Anti-Stratfordianism is a fundamentally classist argument that relies on a host of logical fallacies to argue that the man universally identified and recognized as a playwright, actor and poet by contemporary sources and for a hundred and fifty years thereafter could not possibly be Shakespeare

1/4 bear girl made me feel some things

...who are handsome...and smart...

Ok my pitch to @overlysarcastic.bsky.social is a Trope Talk on Drop Ship Insertion sequences, a weird niche fascination of mine. These are sequences in (typically but not always) military sci-fi wherein we get Character Establishing Moments by showing the journey immediately into a combat zone.

I once realised On Here that right wing 40k fans hate the Tau so passionately not for its lefty aesthetics but because it's essentially expansionist Singapore. And (successful) expansionist Singapore renders all the other cruel maniacs obviously superfluous. But the sickos WANT the cruelty.

As a technological artifact, it simply cannot be cleanly divorced from gay things like allies and Europe.

I didn't watch more than the first moment that the screen threw at me without warning, but when I saw Kirk's wife positively *beaming* to be on TV fake-talking to Trump after his death I thought "yeah, not even his wife will step over his dead body for fame and status, checks out".

Inflation goes underdiscussed bc discussing global 2024 elections honestly means admitting 1) voters just hate inflation, regardless of the government's response, reasons, and available alternatives, so 2) voters are either stupid or cruel Almost no side of politics can & wants to admit this

Poland is eternal. Poland will grind them all down.

The greatest evidentially hurdle to bith string and weak Stanciism is the inconvenient fact that literally every incumbent lost voteshare that year, and Harris probably *outperformed* the general trend. tbf, the fact that trend reversed once Trump did the tariff heel turn probs supports Stancilism.

Yeah, this has been on my mind too. Fascists create the world that justifies their actions, because what they really want is to do those actions and not be shamed for it.

The first two lines are the heart of it Ppl want from "law & order" what they want after the latest viral Karen video: a deliberately cruel & disproportionate response that solves nothing except the rage they feel. Not solutions to the problem, & DEFININTELY not anyone questioning that instinct.

Bit off topic, but it really enrages me that in 100 years time the people who will lament the loudest about RETVRN to 20XX will be exactly the kind of people who ended thw incredible ride we had, right here and now. tbc, not a dig at OP here, who is very not that

Australian Labor Party staying winning at the other end of the spectrum: losing a bit more often, but, once they DO win government, always bedding in wide ranging reforms that the LNP struggles to unwind.

I've been poor before and I've had savings before, and what I learned from doing both is that I'm a better, kinder, more ethical person with savings because I don't fear having $0. I can't fathom anyone willingly living life in such a way that one firing + one day = $0.

the dailup sound was a protection spell the computer said for us every time we went online but we thought we were too good for it. we wanted to be on the phone and the computer at the same time. we wanted to be on the phone and the computer at the same time and now we’re fucked

I've always wanted to see a borderline anarachist-accelerationist Recongregator, and I'm not sure if that Inquisitor would be the hero or the villain of the story...

I don't have that problem anymore. In 2024, American voters proved that all it takes is full employment and higher than normal inflation to pick a snake oil selling fascist over an incredibly competent female. And even that is just a longer way of saying "resentful idiots".

The most fitting punishment for the dumb fucks who would have voted for Trump over Biden because "Biden old" is to watch that guy die in a year and have to reckon with President Vance. It'd be shit for everyone else, but fitting for *those* dumb fucks.

every time i go back to @lastpositivist.bsky.social No Heroes / Anti-merit reading list I always find extremely good stuff that i somehow hadn't seen before sootyempiric.blogspot.com/p/no-heroes-...

look, we know that God does not play dice with the universe, and that it is full of infinite suffering, and so we must conclude he is running AMBER.

People still: Look, we can't read history through a contemporary lens. There wasn't a consensus that slavery was wrong. Every 18th c. pamphlet: How can they do this? Are we SLAVES? In SLAVERY? The worst things you can be? Are they gonna put us IN CHAINS? Like in SLAVERY? Which is EVIL? Like SLAV-

(the Great Games Recommendation Thread, part 2): 101) Mad Max. An absolute 7/10 game, a prequel to Fury World that nobody's going to remember as a classic but is plenty of fun, mixing driving combat with third-person action when you raid bases and such, and some neat weird NPCs.

tbh, when I finally saw how much of the far left today is really just utopian socialists constantly saying "but we're totally materialist I swear!!" was the moment I figured maybe I was more of a strong socdem after all...

Interesting corollary of this thought is that the 80s/90s conservative plan to convince boomers that their retirement money should come from their property value was an attempt to un-end history.

RETVRN to judges travelling their circuit by horseback, as the Founders intended. These decadent city dwelling conservatives have grown spoiled and weak. Give these effete pencil fiddlers a saddle and a map, so they can earn an honest living.

I see now why so many brainrotted antiestablishment anarchocommunists come from NY. If the final outcome of the centre left establishment party becoming a one party state in MY home was "a whiteanted party machine & a more circumspect Trump" I might consider some pretty radical alternatives.

Won't claim to have had the radar then either, but I defs didn't understand why Hermione's pro-elf activism was mostly played for jokes. It was the correct take, and only made even arguably not so by a pretty obviously problematic angle that "oh no, elves actually like their abusers".

"When presented with the real consequences of their incoherent desires, voters would change their minds, but they seem very resistant to noticing the connection between those desires and those consequences" seems to be democracy's central dilemma rn

Speaking from greener grasses, when I was 28 and able to work but "refusing", that was *exactly* when I needed free healthcare. I was "refusing" to work because undiagnosed ADHD made even 30 hours per week mental agony. The free healthcare got me the pills that help me work 50+ hours today.

My parents spanked me and I turned out fine and if you don’t think so then we can step outside and handle this shit right now

Lion El'Johnson is a natsec Republican turned Never Trump Dem convert. He works at Langley, and he's secretly ashamed of how many of his buddies from his old unit now post Trump memes on FB.

Top 5 boardgame core memory was losing as Tzeentch to a whipsmart newbie. Knowing the game's flow, I'd been pruning the tall poppies so I could pull ahead at the last second. But she figured out the game *real fast*, & all my careful plans came down, fittingly for Tzeentch, to a single die roll.

George Lucas sticks to art movies.

fine. i'll do it too

Ok, one like = one game recommendation.

Slightly OT, but it's funny how all the people who ever told me "it's not all about money and your career" all had the kind of job that pays well, is personally/professionally rewarding (if stressful), and also mostly consists of working at a nice desk in an air-conditioned room.

When Mearsheimer popped up just recently, I was like "Mearhseimer, Mearsheimer...where do I k now that name?" After a couple of days it clicked "oh! He was that IR theorist whose ideas sounded hopelessly stupid even to me, a naive undergrad, and ag the time open to many, many silly ideas!"

Sociologists/historians of science: one thing that would be cool is, like, a big book of failure (besides my autobiography wahay!!!!) - like, detailed accounts of research programmes that failed, approaches that didn't work out. Does this exist?

If I *was* a historian, or sociologist, or even scientist, the pop science/history book I'd absolutely write is A History Of Wrong Theories. Lamarckism, Lysenkoism, the aether, geocentrism (controversial I know). Stuff like that.

Lord of Light! LORD OF LIGHT

I love China Mieville for so many reasons, but a top 3 one is the fact that the most books he ever pumped into one setting was 3, and they're defs not "a trilogy": each is its own, barely related to the others. The man moved on from Bas Lag gracefully, and while I wish for more, I respect it.

Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, are you fucking kidding me

I’ve thought a lot about this and many, if not all, of the AD&D 2e campaign settings whip

Absolutely losing my mind, this is hilarious

fr, I wasn't really a proud patriot or hugely pro-Labor until I started learning just how damn *good* at generationally significant policy the Australian Labor Party is. Near single-handedly juicing our famous Luck stat for a century.

If there were a tier above S I would put Banshees of Inisherin there, a movie which, in the first ten minutes, so acutely activated a specific personal fear (close friend suddenly and inexplicably decides they hate you) that I had to turn it off and never finished watching it.

Slowly reading The Dawn of Modern Cosmology, and a real eye-opener while reading Copernicus was him backing his conclusions with (besides his telescopic observations) records of astrological phenomena from centuries/millennia ago Records that were *written down and copied/survived until Copernicus*

People take the is/ought diff way too far. If your starting point is "general human wellbeing is good" you can derive many "oughts" from the "is", but your worldview will be lib/left. If your starting point is NOT that, you can argue "values are different" but your worldview is more/less nihilism.

Capitalist counter-offer: ok, so we'll survive this existential crisis again, while rewarding all 300 of you very smart bois and girls by funding your bougie art newsletters and substack blogs.