March 3, 2014

Some of you have been on this site for over a decade.

What was your favourite moment?

(sits down, cross legged. BIG eyes).

March 3, 2014

What WAS the big Olive Garden thing on DU?

I was here for the Door Wars and the Drone Wars and I was on DU2 for the Great Moon Battle and I think I've seen every chapter of the Wagnerian Porn Cycle and all its numerous spin-offs (an impressive body of work...). The occasionally re-flaring Pit Bull Skirmishes seem to have died down, and Circumcision has circumnavigated the site so many times I've lost count...

Occasionally I see vague references to the Olive Garden when these subjects reappear as we reminisce fondly over the Olden Times. What was it all about? I am burning with curiosity.

March 2, 2014

What's the right saying about Putin now?

Weren't they running around calling him Super-Awesomeness Guy cuz of teh gayhate not so very long ago? Or did I make that up in my head?

March 2, 2014

Horrible homophobic oligarchs are invading a tiny country!

Quick, we must send in the Corporatist disaster capitalism shock troops to save the day!

WAIT! THAT MEANS THEY'LL BE FIGHTING ALONGSIDE NAZI EXTREMISTS!

No! That's just shoddy propaganda from treacherous, Snowden-loving spin merchants!

Nonsense! Lies from mouths of imperialist hypocrites!

LULZ! Hair shirt arguments from wussificated enemies of FREEDOM!


la la la

February 26, 2014

Satanists should start frequenting these Arizona restaurants...

Satanists, polygamists, people who eat shellfish...

After all, if it's reasonable to ban someone on the grounds of a "lifestyle choice", they really ought to be banning everyone that their religion regards as a sinner.

In other news I am officially bored. I am officially bored of being gay.

I am bored of silly arguments online with silly prejudiced Christians and silly prejudiced Ugandans.

I am bored of being told I am whatever other people need me to be in order to allow THEM to feel good about THEMSELVES.

February 24, 2014

The Penis Museum hunts down The Final Member for it's exhibit.

http://io9.com/the-penis-museum-hunts-down-the-final-member-for-its-ex-1529657653

Thirty miles from the Arctic Circle, in the northern Icelandic town of Husavik, stands the Icelandic Phallological Museum - the world's only Penis museum. Over 40 years, the founder and curator has collected every specimen from every mammal except for one elusive penis needed to complete his collection: The Human Specimen. The film follows the curator's incredible, sublimely comic, often shocking quest to complete his eccentric collection, and the two intrepid men who have raised their hands to be the first human donor.

February 20, 2014

Almost anything can be made to appear as if it has a creepy subtext.

Ill-educated, paranoid people with just about enough intelligence to notice this often assume that it's because everything everywhere secretly really DOES have a creepy subtext.

But that isn't true.

February 10, 2014

Politics and cults.

A political movement that cannot respond to criticism isn’t a political movement. Really it’s just a cult. A mini-cult, we might call it, perhaps, driven by personality or by the shiniess of an idea rather than a sober understanding of how political ideas actually work and how they change things.

It’s very easy to spot such mini-cults. In response to criticism, the subject of the critique is exchanged for one of the mini-cult’s choosing. This is invariably because they have no response but need to cover their tracks. It's the sense that the position has been opposed emotionally, rather than criticised honestly, that is the necessary process for the minicultist, because their attachment to their own position is primarily emotional rather than arrived at through self-critical apprehension.

Time and attention is spent on long-winded arguments in which the subject changes every sentence. (Sound familiar?) The mini-cult needs only to seem to be repelling bad ideas to itself.

Such mini-cults exist all over the political spectrum and are often the only real way anything can be achieved politically. Obama would never have got into power and sorted out Obamacare without his sexy graphics and the aspect of his fanbase that likes to feel good rather than think straight, so in a sense we at least partially owe Obamacare to them.

But these little mini-cults all share the same problem, there is often very little integrity to their theory, as it almost always springs from a desire to reach for explanations of political phenomena that make them feel good, in some way, about themselves.

Human brains produce junk. LOTS of it.

The only way to get to a sensible political theory is to treat politics as a real part of the real world and apply the same laws guiding our analytical processes that we do to every other part of the world, i.e. scientifically, and the FIRST thing you do in science is not to see how your theory might be RIGHT but to see how your theory might be WRONG.

February 10, 2014

EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of a discussion instigated regarding Greenwald's character

is an attempt to deflect attention from the NSA.

THAT'S IT.

I notice that certain individuals have now attempted to appropriate the term "misdirection", and similar related terms, in a series of flailing, ludicrous attempts to portray the position of anyone making this blatantly apparent fact clear as somehow manipulative.

Greenwald's character is OF NO CONSEQUENCE.

Accusations of "narcissism" and similar have no value other than to change the focus of discussion.

There is NO-ONE ON THIS BOARD who already undertands this that is going to be fooled by repeated attempts to portray Greenwald as self-interested or politically "inappropriate". Everybody already understands that it doesn't MATTER.

We already had this stupid discussion months ago. A small cohort of losers are smarting over their loss.

There are NO WAYS of addressing how Greenwald's character affects what his actions have revealed, because there are NO WAYS IN WHICH HIS CHARACTER AFFECTS WHAT HIS ACTIONS HAVE REVEALED.

CASE. CLOSED.

For 87th fucking time.