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The dildo of consequence is rarely lubed

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I don't think that's why the dems will lose. I think the "if he wanted to he would have and they don't REALLY care" type rhetoric does infinitely more harm than someone saying "he tried within his boundaries but didn't fully do what he wanted'. Trump hasn't fulfilled his promises, regularly under-delivers, and consistently folds while throwing his constituents under the bus. They continue to draw in crowds because even if he takes an inch, his supporters express some degree of joy in that because republicans understand long term planning better (when its their politicians). Comparatively if a Dem doesn't do anything in full then it may as well not have happened and they didn't really care according to left leaning people. Where's the wall? How's ending the war in Ukraine day 1? Why has he deported less people than both of his predecessors? What happened to him winning the trade war with China? I can keep going. I want more from our politicians 100%, but we gotta stop with the all or nothing doomer speak.

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The problem is, for many people, Jesus is their mascot, not their coach.

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"If [the Reavers] take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And, if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order." — Zoe Washburn, Firefly

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Greatness leaves the body in barely detectable amounts until it suddenly becomes obvious, but it never, ever leaves the mind.

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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus

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franticantelope • 11h ago "“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” -Brian Eno.

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"big gay al's big gay porn shop, how can I help you?" "bob's mortuary, you stab em, we slab em/you kill em, we chill em/you whack em, we stack em/you slash em, we ash em, how can we help you?" "fred's taxidermy, you snuff em, we stuff em" "Bobs BBQ you can beat our meat but you cant beat our prices!" "Dick's Hot dogs, you like hotdogs youll loooove DICK'S!" "Roadkill cafe, you kill it, we'll grill it" "Bill's abortion clinic no fetus can beat us!" "Lou's pizza, you give me 12 bucks i'll give you 12 inches!" "Aaron's sperm bank, you squeeze em, we freeze em"

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A holocaust survivor dies of old age and goes to heaven. When he gets there he meets God and tells him a holocaust joke. God says, “That’s not funny.” And the man says, “I guess you had to be there. “

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By Adam Something

Crowd vandalizes self-driving taxi and then sets it on fire in San Francisco - but where is the Left?

I did predict something similar in my video about robotaxis, as they are expensive, upper middle class tech-toys. This would, and seemingly has already made them a prime target for spontaneous public anger.

We live in an era of increasing wealth inequality, with nascent megacorporations controlling an ever-larger share of global wealth flows at the expense of nation states. Case in point, in a few years we'll get to "celebrate" the world's first trillionaire. This imbalance causes the old system of welfare and social democracy to break down, since financing those becomes increasingly difficult.

In simple terms, the money that could have paid for, say, a million citizens' annual pension is now sitting on a billionaire's offshore bank account, out of reach for tax authorities.

Due to this increasing economic pressure, people are not at all satisfied with how things are going, but most political systems around the world have yet to come up with an alternative. Our current choices in most democracies are:

A) more of the same, maybe a bit nicer

B) crazy far-right isolationist populism

As tensions grow, we'll see more and more instances of such spontaneous displays of public anger. Meanwhile, the far-right is going full steam ahead with culture war narratives, and it's proving relatively popular across the democratic world despite offering zero policy solutions. It's a completely vapid, empty, cynical ploy to get people riled up, while offering absolutely no solutions to any of the problems we face, economic or social.

The global far-right can get away with this empty culture war rhetoric and gain popularity with it, because their only real opponents are the centrists, who do not, cannot promise anything new, or fundamentally different. Many people find even the empty culture war narratives preferable to ineffective centrism, which is understandable.

So we have the far-right facing off the centrists, but where is the political Left? They are completely absent from the political landscape, unable to capitalize on public discontent. It feels like, while far-right thought leaders are out there protesting against various human rights loud and proud, torches in hand, leftist thought leaders are instead buried in dusty political scripture published a century and a half ago, in the dark corners of cafes and community centers.

The right is energized: eager, able and willing to spread their ideas of ethnic nationalism, ultraconservatism, the eradication of trans people, and the threat a gender-neutral Mr Potatohead poses to Western Civilization. They will find you, and they will tell you all about it. They scream it from the rooftops. They take meticulous care to remind you at every opportunity that the West™ is falling because of trans rights and brown people, and also because the female M&M mascot is not as sexy now. They. Will. Tell. You.

Meanwhile the left languishes, on two fronts.

Online, the left wallows in their own, perceived sense of superiority. They already figured it all out, they have the Holy Grail, the schematics of the Ultimate System in their hands. If only the stupid normies™ could realize how correct their ideology is, we could solve literally every problem tomorrow! "You want to know how our ideal world would function? Why should WE waste our time to explain? Educate yourself." The fundamental problem with the online left is that they view their own political positions as an achievement, having been smart enough to figure it all out. This turns their ideology into a precious object, something to shelter and cherish, and to put on a pedestal, as opposed to spreading it like wildfire among the populace. The fewer people believe what they believe, the more "valuable" the ideas are. If 8 billion people believed what they believe, many online leftists would lose their sense of self-worth. Their beliefs would no longer be "special". They would just be ordinary, as opposed to their current self-perception of politics-savvy whiz kids who have "figured it all out", as opposed to the stupid libs™ and normies™. Their sense of self-worth is dependent on their ideology remaining a highly esoteric niche held by a select, almost messianic few. This renders them politically irrelevant however.

The other front where the left wallows is actual, real-life political activism. Many leftist organizations, groups, "movements" and the like seem to be stuck in the past, and are often terminally over-professionalized. Their websites are incomprehensible, outdated, filled with esoteric text unintelligible to the average person. Some organize events, most often talks and presentations on high-level leftist socio-economics, attended by the same dozen people for the past decade. They hold valuable and interesting, pro-human political positions, they just have absolutely no ability and/or willingness to popularize them. Thus they remain on the political sidelines, doomed to irrelevance, churning out posts and pamphlets read by the same hundred people who already agree with them.

The only successful left-leaning politicians are social democrats, who live on borrowed time due to the aforementioned economic tendencies. Systemic economic changes are needed, such as economic (workplace) democracy, but social democrats cannot deliver those; their ideology does not entail such systemic changes. If it did, they would be leftists, not social democrats.

And so here we are. The far-right is going full steam ahead with endless, empty culture war narratives. Centrists are standing chest-deep in proverbial water, scoffing at far-fetched rumors about Atlantis sinking into the ocean. Online leftists are preoccupied with maintaining their ouroboros human centipede of a political community on Twitter. Political activist leftists are busy pouring endless time and energy into events and resources no one will ever engage with or care about. Of these four groups, one is gaining increasing popularity: the far right, in lieu of a popular alternative, which the political left refuses to provide.

We live in an era of populism and political polarization. The injustices, inefficacies and contradictions of our current system are about to culminate. A far-right populist wave is upon us, that centrism won't be able to stop. Centrism itself has become obsolete: there is no middle ground between "human rights" and "eradicate trans people", among many others. The chips are about to fall, and when they do, the stronger side wins. We need a popular, populist leftist antithesis to counter the far-right. For that however, the left needs to be made politically relevant again.

So how does one make the left politically relevant? What can an individual do on the left, if they want to see actual political change in their favor? Turns out, lots of things. Here are some of the things I would do in their place:

Mindset change. FORGET words such as "Marx", "Engels", "Lenin", "theory", "bourgeois", and most of everything in that realm. You don't "care" about Marx, Das Kapital, theory, and so on. You don't even know what those are. All you know is, it's strange how workplaces operate like monarchies to this day, and you'd like workers to have more say in how moderate-to-large businesses are run. Also Jeff Bezos needs to be taxed more.

Political engagement. Political parties rarely shift left or right because enough socially awkward people liked a smarmy, passive-aggressive tweet deriding one of their positions. Political parties shift far more often via new people with new ideas joining their ranks, and then spreading those new ideas within. This is partly why the Republican party is shifting to the far-right so quickly: far-right lunatics have infiltrated them over the years, and have become powerful enough to paralyze the old, neoconservative establishment, see the circus surrounding aid to Ukraine. Join a sympathetic, VIABLE political party. Get to know people. Go to events. Take part in speaking events. Introduce your leftist political ideas in a friendly, digestible, agreeable way. Change minds within the party.

Pro level: public speaking. If you do become a member of a political party, sign up for a public speaking course. Read Carnegie's book on the subject. Become a good orator. Most politicians' public speeches are not more than dry monologues that would put a person on cocaine to sleep. Instead, you can become the living triforce of political effectiveness:

1) an effective and entertaining orator, who 2) shares their pro-human, progressive ideas 3) in an agreeable and digestible way.

This is what I would do in the place of the concerned leftist. Additionally, if an angry crowd torched a self-driving taxi, I would be there to condemn the violence, then lament the regrettable influence that such untested, hazardous vehicles have on our cities, resulting in an unsurprising outburst of emotions from locals who want their neighborhood back, living in the shadow of massive corporations and their disproportionate, growing influence, including on our cities.

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“Art is fire plus algebra.” That’s a quote credited to Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Basically the idea is that in really great art—and, by extension, storytelling—there is an almost mathematical precision to decision-making. Yes, much of artistic expression is about feeling and emotion. But plugging that into a logical framework is essential for the idea to really make sense to the audience. Here, I’m saying Kripke develops his narrative purposefully to positive effect. Hope that helps!

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We all know where the Big Apple is but does anyone know where the… Minneapolis

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"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." Jean-Paul Sartre

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All ADVENT gaze upon me in despair for I am the darkness and the light, stronger than the raging storm and the seas. No alien can escape the doom and justice that is I.

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Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. And I come upon the pale horse of terror.