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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. When the definitive book on this era of the NBA is written, this better be the opening line.
  2. To repeat my pie-in-the-sky plan, college football postseason is done backwards. We argue about the number of teams to include, pick a number, then force the teams into that number. Instead, there should be objective criteria for championship worthiness (some transparent formula of achievements like conference championships and ELO-like calculations). Every team that meets some established benchmark makes the playoffs. Anyone who doesn’t, stays at home or goes to whatever bowls are left over. If two teams make it, there’s your championship game. If 8 make it, you have a big tournament. A five-loss conference champion shouldn’t make the playoffs and an undefeated conference champion shouldn’t be left out. Establish criteria that will give you 4-8 worthy teams most years and then play it out. It would never work because of TV, but it’s the best way. Everyone would know the standards from day one and we’d always have playoffs of only championship caliber teams.
  3. Anecdotally, only a small subset of white America started crying about “mob rule.” It seems like the majority feel like justice was served. I’ve seen some victim-blaming “don’t break the law if you don’t want to get cop-murdered” garbage, but even those tend to think justice was served.
  4. For all of the complaining about the media, the trio of AP, Reuters, and the BBC seem to have been pretty responsible in their reporting. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ohio-police-kill-teenaged-black-girl-say-media-family-2021-04-21/ https://apnews.com/article/columbus-ohio-police-shooting-teenage-girl-0c04a74691f3f3fb3895d6220c729080 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56825871 For me, I read these three sources regularly (and listen to the PBS Newshour occasionally until you get bored), check out things that don't seem quite right, watch important events in real-time, and generally ignore most other media sources. My life has much less news-related existential angst and I have a much clearer picture of the world. If a news source regularly leaves you angry, worried, or generally worked up about something, that news source might be advocacy instead of news.
  5. Let’s go further with this line of thought. Trump won the 2016: a generally agreed upon, non-political statement of fact. The foreign interference issue is related, but not the same. It’s about politics, but it’s a basic fact. Obama won in 2012. Also a simple statement of fact. And so on for basically any election prior to 2020. You’ll get some pushback on Bush/Gore, but not even close to the extent of 2020 and still, the statement, “Bush won the 2000 election” would mostly be accepted as a statement of fact about politics rather than a political statement open to debate. Biden won the 2020 election. For a substantial portion of our population, this is a controversial, debatable, political statement rather than a simple factual statement. COVID killed 500,000+ Americans: another fact that is now politics. A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power (insurrection), killing a number of people in the process. Cops were beaten with flags and crushed in doors; the mob claimed to want to execute leaders of government and were searching the halls of the Capitol looking for them; the paused in ransacking the Senate chambers to pray “in Jesus name;” they did all of this because the outgoing president repeatedly lied about the results of the election. This also somehow a debatable (hyperbolic) political statement rather than a simple recounting of facts. And on and on. When everything is political, there is no longer agreed upon reality. Growing up in conservative communities, I often heard about the dangers of post-modernism and moral relativism; how “my truth” is replacing objective facts with opinion. Even in recent years, we’ve heard that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” And yet the very same voices that decried the downfall of objective truth are tearing or limb from limb. There’s room for debate on taxes or abortion or immigration or whatever. There’s no room for debate on basic reality. Anyone who disagrees with me on taxes or abortion just disagrees, no big deal; the real problem is anyone that won’t engage in reality. Cry all you want about trans athletes suddenly dominating women’s sports or whatever latest fear I’m supposed to have, but anti-reality and right wing have become synonymous.
  6. If I were a "moderated" poster, I'd be tempted to start a "Current Look at Shaggy" thread and start posting screenshots of the more feculent posts.
  7. How far are we from a Republican politician calling for the working class to seize the means of production to save as all from communism?
  8. Belgium. Less offensive words have been created in the many languages of the galaxy, such as joojooflop, swut and Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish. The use of bad language can have unforseen circumstances. One example is the war between the G'gugvunts and the Vl'hurgs, caused by a casual remark made by Arthur Dent being mistaken as a terrible insult. Simultaneous Babel Fishtranslation also means that any being can be rude to any other being without the need for extensive explanations. This has also started many wars. The reason the Earth has been shunned for so long is also due to a language problem. On Earth, Belgium refers to a small country. Throughout the rest of the galaxy, Belgium is the most unspeakably rude word there is.
  9. Here’s a depiction of a bird telling Gregory that standardizing the Roman chants across the empire and attributing their composition to the Holy Spirit via the Pope would be a good political move. It was a good political choice and it eventually ended in our modern musical notation system. Smart bird.
  10. Mole

    Shit My Kid Says

    To follow up on this. The lesson mostly stuck and he has the self-control to not say them, unless he hears someone else say one. Then he calmly rattles off every cuss word he knows and explains how you shouldn't say any of them. He's a smart kid, so he has a rapidly growing vocabulary. We're church-going people, so "oh my God" was on the list of words/phrases to avoid. If he hears that phrase on TV (which is a lot) or just thinks that you might say any bad word at all (for example, if you spill something and seem frustrated), he responds with, "don't say oh my God, don't say fuck, don't say shit, don't say...." It's so calm and matter-of-fact that it's unnerving.
  11. If you click “hide” enough, you start getting vapid vaguely inspirational quotes about how you’re a strong, independent woman.
  12. It seems like that may have been the cause of this mess.
  13. This one hits close to home. I once played a show with Sean Feucht. He was nice enough and put on a good show. Too many of my friends have followed him down the road of whatever it is that he's selling now. They appear to see themselves as some combination of super patriot and persecuted believer. It's some unholy mix of George Washington and Stephen from Acts. Jesus taught his followers to lay down their lives ("no greater love" and all of that). The pandemic provided probably the greatest opportunity in generations for American Christians to live out the Gospel, but I've seen more and more of the Gospel being replaced by self-worship, cruelty, indifference to suffering, and self-proclaimed persecution. I'm willing to give a lot of grace in failing to understand a once-in-a-century event. No one really knew what to do or how to act and there's so much unknown, but wrapping selfishness up in the veneer of spirituality while calling selflessness wickedness is a bridge too far. Acting so cruelly and so selfishly under the banner of Christ and then calling opposition to this selfishness wickedness -- wrapping this whole anti-gospel all up in the name of Jesus -- is just too much. It's not surprising, but it's heart-breaking.
  14. Two threads on this and still no Andy Kaufman. A few other loosely related thoughts. 1. The culture war is exhausting. I’m tired of manufacturing reasons to hate everyone around issues that I only marginally understand. We have enough organic reasons to hate that I understand as it is. 2. Considering the rough go that trans kids can have, there’s a certain dark irony in this becoming a flashpoint for having an athletic advantage. There are no doubt fairness and competitive issues to work through, but the framing of this seems bizarre, particularly for kids sports. 3. There’s no doubt some intuitive unfairness when physically dominant kids use their dominance athletically. Clear rules are needed, but establishing broad standards for things that are mostly edge cases seems unproductive unless the goal is to score points in the culture war. In that case, congrats.
  15. You don't even have to close all of them, just limit their hours. The nearest DMV is about 30 miles from me and is open less than 20 hours per week. Cut the budget while also improving the "quality" of votes. It's a win/win.
  16. So one of the fears is that the next Trump won’t be such a moron, but I’m coming around to the idea that his idiocy and the movement’s effectiveness are deeply connected. Maybe the next chosen one will be even dumber because that’s what this movement thrives on. A smarter, more competent Trumpist might not have the necessary tools to wield power. If that’s the case, I don’t think that makes the movement any less dangerous, it just makes it more maddening. I’d also like to announce that the Court of Grand Citizens has indicted Ted Cruz for the crime of anthropomorphic impersonation.
  17. Voter ID requirements would be fantastic if paired with more robust systems to provide those IDs, automatic registration, same-day registration, and other pro-voting reforms. Of course support for IDs would evaporate since their purpose is to suppress the vote, I mean value quality of white votes over quantity.
  18. A friend of mine died this past weekend of a heart attack. He was in his late 50s and a bit overweight, but didn’t have any previous known heart problems. He did have an extended bout of COVID this past fall. I’m not saying that COVID caused his heart attack, but it probably played a role.
  19. The evangelical arguments are all rooted in self-preservation (will God or the vaccine protect ME?) yet Jesus said to lay down our lives and Paul taught that Christians have died with Christ. Such a disconnect and such a selfish vision of the faith.
  20. Minister of the Gospel Mike Huckabee.
  21. Maybe Nickelodeon is more his speed.
  22. Mole

    Shit My Kid Says

    My wife can cuss like a sailor and some of that has drifted into my 3 year old's vocabulary. He dropped a "fuck it" on the playground this past weekend when my wife spilled her drink. Last night he and I had a talk about appropriate language and he really understood the message. He gets that there are some words that aren't appropriate for little kids to use. I know he understood this because he spent the rest of the night walking around the house saying, "no shit."
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