@gamer-dilbert - Tumblr Blog

It turns out the great egg price increase that helped topple Joe Biden's regime was (checks notes) due to an alleged conspiracy among egg producers to artificially increase prices and the coverage of that fact is a blink-and-you-miss-it story on the NYT website

argumate

What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.

The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.

his article in The Atlantic, 2016

greenbloods

re: the discussion about karma in asoiaf, i think it's so fascinating that one of the things that damns cersei in the end is her relationship with lancel. lancel is so constantly treated as a joke by the lannister kids in the earlier books, as an unimportant person, that it would have been easy for george to push him out of the narrative as soon as he outlasted his usefulness after the battle of blackwater bay. but the narrative cares about lancel, cares about his emotional state, about his victimization. it doesnt treat the fact that he was exploited by cersei as a vulnerable 16 year old as a joke like the other characters do.

the fact that lancel turns to the faith of the seven as a way to make sense of his trauma falls in line with how aeron and mel do the same for their own griefs, and the way that theon seems to turn to the old gods in the godswood after his own treatment--the physical descriptions of lancel and theon are strikingly similar. lancel and aeron and theon all seem to be aged severely by their trauma (while mel is the opposite, appearing youthful despite being the oldest living character of them all)

greenbloods

i guess in the end im just glad that lancel is taken seriously by the narrative, and that time and time again george takes the hopes and sorrows side characters as seriously as main characters. whether it's lancel or lancel or penny or eroeh or hazzea or the miller's boys, the one thing that is punished by the arc of the story time and again is the belief that certain people matter more than others

greenbloods

arya's decision to kill chiswyck because of how he raped and murdered layna is one of those storytelling choices that really show how the little people are prioritized in the narrative. like sure arya couldve used her jaqen h'ghar genie wishes on killing tywin or whatever. but the whole point is that layna mattered too. the death of mycah weighs heavily on arya and ned, and the fact that of all of the Hound's crimes it’s mycah’s murder that he stands on trial for at aryas insistence is significant as a story choice.

it's telling that arya's prioritization of the 'little guy' is reflected in all the starks in different ways. sansa saves dontos hollard. robb spares osha. jon saves the old man the freefolk tell him to kill. bran probably has a moment that im blanking on right now. rickon is four.

greenbloods

in a series where the meaning of heroism is constantly upheld and subverted in different ways by characters such as stannis and rhaegar and robb, it stands of note that the most consistent way a hero is identified by the narrative is how they uphold the worth of the ordinary person, even when it doesn't benefit them, even when it hurts them. lyanna “that’s my fathers man you’re kicking” stark, the knight of the laughing tree, stands up for howland reed. dunk kicks a prince of the crown for the sake of a puppet girl. maybe it's true that there's no such thing as a true hero, and that all honor is a mist that melts in the morning. but a common person is not "no one."

an ordinary person is worthy of being saved.

larkandkatydid

The Civil War Dads would like to remind us that it’s Pickett’s Charge Day, when a nation of the people, for the people, by the people did not perish from the earth because its defenders were heroic and its enemies were arrogant and kind of dumb. May it always be so.

fm-tales

Although some Confederates were able to breach the low stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repelled with over 50 percent casualties.

Pickett's Charge - Wikipedia

bixbythemartian

The assault was aimed at the center of the Union Army's position on Cemetery Ridge, which was believed to be a vulnerable point in the Union defenses. As the Confederate troops marched across nearly a mile of open ground, they came under heavy artillery and rifle fire from entrenched Union forces. The open terrain offered little cover, making the Confederate soldiers easy targets, and their ranks were quickly decimated.

they marched 12,500 men across a mile of open ground under heavy fire. that certainly is one of the greatest white-supremacist self-owns I've heard about, so far.

Pickett's Charge marked the climax of the Battle of Gettysburg, and its furthest advance is called the "high-water mark of the Confederacy". The failure of the charge crushed the Confederate Army's hopes of winning a decisive victory in the North and forced General Lee to retreat back to Virginia.

mini-wrants

Outdoor in sun perfec t place for president to do speech! Outdoor very warm very soft put old man on green lawn under sun. Put old man in warm sun. no problem ever in warm sun because good view and audience can see long speech. Nice podium outdoor sunny perfect place for old president can trust warm sun to give nice view to President good luck to President. friend sun.

knucklecurve

filthy, filthy read

nogaynolife

smuganimebitch

1. Does Ebert make a moral judgment on the fannish obsessions he describes here?

Yes. Obviously. He characterizes these fans as self-absorbed, socially deficient, intellectually incurious, emotionally dependent on formula, and “excruciatingly boring.” That is not neutral description. It is a negative judgment about their character and the way they live.

2. Does Ebert imply that a depth of knowledge about a fannish subject is inherently bad on its own?

Not quite. His stated objection is to people using expertise as a display of devotion, a source of status, or a substitute for broader interests and spontaneous social interaction.

I would argue that the rest of the review makes his position a little more clear, though.

3. Does Ebert state that this pattern of behavior is a quality of all fans?

No. He says “a lot of fans,” “extreme fandom,” and “such people.” He is identifying a type of fan, not making a literal universal claim.

4. Did the reader see a mildly critical opinion containing the word ‘fandom’ and immediately succumb to an emotional reaction rather than fully read and engage with the passage?

Calling people socially inept, intellectually empty, self-absorbed, and excruciatingly boring is not “mildly critical.” It is openly contemptuous.

A person can understand the passage perfectly well and still object to it. Disagreement is not evidence of failed reading comprehension, no matter how many condescending bullet points one wraps around the accusation.

5. Did the reader see the words ‘socially inept’ and immediately assume this refers solely to autistic people? Why or why not?

“Socially inept” does not mean “autistic,” and Ebert does not explicitly mention autism.

But the behaviors he associates with social deficiency overlap heavily with stereotypes about autistic people: intense specialist interests, encyclopedic knowledge, reliance on predictable conversational scripts, and difficulty improvising socially.

The word “solely” is doing dishonest work here. The relevant question is not whether the description refers exclusively to autistic people. It is whether Ebert treats traits commonly associated with autistic people as evidence that someone is socially or intellectually defective.

6. Is the job of a cultural critic to ‘let people enjoy things?’

No. Critics are allowed to criticize fandom, fan culture, consumer identity, nostalgia, and the social uses people make of art.

Readers are equally allowed to criticize the critic’s assumptions, generalizations, and contempt. “A critic’s job is not to let people enjoy things” does not mean every hostile remark made by a critic is therefore insightful.

There is also a rather important contextual omission here. Ebert did not write this as a general essay about fandom in the age of twitter, harassment campaigns, shipping discourse, or whatever present-day fandom behavior the quotation is now being aimed at.

He wrote it in his February 4, 2009 review of Fanboys, a road comedy set in 1998. So this is a late-2000s review discussing a particular stereotype of 1990s fandom. The film follows a group of friends who plan to break into Skywalker Ranch so that their terminally ill friend can see The Phantom Menace before he dies. Ebert’s argument is that the movie identifies too closely with its heroes and should have mocked them more. The rest of the review makes his position much less ambiguous. He calls their fandom “an idiotic lifestyle,” describes them as “tragically hurtling into a cultural dead end,” dismisses their knowledge as having “no purpose other than being mastered,” and ends with a joke about their mothers cleaning up after them.

no-sharks-on-the-sun

the funny thing is Ebert isn't even wrong, just mean, and op could've just stated this instead of setting up a reading comprehension test that they themselves are failing

captain-price-returns

Synopsis of the new Jonathan Majors movie: “When radical Islamic terrorists hijack a liberal college’s pro-Palestine encampment to enforce barbaric Sharia law on students and execute infidels in a makeshift caliphate, a ragtag band of red-blooded students, a security guard tired of ‘Uncle Tom’ smears, and a Delta Force vet must arm up to save their clueless peers and keep America from surrendering to the enemy on its own soil.”

#he was going to be the next thanos 💀

lesbojughead

archie, are you queer?

jeyneofpoole

iron islands dashboard simulator

🏹 princeofwinnerfell

i get mad pussy because women innately understand the raw eroticism of a man who follows the old way.

🪓 not-esgred

larp

🏹 princeofwinnerfell

HAGGARD BITCH

🦑 lordreaper

is it woke to love your daughter??? for context my son is gay 🙄

📚 rodriks-reads

“but nuncle you said you weren’t coming to the kingsmoot” bitch you knew i was going to show up someone has to keep the fucking minutes at this thing !

📚 rodriks-reads

i cannot overstate how dire the straits are here. i asked victarion what his policies on the forever wars would be and he told me that he thought he ate a forever war once.

🪓 not-esgred

bitches hate me for my exploitation of legal precedents!

🐟 trissy

we could be so beautiful

🪓 not-esgred

not exactly the time tris!

🏰 gwynmessharlaw

📚 rodriks-reads

in relation to?

🏰 gwynmessharlaw

MY RIGHTS

📚 rodriks-reads

ah.

🌊 damphair

no godless man shall sit the seastone chair

🏴‍☠️ crowseyes

🤪🤪🤪🤪

🌊 damphair

fuck

🏹 princeofwinnerfell

my father demeaned me by referring to me as another man’s “sweet daughter” and i got so hard it made me dizzy does this mean anything?????

🪓 not-esgred

my mother keeps asking me where my chud failure brother is and it’s like girl i don’t know off being gay somewhere !

🪓 not-esgred

she also asks about my other dead brothers and it’s easier to tell her every time that they’re still dead than it is to tell her about theon’s latest dumbfuck exploit. like yes mother he took winterfell 🫩🫩🫩🫩 no i don’t know why either 🫩🫩🫩

🪓 not-esgred

do you know how hard it is to find something more miserable than reminding your sundowning mother that two of her other children have been dead for a decade? genuinely my brother’s most impressive feat.

👻 urrigone

aborted uncle voice: i would’ve loved fingerdancing……… if i existed………..

🦾 iron-captin

ironborn will nvr surendr wee r chozen by thuh lord ask mye brutther he knoes al abowt it me im not so gud at thuh brayn stuff i just sayl gud

📚 rodriks-reads

DO YOU SEE WHAT I’M FUCKING TALKING ABOUT

intactics

"rickrolling is mean" rickrolling is the gentle, kind, prosocial descendant of what we used to do on the internet, which was putting a redirect to goatse in every possible misspelling of a url

michaelblume

Rickrolling is a beautiful achievement in collective disarmament. We designated a perfectly pleasant pop song as The Prank Song, we agreed that if someone tricks you into listening to it, that means they Owned You, and now no one has to look at goatse anymore.

tockthewatchdog

saltdust-crusader

It bothers me so much how most AI discourse singles out AI art as a particularly bad thing when that's one of the least harmful uses of AI. If you're going to be talking about how AI is terrible at least talk about the actually harmful things it could be used for like mass surveillance or layoffs or something instead of "it makes bad art"

saltdust-crusader

I keep seeing people act as though the solution to these problems is to just harass anyone who uses AI until it magically goes away, and that isn't going to work. Sending death threats towards random hobbyists (and don't pretend this doesn't happen, I have seen it happen with my own two eyes) is not going to help anyone and does not address any of the actual problems with AI. The actual problems with AI have nothing to do with consumers and acting as though shaming people for using it is going to fix any of those problems is misguided at best.

bayesic-bitch

the ukraine war is showing us in real time as warfare evolves into swarms of autonomous drones that can operate over dozens of miles and make the final decision on who to kill. moreover it increasingly looks like traditional militaries have no good response to these weapons -- the stable solution is that everyone (with a military they take seriously) is forced not only to adopt them, but go all-in on developing them, and the ai race turns into a more literal arms race.

the fact that this somehow does not enter into the top 10 issues in "ai discourse" drives me insane

markovchaingang

AI is bad because it's killing the environment

*actually looks at the environmental impact and discovers it's a drop in the bucket*

except it's not actually about that, it's bad because it's not real art

*realises my definition of art is so reactionary it excludes duchamp, pollock, and about half of the stuff since the 1800s*

except it's not actually about that it's about how it's STEALING our intellectual property

*realises my understanding of what is and isn't copyright infringement is somehow even more litigious than the actual law, and that adobe is trying to exploit the pro-copyright elements of anti-AI rhetoric to make artstyles copyrightable*

except it's not actually about that it's because it's destroying your brain

*actually reads the study i keep using as proof and realises that not only is it not a very good paper, the authors have explicitly disagreed with the conclusion i keep saying it proves*

except it's not actually about that it's about how it's replacing workers

*remembers that's been happening for the entirety of history and trying to destroy the thing automating your job out of viability has literally never worked*

except it's not actually about that it's about the innate human sovl

*realises my hitler particles are off the charts*

except it's not actually about that it's uhhh... because it's killing the environment

markovchaingang

because this blew up, here's a few clarifications:

AI companies are not your friend. their valuation is ludicrously inflated right now and sam altman is scamming investors out of their money (which admittedly is pretty sexy of him). anyone who's trying to convince you you need to "uplift your productivity with AI" is either an idiot or a snake oil salesman

i am not going to force you to like AI. i personally don't use AI because i've rarely ever had a need to. i think it's perfectly fine for you to not like AI art and want some sort of filter to exclude AI stuff from search results or whatever. it wouldn't catch everything, but it'd still remove the bottom 90%, which is where the real problem lies

any belief that boils down to "the masses are all tasteless rubes who don't know what's good for them and need to be controlled (by me and my group) in order to culturally uplift them" is both incredibly pretentious and rather dangerous

i understand that there are two different things people mean when they talk about "human soul" and i think they're both shit. either:

A: you genuinely believe in the existence of an intangible human soul and are telling other people what they should and should not be allowed to do based off of your religious beliefs, in which case i think you should examine what meaningfully separates you from people who want to ban homosexuality because of the bible

B: you're using it as a shorthand for "art that i personally like" and declaring that art outside of that category is without merit and should not be allowed to exist, in which case i think you should look at the wikipedia page on degenerate art

literallymechanical

Dang. OP disabled reblogs on the hestia self care post, I was hoping Start Toiling would enter the lexicon.

literallymechanical

Start Toiling

strawberry-crocodile

Kyle. Kyle listen, it's me, White Jesus. I saw you touch yourself to Tsuyu Asui cuck porn. That was some degenerate shit, Kyle. Before marriage, too. Listen. There's only one way you're getting into heaven after a stunt like that. You know what to do. The lock to your cop dad's gun case is zero-zero-one-four. You gotta go for the big one, Kyle. I've read the Epstein files you gotta do it Kyle. I've got a spot for Tyler and Luigi up here Kyle. We're seven away from a lacrosse team and I know you can midfield like a champ. Aim for the center of mass, Kyle. I believe in you.