to that phenomenon, and by losing that community (along with all the other communities we've been losing), we've become even further adrift. The truth is that "we are all in this together." But the "truth" we are trying to live (and failing at, by the way) is "fuck you, I'm all that matters, and I can't be sure I'm winning if I don't see you losing." Zero-sum thinking is almost always destructive, and we've elevated it to a near-holy rite.
  3. au contraire. Ingratiating yourself with the subject so you can observe them more closely is top-notch fed work....
  4. Seems they usually are. And remember, for every one of these types who actually pulls something off....there are a shitload more that get caught beforehand, chicken out at the last minute, or just try and fail. Because the Occam's Razor of this timeline is that when shit like this happens, it's never a complex, well-planned conspiracy ("it's a professional hit, by a well-trained team"). No. It is pretty much always exactly what we have here, and have had going back to (and past) Oswald: a single fucking nutbar doing nutbar shit.
  5. Yeah, there's surely some smoke there. But nothing released that's even close to definitive enough to reach any firm conclusion. Let's see what the actual facts are, not what they are rumored to be or even preliminarily reported to be by local authorities. It certainly seems odd that a black man would choose to commit suicide by hanging, outside, from a tree. But, it's not impossible, it's a fucked up world and people do fucked up things.
  6. Yeah....that's a brain in self-defense mode. You don't process -- you refuse to process -- the larger horror, because it's more than you can handle (even though you are the one who did it). So, you fill the space with the mundane. See the videos you can find online of cops interrogating a drunk driver who just killed someone/a family, even after the driver knows that is what happened. They'll talk about stuff like "but I need to pick up my dog," or "okay, but my phone was in the car, I need to get my phone." We're watching thinking "WTF? You just killed someone, and you're worried about picking up your dog from the groomer?" But that's what the human brain does. The more we see and learn, the fucking sadder it is. And the more it fits into an odd grouping that is all-too common: fucking lost souls. Ending up in a way that they didn't need to end up.
  7. They don't mistrust it, they demonize it. Believe that maybe, just possibly, we should look out for each other? You are an evil communist socialist and, per the rhetoric of the regime this past week in particular, you should be "exiled" from this country. Seriously. That's literally what Stephen Miller said. We don't come back from this. We were never coming back from this. The United States as even a potential force for good and a world leader is not just a dead idea -- we are destined to be the opposite. We are going to be Russia, with more tech oligarchs and less vodka.
  8. Which is probably for the best. But no worries, the MAGA Utah authorities seem to be doing their best to present a pre-cooked narrative of the shooter being a leftist, omitting and ignoring any mention of the groyper/fucked up complex and unbalanced worldview that looks to be the actual case. We are going to get a curated narrative that matches up with the desired story by the MAGA team running things, and nothing that muddies it even in the slightest. Which is what they want, and need. They have desperately wanted this event to provide them what they've been longing for: the opportunity to pursue both legal and physical extermination of anyone and everyone who does not swear 100% featly to the regime. Don't listen to me. Listen to what they've all been saying for the past week.
  9. I think the point is....they might have. Without anywhere else to hide/seek refuge, a lot more of them realized "welp, I guess I better go buy and put on some big-boy pants and go out and learn how to live in the real world." Alternative universes were a lot harder to find and immerse yourself in (not that they were impossible, just harder to cobble together consistently). And again, the rabbit-hole these guys are going down doesn't fit neatly into "alt-right," "right," or "left." It's a fucking chimera of random, often outrageous and/or frustrated, worldviews and positions. You can pluck one thing they say and it's pure leftism out of Das Capital, then the very next term they use is pure modern Christofascism.
  10. TLDR: we would all be better off if folks lived in a simpler, more innocent internet ecosystem like Surly, where people just need tree fiddy to PM Derka about muledick.
  11. Libertarians standing up for liberty and freedom when all they are arguing/fighting against is imaginary left-wing authoritarianism: Libertarians when presented with actual right-wing authoritarianism:
  12. The thing is, a lot of those maga frat kids DO have something to offer. They dress well (at least for their chosen audience). They have some social skills, can make chicks laugh, all that. They have money, and can and will take a gal out to a nice seafood dinner. Sure, in their heart, they're douchey assholes who have a higher chance of date-raping a gal, but they've got some game and some qualities that make them attractive to at least some women. And let's not forget, there are plenty of maga women out there. Those guys and the women who want to get with them have always existed. Shit, 35+ years ago, I worked in a bar where a dude came in most every night with two different babes on his arm. He was, at that exact time, on trial for being a slimeball who recorded himself having sex with a gal and then showing the video around town. It was undisputed that he'd done it. But, he was good looking, had money, and could be charming. And that was enough, even though he was literally a judicially admitted giant piece of shit, for him to get girls (and attractive ones). But even those women, who seemingly have little self-respect, aren't going to be interested in basement-dwelling dorks who don't know how to have a conversation and dress like shit and don't have the first clue about what women are actually interested in.
  13. I also know this is true. I recall talking to one of our younger female employees, and she told tale of guys hitting on her in the gym that literally made my jaw drop. Dudes had ZERO game, came across as creepy and entitled, then when she quite gently and politely shut them down, they'd fire back with "whatever, you're fat anyway" or some shit like that. No concept of "huh, I guess that she's just not interested," or "okay, lemme think about where I went wrong and what I can do to refine myself/my approach." Just starting from a position of entitlement, rolling straight into abuse. Well, no, buddy, you're NEVER gonna get laid with that shitty attitude and approach. And why would you? What sane woman is interested in THAT guy? If presented with the problem of "women aren't interested in the kind of guy I am," it seems that the easiest solution is "work on being the kind of guy women WOULD be interested in." I'll freely confess that as a slightly chubby, glasses-wearing nerdy kid entering adolescence, I realized I had some choices to make. Dressed better, got in better shape, worked on my social skills so I could talk and listen to a variety of people and viewpoints (no, man, she does NOT want to listen to you talk about Star Wars for an hour - no matter how much the internet now sells the bullshit of "hot chicks totally dig Star Wars and nerds!"), went out there and tried and failed, refined my shit and tried again. Turns out that with just a modicum of work, you could turn that awkward middle schooler into a guy who did plenty well with girls over the years. This crowd? It's "be my porn star sex toy who does what I say, or else I call you a cunt and say all women are bitches." When what you have to offer is....shit.
  14. But understand that THAT probably had a lot to do with the fact that your boss was banging her. And she had big tits. And you had neither quality.
  15. Yep. In my younger skirt-chasing days....nothing outside of the baseline legal standards would have stopped me. Certainly no notions of self-respect got in the way. If I'd ended up with the impression that what it took to get a gal was wearing a sweet watermelon helmet, you'd have seen me like this on campus every f'ing day: Functionally every choice I made - what I wore, where I'd hang out, the music I'd listen to, etc. - was driven by a desire to make myself a better candidate for sweet loving with a lady. The amount of "quit" some of these guys have blows me away.
  16. That's because the regime has made it very clear that there is only one criterion that matters in bidding, contracting, etc.: loyalty and fealty to the regime. Not only does the quality or price of the product or service not matter, "high quality at a good price" is a net-negative, because such an approach presents limited opportunity for grift and enrichment of members of the regime.
  17. Got it. And not only fair, but absolutely accurate. The speed with which companies shifted from "we should have a DEI program to work towards a more balanced, high-qualityworkforce" to "yes, we're going to bid on that gas chamber project at Auschwitz, and here are the names of all of our employees who have ever said anything disloyal to the regime" is disappointing. Not shocking or surprising, but still disappointing.
  18. I do have one of the little basket filters that fits in the machine -- I fill it with Community medium roast, which is my platonic ideal cup of coffee. Dudes, I'm not a coffee snob and never will be.
  19. I understand about 20% of that. It's weird as shit. It's totally fucked up. But I've checked the timeline...and we're in America, 2025. So....there's like a 95% chance that's entirely fucking accurate. We are a messed up fucking country/planet right now.
  20. You know, I wanted to go back and correct this statement I made. I HAVE made reference to the ethnicity of Cowboys fans in the past - specifically, to hispanic Cowboys fans. I've made that reference with respect to.....how much they've assimilated. As in, you've got a group of dudes who work their ass off all week, and then on Sunday, they want to fire up the grill, pop open a few cold ones with their buddies, and watch los Cowboys. That's as American and Texan as it fucking gets. FFS, we should all want to hang with those dudes (see, I like hanging with Cowboys fans because I can drink their beer and laugh at their misfortune). So "have you noticed that Cowboys fans include a buncha mexican dudes" is evidence for the EXACT THING that Charlie Kirk specifically bitched about - seriously, he used these exact words or close to them: "they come here and they don't assimilate." How much more can you assimilate into American and Texan culture than grilling meat and drinking cold beer while watching the NFL on Sunday? There's only one thing they can't do, and that's the thing that he holds against them: they can't turn white. And THAT is what the Charlie Kirks of the world mean by "they don't assimilate."
  21. Also this. Every single person lamenting "inflammatory rhetoric leading to violence" has zero, nada to say about Kirk saying that the president of the United States should be executed. HIs literal words were that Biden "should be given the death penalty." So, to be clear, impermissible "inflammatory rhetoric" is calling Charlie Kirk a racist when he says plainly racist shit. A big nothingburger, making no impact on your conclusion that he's a good Christian man, is saying that a member of the political opposition, who happens to hold the office of POTUS, "should be given the death penalty." Wilhoit's law, double-standard, all of that. Enchubben has no answer for it. Because his belief system is that anything conservatives say or do is per se okay, because they are conservatives. And nothing that anyone opposing conservatives do is good or merits any protection, because they are not conservatives. Enchubben believes this, and thinks it is okay and is how things should work.
  22. That's certainly true. But....it's also where and how change STARTS. Shit, it's like family counseling. I'm not asking you to show up to counseling already agreeing that you have your own shit/baggage to deal with, and acknowledging that some of that shit/baggage contributes to our overall family dysfunction. I'm just asking you to show up. Be there. Participate in the conversation. Over time, the honesty and self-reflection will come, and then we'll end up in a place where we can all move forward together. Shit, I'm not asking or expecting Lockheed to hire a shitload of engineers from HBCUs. I would just like it if they sent a rep to interview week and solicited resumes from candidates at HBCUs. Maybe they start out thinking it's a waste of time, and shit duty, and all that. But....they end up hiring a guy from Jackson State. And he turns out to be a damned fine engineer. And the guys on his team at LM end up realizing that Jackson State cranks out some good engineers. And that guy says "hey, my prof at Jackson State knows who his best students are, why don't we call him and see if he has any recs for us?" And they get the names of three top students. And they end up interviewing and hiring another JS engineer. And that's how things roll on. Those JS engineers? They're as good or better than someone from Georgia Tech, who studied under the same prof the 60 year old LM team lead studied under, back when almost all the engineering students were white dudes. Not only can we not start the process or conversation anymore, even having the conversation leads to full-on attack and sanction against the enterprise by the government of the United States (and the State of Texas, in our case). It is literally AGAINST THE LAW NOW for Lockheed Martin to make any particular effort to reach out to HBCUs that were not previously on its interview plan.
  23. Bingo. Shit, we can have that discussion about sexual harassment and sexual harassment training (as just another example of a policy that is both necessary and helpful, AND can be silly, burdensome, and counterproductive). Bosses telling subordinates they have to suck their dick to get a promotion: we can uniformly agree that is bad, and places should have a policy against it. Extremes that lead to silly SNL skits like this one show us that sexual harassment training can indeed reach levels of absurdity: Takeaway? Any and all policies, rules, etc. can be misused, have outliers, etc. The answer is to address the instances of misuse/misapplication. That is NOT what happened with DEI. It, instead, became a not-even-subtle codeword for "reverse discrimination, we must protect our white men!" Oh, and DEI isn't just for large organizations. I work in a mid-size outfit, and if all we did was interview and hire lawyers through our existing network, we'd be limiting the fuck out of our pool. Having an approach that has us look at a broad spectrum of schools, including places that none of us attended, gives us a much better sample size to hire from. When it comes time to hire, we're still going to hire the best candidate who seems like they can perform the specific job the best, but it also means that we may have a minority candidate or two in the mix when we otherwise wouldn't have. And truthfully, that cuts in ALL directions, or it can at a given point in time. Take into account this fact: 60% of college students are female. At many law schools, nearly 70% of the student body is female. If a law firm wants to have diverse perspectives, and attorneys who are familiar with and adept at communicating in and across gender lines, it would seem wise to try to make sure that you at least have decent outreach to the males in the student body, so they drop their resumes too. You still may end up hiring women at a 60-40 clip, because you're going to hire the best candidate for a job, but if you don't get but one male resume for a job, and 10 female resumes, then your odds of hiring a male have dropped below what the baseline should be. None of this matters, though. Because politically, the term "DEI" doesn't have anything to do with that. It means that any policy that doesn't default to white males, and hiring through existing networks (which historically and to present, for many higher-end jobs, are dominated by white men who know other white men), must be banned.
  24. I mean...I'd order tacos de tripas dorados someplace, but you know, you do you.
  25. I am a man of complexity and contradictions. I love Michelin-star meals, and Allsup's burritos. I am an 8th generation Texan with multiple pairs of dirty work boots who loves traveling to and spending time in European world capitals. Don't try to understand me. Just be in awe of my beautiful complexity. And make sure I don't run outta k-cups, I get cranky when I miss my morning coffee.
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