[-] millie@slrpnk.net 140 points 3 months ago

As a late night cab driver, if you're ever wondering why I'm on the street rather than the driveway in your sketchy, pickup truck filled suburban neighborhood, this is why.

Give me a shady looking industrial district or run down residential neighborhood over semi-rural suburbia any day of the week. I feel much safer.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 87 points 5 months ago

I love reading, but the moment an author tries to guilt me into reading their particular viewpoint as though I'm just a slave of the system if I don't, I check out. I have better things to do, and this person doesn't have any right to my time.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I mean, to me the meaning of that juxtaposition is pretty clear.

The Gadsden flag highlights individual primacy, but the thin blue line sticker makes it clear that it's his individual primacy that he's concerned with. For an anti-authoritarian evoking that symbolism, the 'me' refers to the general autonomy of humanity or at least Americans, but in this case it probably literally refers to that specific individual's autonomy or to the autonomy of the United States as a country in a nationalistic sense.

He's basically just representing his subculture and thumping his chest about how nobody better tell him what to do or get in his way, while also showing that he's affiliated with a big gang. Whether he's aware of the racist speech the symbol is referencing or the symbol's deeper meaning is kind of up in the air, but it still probably wouldn't produce much conflict with his sense of nationalist autonomy in an authoritarian context regardless.

Honestly, it's that context that I think makes the association with Punisher inevitable. Whether the character supports the current gang in charge or not, he clearly believes in an authoritarian model of crime and punishment; that's the lens he views the world through and the impetus for his actions. If it's satire, it certainly doesn't read that way. Though, to be fair, the show is probably a lot more egregious in that regard than the comic (while also likely being more widely consumed).

Frank Castle supports authoritarian measures so much that he goes beyond what the legal system allows for. He literally names himself after an action designed to reinforce authoritarian hierarchy. Sounds pretty on the nose to me.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 6 points 8 months ago

I honestly can't stand slowly scrolling and waiting for the text to appear. What a terrible design choice.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 7 points 8 months ago

Can we start archiving stuff somewhere that doesn't block firefox?

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 4 points 8 months ago

I just want to, for a moment, shed some light on the mental disconnect here for Ms. Clifford.

This is a person who literally ran CNBC's climate change desk. She is, then, ostensibly aware of all the same information any of the rest of us have about climate change.

And yet, she seems to think we can somehow have a world where everybody can casually fly to Istanbul or some other place they've never been every single year, and that'll be sustainable. Or if she doesn't think it's sustainable, she's still totally fine using her own financial position to do it anyway.

If this is how people who actually focus their careers on climate change think, we're pretty fucked.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The responses to this thread on SLRPNK of all places just shows how far gone we are. Even here people default to a commerce-centric worldview where the idea of not waking up to an alarm is a ridiculous proposition.

A world in which humans allow their bodies to sleep and wake up naturally? Don't be absurd!How would we prioritize meaningless toil over our own health and happiness if we entertained our bodies' own internal clocks?

Waking up in a panic is your duty as a primate.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 9 points 9 months ago

Kinda sounds like you're rich. I'm definitely not.

Wanna help? I can probably make an amount of money that you barely sneeze at go absurdly far.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

With the level of technical knowledge we've achieved, there's no way we're going back to doing things exactly the way they used to. One example that jumps out at me is the method this primitive technology guy on youtube uses to stoke his furnace. He's basically made a little manual turbine out of leaves and vines to push his air rather than one of those little squeeze box things.

Obviously I'm not a blacksmith or historian so I don't actually know how common something like that might have been, but I'm guessing it's not super old. In any case, I'm sure there are other ways that we'd apply our more advanced knowledge to tackling the sorts of problems we'd be looking at with a collapse of manufacturing and shipping infrastructure.

Honestly, a technologically adept but non-industrial society of artisans sounds kind of cool.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It's also a lot lower impact and when I'm done I can just stop.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 5 points 9 months ago

I'd argue that it's a bigger problem when assholes are able to take over the positions of power they're typically attracted to and make the lives of others miserable. I'd much rather assholes just be, like, kinda uncooperative but no more influential than anyone else.

[-] millie@slrpnk.net 6 points 9 months ago

Clickbait title. The places in question are: the South of the US, the Andes in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, and in highlands African countries like Ethiopia and Kenya.

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millie

joined 9 months ago