They’re*
The thing is, a lot of these people are literally Nazis, and I’m starting to wonder if it was “people saying Nazi too much” or it was actually “there was a fuckton of Nazis and no one took people saying that seriously and now there’s Nazis around and people are blaming the folks who were warning others about the Nazis for not seeing Nazis soon enough”
Yarp but it cleared up all right
I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone recommend The Adventure Zone, especially the first season. One of the best actual play podcasts out there, especially the first two seasons.
I’ll recommend some hidden gems that need more love:
Mabel: A woman works as a live in nurse for an elderly woman, and the show is voicemails she’s leaving to her ward’s estranged daughter. It’s poetic and beautiful, and then strange events start occurring.
Dark Ages: a fantasy workplace comedy where an unpopular museum gets a new exhibit, the crown of the Dark Lord, who terrorized the country hundreds of years ago… Who just recently was resurrected and wants it back. Probably the best produced shows I’ve listened to with a great intro song.
The Cryptonaturalist: a very normal nature show that is normal about normal nature. Also has poetry! Actually feel good podcast.
Wolf 359: science crew is in a remote space station, and picks up a radio signal out of nowhere. Starts off funny, then gets wild.
Brimstone Valley Mall: three demons disguised as humans, working at a mall in the 90s.
Cult Or Just Weird: in depth dives into things which could be a cult or are just weird.
Wooden Overcoats: British comedy podcast about a funeral home in a small village suddenly having to deal with competition
Everything Is Alive: interviews with inanimate objects
Uncanny County: Welcome to Nightvale meets Twilight Zone but it’s also funny
Also there’s podcast versions of books written on the Internet, which I’ll plug here!
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky: What if Harry was not an idiot and knew what science was and was actually supported at home? Fixes a lot of dumb plot holes from the original series and frankly, is better. Also explores rationalist thinking!
Worm by Wildbow: This is literally my favorite book and will make you never see the superhero genera the same again. Superpowers can happen to anyone seemingly at random. A young woman gets the power to control insects and wants to be a hero, but after meeting some villains the line between hero and villain blurs. There’s a chapter that’s one short sentence long and I’ve had conversations over an hour long about what it meant.
-Twig by Wildbow: A world where mad, Frankensteinian science took off instead of the regular kind. Follows a child experiment and his fellow childhood experiment friends on adventures for the definitely evil empire!
Pact by, you guessed it, Wildbow: Guy who just pulled himself out of homelessness who hates his crazy manipulative family gets the inheritance from his grandmother, which he didn’t want. Turns out that also involves also inheriting the karma from his family, who were practicing the most hated form of magic possible, diabalism. So now the whole magical community is actively trying to kill him as he’s scrambling to survive
Also if you like audio books, check stuff out from your library, too. It helps them out and helps them get funding when people do stuff like that.
My medieval reenactment camp group is basically The Crick after we found a stump at our campsite.
How do you feel about the sister in law? What’s her take on all this?
If you think literal Nazis being in charge of the country is a small political situation I’d love to hear what the big one is
A sack of potatoes and cat litter.
From my mom who usually shops year round for Christmas to save the hassle of buying at the end of the year.
My siblings got stuff that they wanted and could use and I got… Those two things in a very flimsy laundry basket.
She did not approve of my girlfriend and probably me living with her.
They weren’t even wrapped.
It was pretty easy to pick up on.
I don’t think you should be quiet, it makes them feel like everyone is agreeing with them and makes everyone miserable. Time to introduce you to my favorite game to play with conservatives, Politics Judo!
So you hear them rant about a thing. Some dumbass talking point. Let’s use gun control. It’s pretty easy to know in advance what the talking points are since they never shut up and parrot the same problem and solution over and over. “Shouldn’t take guns, it’s a mental problem not a gun problem”.
Things are basically boiled down to a problem and a solution. A lot of people try to convince people that the problem isn’t what people think it is, and that’s hard to do. Even if they are just misinformed, it feels like trying to dismiss their fears.
So what you do is you agree with the problem, then use lefty talking points as the solution.
“Oh yeah, gun violence is pretty bad! And I love the Constitution, we shouldn’t mess with that!” (Use small words and also throw in some patriotism, makes them feel like you’re on their side. You want to sound like a right wing media con artist) “so instead of taking guns away, we should instead start having more, free, mental health care in this country. Since it’s a mental health problem and these people are crazy, that is the solution that makes the most sense!” (Don’t try to get them to agree to your solution, just state it as the obvious one)
It becomes weaponized cognitive dissonance. Their brains fry because you said the things you should to agree with them, flagged yourself as an ally, but then said the thing they were told is the bad and shouldn’t want.
If they try to argue with your solution, rinse and repeat to a different talking point. “Oh yeah it might cost more, and we shouldn’t have to pay more for it, so we should get the rich people who are screwing average hard working Americans over by not paying taxes to do that. We should shut down tax loopholes and increase funding to the IRS so they can go after them instead of the little guy”
Always sound like you’re agreeing with them, but giving solutions that they disagree with that seem to be off topic but are related.
Either they will get flustered and stop, or they will slip up and say something racist or sexist or something, and then you can have HR bust them. Document it and also see if you’re in a single party consent state.
Why try to delay it? Also trying to buy a house in this economy sheesh
Ignorant bullshit. There’s whole generas of rap and hip hop that you’re unaware of. There’s hip hop songs about drinking tea ffs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA
I don’t miss being in my 20s. I was broke, miserable, sometimes homeless and kind of a shit. I had a lot of fun and good memories but my living situation was miserable.
You like being exposed and surrounded by idiots? Because the post asked what you weren’t nostalgic for.
What’s your cut off? At what financial point is someone allowed to take part in trying to fix a broken system?
If it’s only people who don’t benefit from the system who are allowed to fight against it, should white people not try to fight the system? Cis? Straight? Able bodied? Able minded? Are only poor trans lesbians with two types of disabilities allowed to try to fight the system?
I don’t know the guy from Adam and I’m not gonna say he’s not well off, and I get that it seems sketch, but he’s at least doing something with his money other than sitting on it trying to get richer.
I’d imagine that the ghosts who ditched their unfinished business to explore the world beyond would be doing that exploring in a world beyond so we wouldn’t see them or anything.
I think you really don’t know what a false equivalence is.
So yeah, could tell you about how the exit polls said most people voted based on the economy and it wasn’t because Democrats hint at helping trans people or how the right demonizes them.
Or that your strategy of trying to become diet conservative doesn’t work, especially since the Democrats have and are basically doing that.
Or that the same goal could be achieved by getting more election and voting change, like ending gerrymandering and putting in ranked choice voting.
Or maybe I’d meet you halfway and say if the Democrats decided to rebrand stuff as “helping all Americans” rather than outright saying that it’s for trans people, they might get some of working class rural Americans on their side. Maybe.
But since you don’t figure out what a false equivalence is, I’m not sure you’d really get it, ya know?
And since you’re willing to throw my friends’ lives away rather than look at other options, I’m not really keen on talking to you much.
It’s false equivalence because, again, these are two separate scenarios.
The first is your hypothetical assumption based off of a completely different culture and time period, and the second is, you know, the here and now in the present day. Factual reality.
Arrogantly going “well I think this would’ve gone badly if they did something completely different totally equates to what’s happening now” is a pretty ballsy form of false equivalence. You can’t even come up with a real scenario to compare the present situation with.
Actually people had much less of a beef with homosexuality before the 50’s and the pink scare. Lord Byron was like, an open bisexual. Victorians has nipple rings as a fad.
Also abolitionists and suffragettes and the like weren’t exactly wildly popular.
Your hypothetical scenario is not only uninformed, but also a false equivalence. We don’t live in those time periods, we can focus on more than one thing at a time, and you’re also fixing blame on the movement to make things better rather than on the people who are actively making things worse. You should be blaming the rich for making global warming worse, not the people who are fighting against it and losing because they are daring to say trans people shouldn’t be a problem.
Turn 40 in about a month and let me tell you, it’s dope AF. I’ve got more friends than I know what to do with, having way more fun than in my 20s and I’m not tied down to raising a kid. I go to cons and adventures all the time that I couldn’t do nor afford if I had kids. Having kids always grossed me out. I’ve got friends with kids that I can corrupt as needed.
You could start by engaging and reaching out. For example, assuming someone doesn’t care because of their race, gender identity and job is kinda shitty. Maybe look into those internal biases.
The next part would be finding out how they are and will be effected by this new presidency. Sometimes people have a hard time caring about a problem if it doesn’t affect them directly. You might have to get to know your coworkers rather than make assumptions about them to learn this.
Being polite and nice to them also helps, no one wants to hear from someone who’s screaming at them.