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Author Topic: Things that made you laugh today: some people notice when l change the title  (Read 1845637 times)

Tawa

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8475 on: February 25, 2018, 08:42:43 pm »

My point was that Reelya did not define "antifa". It's like "socialism", a group of five people will have six definitions of the word.

Still, I kinda had a bad point there. Scratch that.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8476 on: February 25, 2018, 08:52:26 pm »

Oh ok. It's not too bad a mistake to make, cos it's not like any edgy political group worth its salt would want to be easily defined & identified, because to have such a concrete structure would allow its own muck to stick, or allow all sorts of subversion or criminal prosecution. I think one of the first recorded instances of this type of organization was born in colonial America, where you'd have all sorts of Americans in independent organizations who operated autonomously, only united in their common goal of gaining independence from British colonial rule. Everyone has unwittingly followed their footsteps in how to fight an opposition without providing an entity to attack in return

Reelya

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8477 on: February 25, 2018, 09:28:35 pm »

I asked for a name. You give me an amorphous organization with wildly varying practices and ideals, a couple of catch-all terms, a disparaging nickname for someone who argued with some MRAs seven years ago, and a vague description of an article you read this one time paired with a claim this is representative of all articles.

Seriously. Can you name somebody? Present some sort of evidence? I mean, you didn't even describe what you think "Antifa" does or is, and it seems like nobody can agree on what Antifa does or is.

Hold on, you're being both extremely vague and extremely specific at the same time, and demanding. The way you're talking it's like no evidence I could possibly provide would be good enough, a clear case of the kind of dogmatism I was talking about. And I'm certain you wouldn't have the same "preponderance of evidence" required if i made the same claim of the Alt Right, which is motivated reasoning / confirmation bias.

I'm just going to cite some research on the cherry-picking part first, I might address the other stuff in a different post, but it's a different argument, so I'm not going to mix them up, except to point out that i said that groups on the left have religion-like ideologies. I didn't claim there's one universal ideology that everyone on the left follows, so that's a straw man. e.g. the plethora of cults aren't "not cults" just because you can't pin down all cults to a single "cult" ideology. It's a patchwork, just like left-wing beliefs. Groups on the left can totally be like cults, even if there's no all-encompassing belief system they all share.

Cult-like groups just tend to be far-left or far-right, because being a fanatic doesn't lend itself to being a "moderate".
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« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 11:05:50 pm by Reelya »
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redwallzyl

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8478 on: February 25, 2018, 10:41:20 pm »

Nice collection of data. Just like I always say, everyone is capable of being just as much an asshole as everyone else. Assholeishness does not discriminate.

However when you talk about the extremes turning people away I would like to point out that the extremes are just that, the extremes. They don't represent what logical rational informed people one the "left" are arguing for. I hate stupid and illogical people with a passion and recognize extremism when I see it even if I get a bit angry and generalize my frustration on the larger group. It just doesn't have the same ring to it when you have to preface your outbursts of anger with long disclaimers. I'm glad my teachers and friends are of a logical and informed mind despite what a certain ignorant bay12er might say (yes, still pissed). The trouble is when on the forum as I'm sure you know putting together what you just did is a bid difficult and I have better things to with my time. Like reading scholarly sources for things I have due or for my research interests. Sometimes my reading and discussions do coincide however.

I guess that's part of the problem with the modern world. No one has time for anything. It seems like a brilliant way to subtlety disenfranchise people.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 10:54:07 pm by redwallzyl »
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Rolan7

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 7630 laugfs and counting
« Reply #8479 on: February 26, 2018, 12:15:22 am »

This is going to sound weird, but oddly, my "anchor" for this thread - the place I land when typing "bay12 laugh" into the URL bar - is also an interesting and amusing if technically offtopic discussion between Reelya and LW.
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Rest your soul
For the WTF thread it's my writeup of a polymorph-centric DND party member becoming an ooze to navigate a trapped hall, and accidentally merging with a gelatinous cube.  hehe

Completely unrelated, I have a Fallen London related funny which uh might be somewhat funny to other people?  The developers polled the players on various aspects of the lore, and many players answered with in-jokes.  Sometimes quite creatively, imho.
IDK, I just feel I've filled my allotment of bumps for the Fallen London thread...
http://www.failbettergames.com/the-mysteries-digested/

"Where is Mr Eaten?"  "Look, I was hungry. Stop asking, okay?"
"What price was paid for London?"  "The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat! Conspired to take the town with a bat!"
"Who brought the tiger to the labyrinth?"  "There’s a tiger in the labyrinth? I wanna go there!"

Heh, sorry, I can't accurately judge whether these are at all amusing if you don't teh references.
It's just that I always found fandom memes kinda funny, even when I wasn't in the know.  I guess I was young, and enjoyed non-sequitur for its own sake.

I just don't want to bump the FL thread anymore, and this is somehow relatively on-topic :P
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 12:17:01 am by Rolan7 »
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This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

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Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

Loud Whispers

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 7630 laugfs and counting
« Reply #8481 on: February 26, 2018, 07:34:04 am »

This is going to sound weird, but oddly, my "anchor" for this thread - the place I land when typing "bay12 laugh" into the URL bar - is also an interesting and amusing if technically offtopic discussion between Reelya and LW.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Rest your soul
That's a dank blast from the past. 23 years

For the WTF thread it's my writeup of a polymorph-centric DND party member becoming an ooze to navigate a trapped hall, and accidentally merging with a gelatinous cube.  hehe
How did you write it up? Cos you could take that any way. Some sort of horrifying body merge, an enlightened loss of self, a comedic description of merged bodily fluids...?

Nice collection of data. Just like I always say, everyone is capable of being just as much an asshole as everyone else. Assholeishness does not discriminate.

However when you talk about the extremes turning people away I would like to point out that the extremes are just that, the extremes. They don't represent what logical rational informed people one the "left" are arguing for. I hate stupid and illogical people with a passion and recognize extremism when I see it even if I get a bit angry and generalize my frustration on the larger group. It just doesn't have the same ring to it when you have to preface your outbursts of anger with long disclaimers. I'm glad my teachers and friends are of a logical and informed mind despite what a certain ignorant bay12er might say (yes, still pissed). The trouble is when on the forum as I'm sure you know putting together what you just did is a bid difficult and I have better things to with my time. Like reading scholarly sources for things I have due or for my research interests. Sometimes my reading and discussions do coincide however.
I would caution against this kind of thinking, just because it blunts self-reflection and is a very useful tool for killing political heretics, if you pardon the visceral metaphor. Who gets to call who an extremist claims the mandate of the majority, even if they are calling the majority the extremist - it's a very easy way to turn common ideas and concepts into unacceptable beliefs, without actually having to explain why. They are extreme, not representative of the logical, clever majority, held only by the fringes of the stupid, irrational and insane. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that these peeps are stupid or illogical, and I wager that if you did some intelligence and reasoning tests on them, you'd find a good spread between the mediocre and talented - with one common thread of all of them being more well-educated than the average of the USA. You are clever and rational, and you hate their ideological behaviour with a passion; if you had been born under their exact ideological wing, could you not also have had this passion turned into the same ideological hatred for all leftists who stray from the orthodoxy?

I guess that's part of the problem with the modern world. No one has time for anything. It seems like a brilliant way to subtlety disenfranchise people.
The tyranny of the clock.

Quote
It is a frequent circumstance of history that a culture or civilisation develops the device which will later be used for its destruction. The ancient Chinese, for example, invented gunpowder, which was developed by the military experts of the West and eventually led to the Chinese civilisation itself being destroyed by the high explosives of modern warfare. Similarly, the supreme achievement of the ingenuity of the craftsmen in the medieval cities of Europe was the invention of the mechanical clock, which, with it's revolutionary alteration of the concept of time, materially assisted the growth of exploiting capitalism and the destruction of medieval culture.

Socially the clock had a more radical influence than any other machine, in that it was the means by which the regularisation and regimentation of life necessary for an exploiting system of industry could best be attained. The clock provided the means by which time - a category so elusive that no philosophy has yet determined its nature - could be measured concretely in more tangible forms of space provided by the circumference of a clock dial. Time as duration became disregarded, and men began to talk and think always of 'lengths' of time, just as if they were talking of lengths of calico. And time, being now measurable in mathematical symbols, became regarded as a commodity that could be bought and sold in the same way as any other commodity.

The new capitalists, in particular, became rabidly time-conscious. Time, here symbolising the labour of workers, was regarded by them almost as if it were the chief raw material of industry. 'Time is money' became on of the key slogans of capitalist ideology, and the timekeeper was the most significant of the new types of official introduced by the capitalist dispensation.

Out of this slavish dependence on mechanical time which spread insidiously into every class in the nineteenth century there grew up the demoralising regimentation of life which characterises factory work today. The man who fails to conform faces social disapproval and economic ruin. If he is late at the factory the worker will lose his job or even, at the present day [1944 - while wartime regulations were in force], find himself in prison. Hurried meals, the regular morning and evening scramble for trains or buses, the strain of having to work to time schedules, all contribute to digestive and nervous disorders, to ruin health and shorten life.

The problem of the clock is, in general, similar to that of the machine. Mechanical time is valuable as a means of co-ordination of activities in a highly developed society, just as the machine is valuable as a means of reducing unnecessary labour to the minimum. Both are valuable for the contribution they make to the smooth running of society, and should be used insofar as they assist men to co-operate efficiently and to eliminate monotonous toil and social confusion. But neither should be allowed to dominate mens lives as they do today.

Now the movement of the clock sets the tempo men's lives - they become the servant of the concept of time which they themselves have made, and are held in fear, like Frankenstein by his own monster. In a sane and free society such an arbitrary domination of man's functions by either clock or machine would obviously be out of the question. The domination of man by the creation of man is even more ridiculous than the domination of man by man. Mechanical time would be relegated to its true function of a means of reference and co-ordination, and men would return again to a balance view of life no longer dominated by the worship of the clock. Complete liberty implies freedom from the tyranny of abstractions as well as from the rule of men.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/woodcock/sp001734.html

TD1

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8482 on: February 26, 2018, 08:16:06 am »

Certainly. But politics strives to reflect reality, because reflecting reality (or facets of it) gets the most votes.
I disagree entirely, we live in the fake news era of politics, where politics strives to reflect what maintains the most corporate acceptability. Whatever maintains the support of the modern estates has all the resources and tools needed to set public opinion, public opinion is not based upon who reflects reality the most, but on who has the loyalty of the most opinion setters.

Those systems which try to create a new reality can only do so to a certain degree before their system collapses. LW claims that "politics, by its nature, strives for compromises which renders truth as a matter of subjective relativity." This is, of course, true. To an extent. But those compromises must meet the demands of reality or be disregarded by the general populace. Oft times through the use of the great cleanser which is violence.
They don't at all have to meet the demands of reality for the general populace to react with apathy or even support. That's why politics sucks fish heads. For 3,000 years a long line of Chinese and Roman statesmen have known that as long as people have their bread and circuses they'll be happy to support systems, new and old alike. Just look at our modern financial system, we have 300 years of optimistic greed leading into increasingly bigger collapses and corrections, yet every time the system collapses, our political machines do not reflect reality and instead seek the continuation of these systems yet further. The general populace does not care that no wealth is being generated, until the appearance of wealth generation disappears, and the reality of their lost money dawns on them. Yet the lessons learned from these experiences are never brought into the next political cycle, which is evidence enough that politics need not represent reality or even attempt to. Simply put, the system which invented spin doctors, PR consultants and biased journalism do not view objectivity as little more than an anchor keeping them away from popularity.

Religion meets basic needs within the human psyche - community, love, security in self. Purpose. But its fancies, compared to politics, require much, much, much less grounding in the rational world we inhabit. Which is why when politics meets religion, it becomes a particularly volatile mix. The reality which politics strives to meet in such cases is that of the believer, which is even further divorced from actual reality than normal politics.
I disagree yet further. Politics is responsible for providing community, love, security in self and purpose, and seeing it in these terms is still seeing religion in political terms - seeing it as another tool to be used. It is only when religion is divorced from the objectivity of its own truth by politics that both conspire to delude its followers in the most mercenary ways. Look at the example of the British, which contains multiple cases of this. Where the British destroyed the Indian priestly castes they created Hindu extremists, where the American colony removed all institutional oversight they created creationists and apocalyptic revalationists and so on. And of course, the birth of the modern day "spiritualist, but not religious," which paradoxically causes secular nations to create armies of fundamentalist warriors, aimed at inwards destruction. Where politics destroys religion, it creates political dogmatists, who yearn for objective truth in a political system which inherently disallows any truth. Our contemporary political system is built on the very premise that you can decide for the general populace what is accepted as reality in normal politics

Also what are TERFs? I've never heard of those before
Fake news era is doomed to failure, though, because of its non reality. There's a reason straight(ish) talking politicians like the Mogg are becoming increasingly popular, and the bend-in-the-wind Mayites less so. Trump's election success is in no small part a result of his policies which tackle immigration and terrorism. His methods would likely be condoned by most here, but they do address a real issue. He may use fake news too, but it's still a castle built on the foundations of reality.
Quote
Religion meets basic needs within the human psyche - community, love, security in self.

Those basic needs don't go away when you lose religion however. And non-religious belief systems tap into both the same needs and the same psychology. Humans are humans, which is why belief systems share the same distortions of thinking, and whether you formally believe in a god you can't see, or scientific information you can't verify, the base mentality is often indistinguishable. (e.g. that sense of smugness because you believe in the "right" God doesn't go away when people believe the "null God hypothesis". They just become smug about "null God").

So, i would argue it's yet another human folly to believe we "transcended" anything when we merely shed the idea of God. We just switch our screwed-up thinking from one set of rationalizations to another new set.
Hrm, true. However, people atm are quite capable of holding radical political and religious views. It's not a matter of transference from one to the other. By losing religion, I assume people don't become more political.

Of course, I still believe a political thinker is superior to a religious one, if only because politics does address more of the real world than religion. Even if it's just by an iota, surely you acknowledge that to be the case?
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hector13

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8483 on: February 26, 2018, 09:04:42 am »

Fake news won’t be doomed to failure until people learn how to be critical of the news.

This requires being taught, which invites protests of government controlled thinking from the fake news peddlers, meaning the problem is not going away any time soon, particularly because you can have a political party affiliated media organization pushing the party line to its readers. This is here to stay, brah.
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TD1

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8484 on: February 26, 2018, 09:08:44 am »

Fake news has always been here. It's its efficacy which can, and will, change.
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hector13

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8485 on: February 26, 2018, 09:17:06 am »

In this hyper connected world that is only becoming more - particularly with the ability for people around the world to post non-corroborated (or whatever the other word is I’m thinking of, hey basically don’t check the veracity or reliability of the story/sources) news stories -  so the problem is only going to get worse.

You may get a higher number of people figuring out on their own that they need to have the skills to get to the nugget of truth within the muck of subjective reporting, but in turn the audience for the latter is so much bigger than it was even a decade ago, and it’s just getting bigger.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8486 on: February 26, 2018, 09:30:10 am »

Fake news era is doomed to failure, though, because of its non reality. There's a reason straight(ish) talking politicians like the Mogg are becoming increasingly popular, and the bend-in-the-wind Mayites less so. Trump's election success is in no small part a result of his policies which tackle immigration and terrorism. His methods would likely be condoned by most here, but they do address a real issue. He may use fake news too, but it's still a castle built on the foundations of reality.
I'd say some fake narratives are dying, but I'd not say the era of fake news is dying. It's just getting more sophisticated, to the point where most people are unaware that they are receiving news. Let's say we have Joe Bloggs, the greatest anti-corruption candidate ever. And let's say a corporation, I'll just call it EpicMaus, owns a great deal of the news and doesn't want its interests harmed by Joe Bloggs's anti-corruption drive. The news, owned by EpicMaus, calls him an extremist who kills puppies for fun, digging every piece of dirt, making up dirt as needs be, and using all of its owned media to generate a self-perpetuating story about the growing doubts surrounding Joe Bloggs. You've got those who still believe in the news sure, and those who will believe it if enough news media are saying the same thing - even if they are unaware they're owned by the same company.
But you could chalk them off as the people who are already biased against any Joe Bloggs who threatens their party. So what of those who distrust the media? They go on iTunnel to go watch the latest in online entertainment. Unexpectedly their favourite channel is talking about the serious emergency, of how dangerous Joe Bloggs is. They go to University and the faculty are unanimous in offering their support to everyone threatened by Joe Bloggs. They check tweeter and all of their friends are saying Joe Bloggs is a terrorist. They check grapebook and their friends are asking them to sign a petitition to have Joe Bloggs resign. What they don't realize is that their favourite iTunnelers are owned by a subsidiary of EpicMaus, that all of their friends who support Joe Bloggs have been put in a limited state where their tweeters are blocked to opinion-setting profiles, where their grapebook feed has been controlled so they only see anti-Bloggs posts.

Having a populace critical of media is insufficient, because the tools for narrative control have become so sophisticated, that people can be sold products without realizing they're being marketed to. To be sold messages without knowing they are being sold. To have all the people they trust to set their opinions for them, be those controlled by the entities they distrust - wearing the faces of friends. It's not that hard to turn online social media into the most hardcore political native content there is.

Hrm, true. However, people atm are quite capable of holding radical political and religious views. It's not a matter of transference from one to the other. By losing religion, I assume people don't become more political.

Of course, I still believe a political thinker is superior to a religious one, if only because politics does address more of the real world than religion. Even if it's just by an iota, surely you acknowledge that to be the case?
No, because the politician has a vested interest in maintaining their own power, and will subsequently seek to distort what their followers and opponents see of reality in order to better maintain their power. The religious one might be incorrect in telling you their worldview, but they sincerely believe it is truth. The political one might be incorrect in telling you their worldview, but they sincerely do not care, as long as they can convince you that their war is peace, their slavery is freedom, their biology is socially constructed, their society biologically constructed, their ugliness as beauty and dysfunction as harmony.

TD1

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8487 on: February 26, 2018, 10:02:27 am »

And yet, our very conversation seems to stand as evidence that fake news is becoming more of an acknowledged issue. Perhaps the means of conveying it is becoming more sophisticated, and we are all mindless sheeple dancing on the strings of corporate media. I personally find it equivalent to the early modern period's fascination with pamphlets and their oft-times less than truthful arguments. It was hugely more sophisticated in spread and delivery than what went before... but the efficacy of it became less and less as time went on. A case of rampant media being reigned in by the public's dislike for being lied to.

People enjoy some form of being lied to by the media, it helps them compartmentalise and streamline their own views. But the best lies in this case are those built on solid facts, and those are the ones people want. Fake news pamphlets held efficacy until greater interrogation occurred. Let us hope that increased awareness of media tom-foolery in today's world will lead to a likewise increased disdain for it. Personally I view most media writings/reportings as opinion pieces. Helps not to believe them overly. Especially when reporting on Brexit, hah.
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Eric Blank

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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8488 on: February 26, 2018, 11:18:15 am »

We can all thank trump for awakening us to the concept that "YOU are fake news!"
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Re: Things that made you laugh today: 8582 chuckles and counting
« Reply #8489 on: February 26, 2018, 11:43:29 am »

Heil Trump!
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