with-a-martyr-complex

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Like, something I've noticed with conspiracy believers is that, in friendly environments like their own blogs or podcasts or publications, they will make extremely strong pronouncements, e.g.

"The Blargenforp theory is absolutely, 100% true, at this point the evidence is overwhelming. Hell, establishment figures are on the record admitting that the Blargenforp theory is true!"

But when taken to a neutral audience, they switch to,

"Look, what I'm saying is, science is the open-minded search for truth. What I'm saying is, shouldn't we be willing to make an open-minded investigation into whether or not the Blargenforp theory is true, and just see where the evidence leads us?"

Listen to the Alex Jones depositions in the Sandy Hook case and you'll see a real world example of this, where he makes incredibly concrete statements that Sandy Hook was definitely a hoax and that the evidence is overwhelming and inarguable, and then in deposition says, "That's just my opinion, I'm allowed to have opinions."

And when asked how a viewer would distinguish between which of the things he says are statements of fact and which are opinions he has no coherent answer.

And I think it's because to Jones and his employees and a large chunk of his viewers, there just... Is no concrete distinction between facts and opinions.

And since all statements of fact are just different wordings for what are fundamentally opinions, it is in some sense cheating to act like it matters whether a given statement is true or not.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

There's only one way to resolve this. One of you is going to have to go to Rome and tell the Pope that you like his shoelaces.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/conclave-pope-class.html

[with-a-martyr-complex]

motivational words from the yuan ming dinasty blorbos to brighten your day <3

[with-a-martyr-complex]

People talk about Lolita like Humbert Humbert is a conflicted and dichotomous character and then you read the actual book and he's like "I love lying to people for fun and getting lost in flights of wild imagination and making things up and telling falsehoods. Also I look like a bunch of movie stars and every woman in the stories I tell thinks I'm darkly handsome."

[with-a-martyr-complex]

I am loosely inclined to agree that credentialism among Ds is a problem but the major 2028 frontrunners right now include someone who was a bartender before running for Congress. A major 2020 candidate had only been mayor of a small city in Indiana.

On reflection, I find myself kind of awed by Dwight Eisenhower's meta-level thinking. Which is not a thing that I ever expected to find myself saying, I assure you.

Everyone, meaning absolutely everyone, loved him for winning World War II. Both major parties tried to get him to run for president, because he was almost certain to win and he had no discernible ideology tying him to one faction or another. Many people advised him, at that juncture, to go with the Democrats, on the grounds that the GOP was a terrible party for losers. Which was just true, at the time. The Republicans hadn't held the presidency in decades; the Herbert Hoover stink still clung to them; they were generally seen as an organization that mostly catered to rich reactionary cranks.

And Eisenhower, after flirting with the idea of remaining apolitical, decided to become a Republican. Not in spite of the GOP being a terrible party for losers. Because the GOP was a terrible party for losers.

He wasn't ideological, but he did have certain issues that he cared about deeply, such as robust US support for NATO.

He saw that even though the GOP was in the doghouse, it was still a pillar of the American political system; its role in the FPTP system couldn't be evaded, and it couldn't be kept out of power forever.

He saw that any political issue that became a factional issue, a bone of contention between the two big parties, would be a source of perpetual instability. Anything meant to last would require bipartisan supermajoritarian support.

So he went and made the Republican Party what he needed it to be. The Democrats could handle their role in the pageant on their own, but the GOP couldn't.

Any gambit like that would be much harder, these days. No one has been in Eisenhower's position since...Eisenhower.

But it's true that the hyperpolarized world, the world in which the parties are toxoplasmically driven to maximum frothing conflict over literally everything, has not been good for the stable stewarding of anyone's agenda.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Come on down to Wizards Vs. Lesbians, where we've recorded our longest episode yet - and, fittingly, it's on a book about the biggest animal ever, the sperm whale. I am sure the sperm whale is the biggest animal there is. The sperm whale is big and it's real and it's my nemesis and I don't know what that emo kid's getting up to with my harpooneer over there but it sure smacks of lesbianism.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

All you internet addicts stop becoming vtubers we need more wikipedia editors these articles out-of-date as hell.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Combination of 1980s Carter Backlash (remember that Trump is very much an 80s guy in terms of political memory) and Obama era right wing talking points--"our president is bowing to a foreign king" shit

Trump's foreign policy seems to be based heavily on a belief that foreign nations aren't grateful enough to America and those fuckers need to be put in their place and I have no idea why he seems to believe that so strongly.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Messages from 19th Century Romantics

anyways tl;dr on that last post it’s like we’ve reached a point where in popular culture the ancient Greeks are remembered for their mythology and literature (and maybe Athenian democracy) while the Romans are remembered for their patriarchal imperialism, despite the fact that both cultures did plenty of both. and the consequence is that we’ve ended up with a bizarre quasi-gender binary where Greek stuff is for people who like mythology and literature and Roman stuff is for people who like patriarchal imperialism

[with-a-martyr-complex]

When you get good enough at empathy you understand someone else's self loathing and get to factor that in

[with-a-martyr-complex]

I refuse to ever learn what the astrological sign personality traits are, which means if I know what someone's sign is, I can look at any trait they do and tell them it's so very their sign and they accept it as clear and natural

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Someone once said the mark of authorial success was when gay teens drew fanart of your characters

If people want their ideas taken seriously, why haven't more of them written fanfiction as a paper thin excuse to get teenagers to think about their whacked out ideology?

The battle for the future is waged among the impressionable, not the fashionable.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

Psychometry in its modern form is Locard's Exchange Principle, where instead of any two things that come into contact leaving some trace on each other (itself an idea with issues), the essential essence of an act, at least of an emotionally charged act, leaves some permanent trace behind that we can feel and reach out to.

We want the objects around us to reflect the emotions that they are tied to, the memories they hold for us. I love my stuffed animal and hope it knows I do. This is the table I cried at late in the night at in 2009 and it means something to me. This is the knife that was the knife that threatened the life of someone I cared about and tore a community apart.

They mean so much to us. The hope and sorrow we put into them we think ought to be visible to others--the heart beats still beneath the floorboards. And yet.

It's fucked up that psychic powers aren't real even a little bit. Like. Obviously people shouldn't be able to lift buildings with their mind with no training or whatever. But I feel like there should be SOME technique that does SOMETHING. Like. Idk. Weak telepathy. Shift a coin. After a dozen years of work. Decades of grueling research. Yknow, something

[with-a-martyr-complex]

You can still see it there, the old internet, the world where people spoke of their niche interests, their life experience, the searching feeling in their souls and their desperate casting out of messages to reach the heart of another human being across a gulf of anonymity, the face of God that shines through in His image in each of His creatures. It may be harder to spot amidst the new internet of everyone vying for your attention and your money, but it's still there if you have eyes to look--the majesty of blogs and irc and forums where people spoke of insights on niche interests and guided each other through the first fumbling steps of hobbies.

It's in the Youtube comments section of 90s music videos.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

"Medieval Christians would have gone nuts for protons, neutrons, and electrons for trinity reasons" sounds like a jokey oversimplification historypost but I cannot really articulate how true that is. They would never shut up about it.

[with-a-martyr-complex]

You can do all three.

honestly forget all the time that joan of arc is a saint and that people like her catholicly instead of lesbianly or transgenderly or both