mbg721

26 ms·

361.
by mbg721 4y ago
Sure, casual Christianity is dying. But saying "Oh, I'm an atheist" doesn't mean that you lack a religion any more than Michael Scott yelling "I declare bankruptcy!" is a declaration of bankruptcy.
362.
by mbg721 4y ago
My point was that you're never going to find consistent principles in a group that's really a coalition of the persistently unhappy, beyond "this isn't progress".
363.
by mbg721 4y ago
Religion isn't dying; Christianity might be dying. What you're seeing is fashion, not progress. It's like when older people say "Oh, the kids are so good with technology," when mostly it's clicking around wal
364.
by mbg721 4y ago
That's interesting to me, since teenagers were really the only ones who ever used it. It's not just the subtext, since everybody says "idiot" and "moron". But I have a hard time imagining an f-bomb-throwing 5
365.
by mbg721 4y ago
Yes, I'm reassured every time I try to file a financial statement at work and the accountants send it back with "You can't say 'cunting dollars'."
366.
by mbg721 4y ago
I think the first alien we ever encounter will be something like a bacterium or virus, it will spur a debate as to whether it's really life, and it might already have happened.
367.
by mbg721 4y ago
If you summed up the American right as "We don't all agree what we want, but it's certainly not this. It was better before," I think most right-wingers would agree. "Reactionary" is thrown around as though al
368.
by mbg721 4y ago
The English language is deep in a crisis of lacking effective profanity. We neutered "fuck" by using it too much, Aussies use "cunt" as an adverb at the dinner table, all we're left with is ethnic slurs.
369.
by mbg721 4y ago
Fair enough, but you have to realize that nobody calls themselves "alt-right" with the philosophy "Oh boy, more racism and school shootings is just what this country needs."
370.
by mbg721 4y ago
"Alt" is just a way of calling out beliefs you don't like as outliers, hoping that will make them go away.
371.
by mbg721 4y ago
How is "alt-right" different from general "right-wing"? Regardless, AM radio is probably the closest thing, although call-in shows are very low-tech as a form of "social media".
372.
by mbg721 4y ago
For that to happen, it has to lose all its momentum, MySpace style. I don't see anything right now replacing it, which is why the journalist class is in such a state of impotent rage.
373.
by mbg721 4y ago
That's actually smart, without my mocking scare-quotes. I think we very much agree, but I'm responding in the context of one parent higher comment than you are.
374.
by mbg721 4y ago
A handy hack for getting around pesky legal protections of human rights is to realize that while the rights themselves are protected, the levers people apply to them in everyday practice are not. So you can just selectively outlaw levers.
375.
by mbg721 4y ago
Well yes, but my point was that you don't need a Smart House in order to do the job of a $10 hardware store device.
376.
by mbg721 4y ago
With my toddler, the perfectly-okay response is "No. I am NOT okay," just to hold onto the grievance, which also happens online.
377.
by mbg721 4y ago
If the standard were "It caused a fatality, shut it down," nothing would ever get built. This came up as a human rights issue with the World Cup, but if you're uncomfortable with that, wait until you see how many deaths happ
378.
by mbg721 4y ago
The security part is a solved problem, unless you think a burglar is obsessed with your house in particular; they've made outlet timers for decades.
379.
by mbg721 4y ago
Seeing John Cleese of all people discarded as a stuffy reactionary is very much like watching a meta-sketch, except in Monty Python's Flying Circus the writing would be tighter.
380.
by mbg721 4y ago
If you think that's bad, you wouldn't believe all the crazy stuff people believe Donald Trump did while in office. If you took the name off and got rid of all the self-promotion and bombastic media stuff, people would think of hi
381.
by mbg721 4y ago
Guns are unironically considered egalitarian by American conservatives; the argument is that the 2nd Amendment levels the playing field for individual citizens vs. the government.
382.
by mbg721 4y ago
Your comment reminded me of a line I heard from a 90s comedian: "Oh, the royals are a sort of middle-class German family really,"
383.
by mbg721 4y ago
No one knows what to call the Democrats' political philosophy. It's not really leftist, although it sometimes claims to want to be, and it certainly isn't liberal in this age of woke authoritarians.
384.
by mbg721 4y ago
I mean, Australian drivers are generally aware to check for kangaroos, but American drivers, not so much. The more of something there is, the more traffic awareness of it there will be.
385.
by mbg721 4y ago
Were Amigas considered to be exclusively entertainment machines, or did they try to get people to use them for work? I grew up with an IBM XT my dad had on loan from his job, and got the impression that everything else was a (cooler) gamin
386.
by mbg721 4y ago
I continue to be amazed how much vitriol Musk manages to stir up by being an arbitrary agent of chaos for the wrong side. Who cares if he wastes $44B? If anything, he's fighting inflation by removing mistakenly-assigned value of $44B
387.
by mbg721 4y ago
Is it okay for someone to go "Ha ha, you're my bitch" just because they can?
388.
by mbg721 4y ago
The more frequently breaking the law coincides with good morality, the weaker the law becomes, and the less legitimacy the state holds. That's why setting everything up for selective enforcement is so destructive.
389.
by mbg721 4y ago
My parents were too well-off for Brunswick Stew, so we had Titleist Bisque instead.
390.
by mbg721 4y ago
The US is built on a fundamental distrust of mainstream authority. Our founders were religious radicals who thrived as long as they were exiled someplace where they couldn't affect anybody who mattered. Our folk heroes are dimwitted-

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