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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • I feel like this is a 1000 IQ move if you’re a fuckboi.

    Put these pictures up. Girl comes over. She’s already planning on hooking up, so she’ll be inclined to not immediately bail. If she looks uncomfortable, claim that you put those posters up before Elon went insane, and just haven’t gotten around to taking them down. The picture of Elon is older and the Jobs poster is 2015-coded, so that will be enough of an excuse for the vast majority of people who already have other things on their mind.

    After the deed is done, be respectful. However at the same time drop some phrases that are conservative-coded, but still with plausible deniability. Something about fraud in Ukraine, referring to being non-binary as a “lifestyle choice” that you “personally respect”, mention the upcoming stablecoin legislation, etc.

    Girl leaves, weirded out but not immediately fearful. A day later, text her. Say that you had a great time, but you sensed there was a bit of a disconnect. Tell her that you could go either way, but the ball was in her court. If she brings up politics, say something like “I’m an independent, I respect everyone’s beliefs, and while I respect your perspective I don’t plan on changing myself for you”.

    Maybe she declines, maybe she ghosts you. It doesn’t matter, the point is that you don’t have to deal with her, and that feeling is mutual.

    Same result as a hookup and ghosting, but enough plausible deniability that your name won’t go up on social media


  • Bernie is a social media merchant. Dude is an expert at looking like he’s challenging the status quo, while never doing anything that could truly piss them off. Dude straight up ended an interview when the interviewer started suggesting Schumer face a primary challenge.

    Trump is awful, but his election is in its own way proof that the American people are willing to reject the status quo and embrace change.

    Democrats don’t need their own Trump, but they do need someone who is results oriented and willing to abandon a lot of longstanding assumptions.






  • The current senator minority leader is Chuck Schumer. He’s incapable of being an effective opposition leader. The dude is addicted to the status quo, terrified of rocking the boat, completely disconnected with the American people, and overall stuck in the mindset of a 20th century politician.

    There is a lot of frustration with him among democratic voters, but he’s maintained his power among the donors and other senators.

    A huge part of his argument is that there’s nobody else that can replace him. At the moment, he’s not wrong. His rivals in the Senate are either cut from the same cloth as him, or are in their own way content with the status quo. I know people on Lemmy love Bernie, but the man was elected to the Senate the same year Pokemon Diamond and Pearl hit the shelves and is no closer to the revolution he promised.

    While this filibuster doesn’t accomplish anything itself, it’s part of a larger effort Booker is making to raise his national profile and position himself so he can replace Schumer. In that context, it’s an important and smart strategic move.

    Ironically this filibuster was probably less physically and emotionally exhausting than trying to teach all of his Senate colleagues how to effectively use TikTok.






  • BS. A recurring theme of DS9 was that the federation principles only exist because in times of crisis there are people willing to do what must be done to prevent annihilation.

    Both Ross and Sisco did fucked up shit. They didn’t do it because they wanted to, or because they deluded themselves into thinking they had the moral high ground. They knowingly crossed lines they swore they would never cross because that’s what they felt they needed to do to ensure the safety of their people.

    They weren’t wrong.

    Nothing Ross did when working with Section 31 was worse than what Sisco did during the events of In the Pale Moonlight. We just didn’t get a POV entry of Ross monologuing about how he hates what he’s becoming, but at the end of the day he can live with it.


  • A danish news organization will have articles about what Danes think of tariffs. The same with a Canadian news organization, a German one, etc. Yet for some reason almost all of what American sources talk about is what citizens of other countries think.

    I think the fact that American establishment publications put out more articles about what citizens of other countries think of tariffs than what Americans think of tariffs is part of the reason why Trump won.

    The upper 10 percent of liberal America seems to think of themselves as citizens of the world, and seems to spend more time caring about anything other than Americans outside their hyper-specific socioeconomic niche.

    The end result of this mentality is that Trump was able to make huge inroads with groups that were historically democrat’s bread and butter in 2024. Even if he was lying through his teeth, he and his team made real efforts to appeal to issues that were important for demographics.

    I’m willing to bet you could find people from Hawaii to Mississippi altering their spending habits in fear of Trump’s tarrifs. Maybe the press should spend more time reporting on them.

    Obviously, neither Trump nor MAGA is the answer. However there needs to be a way to talk with how out of touch so much of our establishment is without sounding like a Trump supporter.



  • This article almost feels like gaslighting.

    Disney has put out a ton of content that follows the same power. It generally can be summarized as "put out overpriced mediocre garbage, hamfist some culture war stuff in there, and then imply anyone who doesn’t like it is some sort of deplorable.

    This movie:

    • Had a budget of at least 270 million, meaning that it would have to make like 700 million to be considered a success
    • Looks mediocre as all hell regardless
    • The Dwarves are CGI monstrosities that feel more at home in a horror movie. This is because Disney kept pivoting to dumber decisions based off petty internet drama.
    • The decision to cast a Latina in a movie where the actress is explicitly white is on some level a deliberate decision to start culture war drama. Disney has had multiple WoC as princesses for over twenty years now, so it’s not like they didn’t have other movies they could have adapted
    • They made Zegler look a lot less attractive than she is IRL via poor wardrobe choices, while managing to capture Gadot’s beauty.
    • Israel aside, I have zero idea why Gadot is cast in this. She’s like the female version of the rock in that she’s only really good in stupid action movies that take absolutely minimal acting abilities
    • I understand Lemmy is super pro-Palestinian. However the general viewing public is a lot more divided, and many people simply don’t want modern politics in a movie they take their small children too. This is the kind of shit you say at a premier of a small budget film, not something that has to gross hundreds of millions of dollars
    • Zegler also harassed Gadot on set, despite the fact that she was trying very hard to not bring politics into the workplace. Again I understand Lemmy might think that’s amazing, but most working people recognize that as the kind of shit they put in an HR training video
    • Zegler also seemed to go out of her way to insult hardcore fans of the show. This is especially egregious because hardcore fans are the type of people to see an IP no matter how bad this is.
    • Unlike Joker where you can just dodge criticism by calling fans of the original incels, hardcore fans of Snow White tend to be gay men and white women. The end result was a lot of the outrage came in the form of gossip influencers throwing shade, which the Disney PR machine was not prepared to counter.

    The most ridiculous part of this is the trailer for Lilo and Stich, a movie that is a million times more minority forward than the Snow White remake, dropped to largely positive reception. 2024 is going to be simultaneous “Snow White failed because of bigotry” and a movie centered around two woman of color, and unconventional definition of family, and Hawaiian culture prints money hand over fist.



  • Honestly, LinkedIn influencers aside, AI art seems to be dominated by two types of people

    1. Techies. Not “tech bros”, like people genuinely excited about the technology. They often create AI art as a way to better understand the technology, push the limits of what is possible, and produce art that exists in their head, but they wouldn’t otherwise have the skill to create.

    2. Degenerate gooners. Basically they’ve spent so much of their life gooning that they’ve come to hate the current state of online porn. Not like in a “I need a weirder fetish” sort of way, but in a “modern porn is often low effort, and you have to sift through a lot of crap to find something you like”. They work tirelessly to adapt AI image models that weren’t meant for any sort of nudity into their own personal spankbank generators. They are also extremely willing to share all their tricks and tuning, because their idea of a perfect world is where everyone has their ability to casually generate personalized porn.

    The two things those groups have in common is that they aren’t making money, and they put in hours and hours a day to perfect their craft. I don’t know if I would call it art, but I would definitely say those people can do things a layman can’t.