Way more people in the UK think immigration is a national issue than an issue in their own community. Between this and the polling on Bidenomics (voters siad the national economy was bad, but their state's economy & personal finances were good) this might be a sharp razor for manufactured bullshit.

Man, people back then really didn't know how to hydrate did they.

the people demand lego warhammer 40k

tbh, "medieval doomsday cults and preasanr revolts, as depicted in a fever dream by the Tory-est of Tories" is the closest analogue I can think of, and even that is reaching a fair bit.

turns out you can have an always chaotic evil fantasy race that nobody has a problem with if you just make them really fucking cool and funny

STRAYA. The greatest nation on earth! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

There's been a lot of ink spilled about where the PT went wrong, but it was in the opening scroll: "anything cool and new that could have happened didn't, now here's the same old story you wanted right?"

The sheer contempt I feel for videos that misuse POV. "POV you are a cheeky dog!!!" Then why can I see the cheeky dog, hmm? Explain that? How dare you? I went to film school.

I'm genuinely starting to believe that the first and most crucial test of a democratic system is figuring out how to distract, coerce, bamboozle, sideline, misdirect, shame and browbeat the roughly 35% of people who are just authoritarian fucks. And no, I don't think that's a paradox.

Not a historian, but in a 2012 politics class at uni, we had a comparative research essay: compare two political (technically federal) institutions between federal governments. I chose the US filibuster & PLC's liberum veto, saying "this could fuck shit up". Not the first to notice, but *damn*

I don't know who's playing this baseball game or what innings they're in, but I think in half an hour they'll technically be playing cricket.

They got me good

Okay this is a good headline

You won’t believe what degrading practice the Pope just condemned

"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gondor," i holler as i overturn my uncle's funeral pyre and turn the 4th Age of Man into the 4th Age of Shit

It’s National Poetry Day. The greatest poem in the English language.

Even ignoring their grasping lust for power, there's a lot of folks who've done (and will do) genuinely illegal things that could send them to prison. The rats will feel cornered.

Ludonarrative dissonance is a fun concept to think about, to talk about - hell it's even fun to *say*. But it's not even worth applying to, like, 10% of games because it's patently clear that 90+% of games aren't designed to make you feel anything besides "I'm playing a videogame - cool!"

My only experience with surveys was a phone survey on religiosity at ~ 12yo. At first I answered yes I was religious, but as the questions mounted I quickly learned that no, in practice I wasn't. But I was embarrassed to say it so I gave bs answers instead I think much survey answer bs is like that

I once read that Aristotle (or Plato?) had a concept called the golden mean, arguing that the opposite of a vice is not virtue but a different vice, and virtue lies somewhere in the middle. eg, cowardice<->bravery<->recklessness I always wondered what would be the taken-to-extreme vice for empathy.

Interesting - Sarah Taber re: why farmers voted for Trump youtu.be/badGHJLDpP8?...

"War sucks [except that maybe it's awesome???]" is a surprisingly common ambivalence that you see in real life soldiers.

Agreed. And the kamikaze winds should never have saved Japan from the Mongols.

*long intake of breath* The Deluge was a world historic tragedy that set back the cause of democracy by centuries and ruined a powerful counterweight to encroaching Russian authorita-"

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.

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.

(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.