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ndawg

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by ndawg

  1. No doubt, I agree with you about confronting death regularly. I do it too, but I still get freaked out by it from time to time. I was just responding to someone who suggested that the faithful are the only ones that fear death, or that their faith is a just a tool to stave of the fear of death because they're weak. We're all weak piles of matter.
  2. It never bothered me until it really dawned on me that I was going to die eventually. Now, I don't think of death as being frightening, but it is incredibly depressing and panic-attack-inducing. It's frightening to think my life could be completely cut short, and everything I aim to achieve or explore will never be even a possibility. You and I are going to be erased. That shit cuts deep, man.
  3. Grew up in a non-religious household, so my vantage point causes me to notice antisocial personality disorders before noticing religious affiliation. I am, however, fascinated by the notion of self betterment, and that's led to me to appreciate a few spiritual teachers over the years. There's a saying the Christians have -- you'll know the good ones by the fruit. The Trumpkin evangelicals are displaying that they are rotten to their core. They don't really believe any of this shit. They're malevolent people.
  4. Don't worry, evangelicals will make sure to point out that this means that you are going to hell, instead of realizing that they shit the bed.
  5. This deep state rhetoric is going to keep the base going strong till the bitter end. Trump in a few weeks: "This is all a deep state plot." Trumpkins: "I *knew* it. They orchestrated all this negative press, all these indictments, and all these criminal charges. They used the raid to plant evidence. Stormy Daniels is an asset."
  6. And it's not like only the 1% can afford to fly first class domestic. He must be a cheap ass.
  7. The GOP has become the Church of Scientology. Setting up smear websites to discredit those who "attack" them is straight up their playbook. There's building a castle in the sky, and moving in. The GOP has been living in a state of permafried insanity for a while now.
  8. Well, assume for a second that Trump is the criminal we all know he is, and his election required a large portion of the population to vote for Trump in spite of very troubling authoritarian tendencies because they placed their trust in fake news. Given that assumption, we're already way past the point where our democracy can continue to thrive without some intervention. Trump's downfall might be that intervention, which is what I think Hugo is hinting at. Call me cynical, but these days I'm sympathetic with Brisket's take. There's no fixing this stupid.
  9. I can't get behind this take. Trump inherited a favorable economy, relatively few foreign threats, and a mandate to make occasional hollow gestures towards some bullshit campaign promises that no intelligent person expected him to ever follow through on. Bush got the dot com bust, 9/11, and conservative base that expected him to seize every opportunity to advance their agenda. Trump's situation is the exact opposite in every way. Hell, the GOP is *thankful* that no one has yet caught a photo of him at a $2-steak-strip-club wearing a soiled child's bib covered buffalo wing remnants that are also all over the rest of his shitty body. Had Trump inherited 9/11, on the other hand, he'd already be bombing the whole of the middle east back into the stone ages. Even if you don't believe me, let's just agree *not* to use past presidents to diminish just how shitty this horrible human being's aborted shitshow of a "presidency" has truly been.
  10. I had never seen that one. It's definitely the best.
  11. Look, there's no one who has done more to harm race relations in this country than Obama.[/sarcasm]
  12. Damn, Trey Gowdy, just watched his interview. Just goes to show, I'll take a good dude with awful beliefs over an awful dude with good beliefs.
  13. I've had some freaking great times up in Colorado and the PNW eating 200+mg edibles when I had no business eating even a microgram over 50. Can't wait for Texas to legalize...
  14. Freaking dig this thread. Started working out (lightly) about three years ago. For once in my life I didn't try to create quick results. Just added a little bit more exercise gradually, increased my water intake, and allowed myself to start becoming a bit less attached to food and drink. I've had some brief periods where I exercised a bit less and ate a bit more, but overall I've lost 15lbs, but probably lost 25lbs of muscle and gained 10lbs of fat. The great thing is that I don't have a wagon to get "off" of, and I can only go up from here. I still eat incredibly unhealthy things from time to time, when the spirit moves me, and when I'm on business trips, there's often a considerable amount of drinking involved. These days, working out involves a lot of really challenging exercises that I would have previously thought impossible. I've become a big fan of bodyweight exercises: pistol squats, one arm pushups, etc. It's fun, too. I suppose I'm in the "get fit slowly" camp. I could still stand to lose about 10lbs of flab (currently 6'0 and ~190lbs), so for a few months I'm going to experiment with avoiding bread (and beer, which is really just liquified bread).
  15. The reason why Swam deserves to be ignored is that no matter how many times he gets his ass shown to him, he never owns up to being wrong.
  16. It's not stupidity, it's corruption. If you or I wanted to make Trump look innocent with respect to Russia, the best way is to swing for the fences and say something outlandish like that. Idiots are going to walk away from that thinking, "well, I don't know about him being the *toughest* on Russia, but he certainly isn't *weak* on Russia."
  17. It's the opposite. Root cause analysis.
  18. Yeah I got no excuse, I was really high when I wrote that.
  19. What if Bezos got the Post to publish an article that deliberately triggers Trump, in order to make money shorting his own stocks? Either he goes to jail _and_ a court of law has to put Trump's thin skin on public record, or he gets away with it.
  20. Trump's departure timeline IMO depends on the Republicans confidence heading in to the mid-terms. If they realize they are up shit's creek, they might like the optics of making the opening gesture against Trump. It shows them to be making the ultimate sacrifice for their party in order to help save the Union. From our present vantage point we might dismiss this cynically, but I believe it would be represent "feel good" moment for Americans that would make a lot of potential Republican leans feel comfortable voting (R), or give some people intending to vote (D) feel justified in staying home. On the other hand, if the Republicans believe they'll win the mid-terms, then we won't see much of anything until after the mid-terms. (Wow that felt like writing a shitty $9.95 recruiting article. I'm disgusted with my own hedging, heh)
  21. This is almost always a stupid discussion disguised as an intelligent one. Every human is blessed with a brain that is many times larger than our closest primates, relatively speaking. We developed really powerful saliva and teeth for digesting food just to continuously pump enough calories to feed our massive brains. You might find, say, a disproportionate number of World's Strongest Man competition winners from Nordic countries. Or a majority of marathon runners from particular countries in Africa. Does this mean much on a macro scale? Nope, because the strongest man from Kenya, if he works at it, will still be stronger than 99.999% of all men. And the fastest marathon runner from Scandanavia, if he really practices, will smoke 99.999% of all men over 26 miles. Find a population with malnourishment and you'll find lower IQs. Are the people stupid? Nope, just malnourished. In every one of us, genetic potential is just a drop of bitters mixed into a cocktail that otherwise contains a stupefying amount of variability. Our genetics based on ethnic background only really make a difference when comparing the top human beings alive. It really has no material bearing on our everyday potential.
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