Post a controversial opinion

but don't, as its surface temperature is zero kelvin and yr fingers wd shatter into an icy dust

*cough*

"What would you ask us?"

Miss Lavis laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy's arm, as if to suggest that she, at all events, would get full marks."

OK, then, something I DO believe; Derek Bailey will have a number one single before this decade's out.

*does this controversial opinion necessarily have to be mine?

that's something I WANT to believe.

AND WHAT ANDREW SAID!!

The people who sometimes annoy me on ILE are on the whole the ones whose talents I most envy.

AND WHAT ANDREW SAID!!

I believe the Harry Potter industry is even more guilty of this.

But he DID!

I don't have a firm opinion on whether abortion should be legal. I've yet to see a totally convincing pro-choice argument (not that I've been reading in depth). My main reason for being sort of pro-choice is that it's a controversial topic and since I don't have a firm decided opinion I want to leave it up to personal choice.

(barely in the closet, mind, but still.)

http://www.lifecorner.org/photos2.html

yes i have no life. what of it?

what harm does my not having a life do to you? is it, like, illegal?

2) Harry Potter is a kids book and adults reading it are morons

3) LOTR is Harry Potter for grown-ups (and thus still shit)

4) Freedom of speech won't feed my children

5) David Elleray's denial of Chesterfield a legitimate 3rd goal in the 1997 FA Cup semi-final was an act of class war.

Hum dee dai la la hum dei dei la la la la la
Hum dee dai la la hum dei dei la la la la la
Kids!"

(1st person to mention 'Australia' is 1st on the boat...)

hashtags are more toxic to the US political climate than all the corporate money in the world

The left is unhealthily obsessed with moral purity.

man alive otm

the left a lot of my leftist friends who post a lot on facebook and a few writers they admire, basically

the left are the worst

ban strollers

xp- actually Hurting, iirc i follow Doug Henwood on facebook because of a post you made on ilx about how he's fun to follow as a cipher into intra-left squabbles. too hooked on hatereading to unfollow :(

The left is unhealthily obsessed with moral purity.

#mindBlown

xp I generally like Henwood, he just has a lot of weird hangers-on.

ah that wasn't clear, i meant hate-reading his comment threads and intra-left squabbles he links to. i like henwood a lot, even if he's a little too partisan/hard left for my taste. i actually met him under hilarious circumstances in montreal last summer. he was tweeting about feeling embarrassed to be seen reading HRC's memoir (which he was reading for the review that turned into his controversially designed book) at a montreal cafe, and i looked over and saw him at a neighbouring table with the book on his lap!

Wow @ 2002 opinions. I've been pretty solidly pro-choice and anti-death penalty for a long time.

not every shooter is a terrorist

pretty uncontroversial there. if you're talking about the planned parenthood thing, almost no one in the media is calling him a terrorist. he's just a disgruntled gentle guy who was having a bad day and just happened to be near planned parenthood. these things happen

Such a hapless goofball. You can't help but love him!

i don't know if this is controversial or even an opinion but i do believe that if pro-life activists believe what they say about abortion is true (that it is literally murder and there has literally been one of history's greatest genocides going on in the US for years) there should be way more clinic shootings. think about the kind of behavior you would condone if you felt it was designed to stymie an actual genocide. otoh from the beginning of this year: "If we were in 30's Berlin we'd all be Nazi's," so maybe not.

Not everything in the respective threads are racist/sexist/antisemitism

how dare you

"otoh from the beginning of this year thread" i meant

I sometimes feel similarly about people who are vegetarians/vegans for animal rights reasons. Why don't they at least push for anti-meat legislation more often?

I don't see how there is much of a case for abortion being a genocide by this definition, though, even if you think it is murder.

3xpost

think about the kind of behavior you would condone if you felt it was designed to stymie an actual genocide

you could go all the way up to genocide minus one

fair enough - i was using genocide loosely to mean the intentional murder of huge quantities of people in a systemic manner. i don't think they're being discriminated against on account of their race or religion. xp

Pet breeds basically = killing dogs and cats for ornament and amusement.

And yet it's socially acceptable, even classy.

"Ooh, lovely dog! Is that a Glaswegian Sproinger Spaniel?" "Yes!" "I love their temperament. And such majestic bearing!"

"May I pet your dog? What breed is she?" "She's an Ethiopian Sticklefoot. Yes, it's rare for E-Stickies have this golden color, but she took a ribbon for Best in Show last month!"

I get that people may want a pet that works well for their household and lifestyle.

But with millions of dogs and cats being put to sleep for lack of a good home, any and all intentional breeding is like throwing gas on the fire. And failing (or refusing) to spay/neuter is equally reckless.

News flash: dogs don't give a shit about whether they're a Norwegian Bumbleneck or a Mexican Cockless. If an intentionally-bred pet is beautiful or noble, bully for you... but as for the practice as a whole, why not footbinding, or toddler bonsai?

I sometimes feel similarly about people who are vegetarians/vegans for animal rights reasons. Why don't they at least push for anti-meat legislation more often?

I'm (recently) vegan for a lot of reasons, not just animal rights, but I think greater public awareness of the consequences of factory farming and animal-based diets is more effective than legislation at this point. Also I'm not necessarily a bleeding-heart animal lover. I'm more interested in seeing people significantly reduce their consumption of meat/dairy/eggs/etc than in seeing everyone go fully vegan. Though at the rate humanity is trashing this earth, at some point most of us will be forced to give up animal consumption.

Or we'll populate the seas w/ plankton and consume vast amounts of fish?

people don't push for anti-meat legislation because it has absolutely no chance and it makes meateaters incredibly angry to even discuss the concept. otherwise reasonable people get visibly shaken and angry and begin yelling at good friends and ruining dinners and family gatherings, and even after the tension thaws out a little bit, during future gatherings there are countless side-remarks that fly around the room about how such and such was on the dinner menu to accommodate "the vegan" (even if you're not a vegan) and assumptions that the non-meateater is deeply disappointed at everyone around them and probably thinks they're a bad person because of how they eat meat. if somehow anti-meat legislation was ever seriously brought to the floor i'd strongly consider protesting against it just so that i didn't have to listen to the nauseating comments that everyone has on the issue. there's a stereotype about the vegetarian/vegan ruining everyone's good fun and lecturing everyone, but in my experience it's always been the veggies just eating their food and attempting to have a normal meal while numerous (well-meaning!) (?) friends and acquaintances interrogate them about what they are and aren't eating and why.

but i'm not bitter! i'm not bitter!

all of that was supposed to be read using the funny satirical jokey guy voice

ppl who get angry that vegans exist should be executed

basically

how about ppl who get angry that meat-eaters exist?

Humanity could relieve itself of anger, intolerance, resentment, guilt, associated defense mechanisms and much destructive cravings; while gaining humility, patience, forgiveness, compassion, benevolence, empathy, and equinamity; if only we could all concede contra-causal free will is a delusion.

everyone should eat their meals alone. it's a secret.

take it into the dark, cold woods. do what you have to do. then don't talk about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evkz3hgHQyM

listening to other ppl eat is the worst anyway

Meat eaters can go out to the woods and rub the juices all over them, have sex with it, whatever it is that they typically do with the meat. All I ask is that they keep me out of it and stay away from my daughter

Not everything in the respective threads are racist/sexist/antisemitism

whoa whoa whoa man how long you been here

I don't think that opinion is controversial. but you can take that tone to the dark, cold woods.

I like karl's plan, but we should just keep some loose meat in the woods.

bulgogi beef tree hollow

"loose meat"

karl, I know plenty of people who are still upset by the curly lightbulbs. Trying to imagine how butthurt they'd be by Meat Prohbition, gah. "So hard to get bacon across the border nowadays, because of the lib-nanny state, eleventy!!!11!" Yes, If I were veg*an I'd oppose anti-meat laws too, if only to avoid hearing forever about how much we'd ruined everyone's fun.

I saw and enjoyed Cowspiracy the other evening. Next day I ate a shit-ton of dairy and some meat. It cannot happen. The only way is emergency rationing during war or global meltdown, by which time t will be too late.

there's a With Bob and David about this

I don't have any kids (having children is way more environmentally damaging, long-term, than eating nothing but bacon cheeseburgers all day while coal-rolling the highways of America) so I eat what the fuck I want. Sometimes it's a salad, sometimes it's not.

that's not necessarily true.

really the only ways to significantly change your individual carbon footprint (really a symbolic and pyrrhic "victory" the way things are going to go) are not to consume animal products and not to travel by airplane.

so someone eating bacon cheeseurgers all day could cause more environmental damage than several people not doing that. cf. the consumption habits of individuals in rich countries v poor.

Isn't travelling by airplane greener than driving?

Not-having-children, as an environmentalist measure, means that a larger percentage of tomorrow's grownups will be people whose parents were not environmentalists.

That might mean a thing or two in terms of their values, and the resulting impact of their lifestyle choices. Just sayin.

Not-having-children, as an environmentalist measure

Actually, my not-having-children is directly related to my not-liking-children. Nothing to do with environmentalism at all.

Isn't travelling by airplane greener than driving?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:25 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think there are cases where flying the same distance is greener than driving that distance by yourself, especially in a less fuel efficient car. On the whole, though, absolutely not. Especially since air travel is largely done across distances that people wouldn't drive, i.e. just wouldn't travel at all otherwise (going halfway around the world for a vacation, etc.)

Another thing that has a big impact on carbon footprint is the size of your living space and how you heat/cool it -- moreso than driving IIRC.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping

(tl;dr - car v air travel in environmental terms actually rather complex)

No beef with yr stance, top man etc. Having kids is not for everyone of course.

Hate to belabor the obvious, but no children = no future grownups. Everybody you've ever had sex with, every one of your friends, and everybody who's ever made a record/written a book/painted a painting that you liked? That was once a snot-nosed poop-covered brat. And they all had parents who had to curtail, to some extent, whatever they previously thought of as their lives (clubbing, meth, whores, golf, whatever).

Pretty much, on Kantian grounds, somebody has to have children, and I'd rather it be Us (broadly speaking) rather than Them (broadly speaking).

Climate change can only be fought through state action, however I have come around to think individual choices accompanying calls for state action mutually strengthen each other.

Not having kids for environmental reasons kind of stretches the logical limit of ethics imo. I'm fine with people not having kids but that strikes me as an odd reason.

There's tons of good reasons not to have kids let's not get silo'd here

yeah, like given the infinitesimal impact having a kid will have on environment, if it will bring you great joy please have a kid

Just keep your joy to yourself where possible.

How.many things mentioned itt have less of an environmental impact than a kid that lives to idk 75?

To whom are you doing your ethical duty by not having kids except other people's presumed future kids? Unless you think the most ethical think humanity can do is to die out, in which case your ethics places other species ahead of humans.

Ugh v human centric not cool man

trimming back is good. raising children is not the only way to have an impact in the world. lots of sources of joy out there incl. adoption.

let's be real - there are no potential parents out there that are going to change their mind on having kids bc of fear of overpopulation

if you say so. i honestly have no idea but would rather give them the benefit of the doubt.

i would say mordy is otm but tbh i can easily imagine some slate article pitched as "i always wanted kids...then i started thinking about overpopulation. here's why you should too!"

one of my envirofascist college professors actually did change their mind on having kids because of climate change/resource constraints. he and his wife limited themselves to one kid (don't know if they adopted more or not)

but yeah, not too common

I can kind of see someone having the feeling of "not wanting to bring a child into this world to suffer" assuming climate change is going to massively fuck up the planet, but the results seem so indeterminate and unknowable, and so much human suffering has occurred in so many eras that it sees presumptuous to think you can guess whether your own offspring will suffer particularly badly in the coming decades.

my wife and i have thought about environmental concerns when talking about having a kid but def more in terms of "hey the world is going to be screwed when our hypothetical kid grows up" rather than "hey our hypothetical kid is going to contribute to screwing up the world".

here's a controversial opinion. or not a controversial opinion but like a serious consideration i've been having recently which is that despite my fervent wish for more gun control that could successfully bring down the murder rate in the US i keep thinking about asking a gun-rights promoting friend to initiate me into the horrors of gun ownership. i can totally get how these things reinforce themselves - ppl are afraid and they want to defend themselves and naturally if just you own a gun it's not a problem. like it's a categorical imperative issue. obv a society full of guns doesn't work but it's easy to think that you are not contributing to that problem. or like why ppl don't vote. so i guess i will continue to vote + to not own a gun bc kant.

xp the world is going to be screwed up for the next couple generations i assume unless humanity miraculously pulls itself out of this nose dive like a hero in an adventure pulp but tbh most eras of history seem pretty bleak and humanity has survived and i assume there was even happiness and great satisfaction in the most horrific of times and those people continued to have kids knowing how shitty their lives would be

I know plenty of people who are still upset by the curly lightbulbs

CFLs have already been overtaken by LEDs fyi

xp oh, it's just one of a myriad of different considerations and counter-considerations in an interminable debate that we have with varying degrees of seriousness, I agree that it's not a deeply compelling reason not to procreate.

xp Always find it interesting to read what the coherent end of gun owners have to say, though in my mind, they tend to get bracketed off with miniature carpenters with respectable workshops (10+ kinds of saw and a selection of stock wood) and people who take drugs responsibly and people who are very good at painting 15mm Greek hoplites and other professional hobbyists, with just one telling distinction which is that this a gun

is artisanal gun craftsmanship/ownership a thing, like fellas reclaiming gun ownership just as they reclaim the wood they use on the gun handle?

I haven't seen that, no doubt it's out there? But gun ownership def matches up with 'non-tradesman's interest in tools and hardware'

People who make it a summer project to build their own house extension or replace their own joists and boards, through a feeling of being a Renaissance man or a Henry David Thoreau

Muscular Christianity

I'll cop to having had a certain curiosity about gun ownership at times, although the risks of one of my children using it have always outweighed any perceived security benefits, which I think are probably marginal anyway.

; if only we could all concede contra-causal free will is a delusion.

if we don't concede this, presumably it's because we have no free will to choose to do so

you know when you submerge a straw in water and put your finger on one end and then take the straw out of the water, and the water stays in the straw instead of falling out? i don't get how that works

that was my controversial opinion

i know a guy who deals in historical guns and let me fire a civil-war-era pistol once, from which i surmise that not many civil-war-era people were killed by pistols

anyway

Hate to belabor the obvious, but no children = no future grownups

so what? i'll be dead soon enough; why should i care?

we have reached such a pinnacle of evolution that i neither need to play these darwinian games nor appreciate enormous strollers on the subway at rush hour

i am optimistic about the future of human civilization.

"I agree that it's not a deeply compelling reason not to procreate."

Idk - it's one that I seriously think of often. I worry about bringing a new kid into such a fucked up future. Somehow it just doesn't seem fair. It's one of the things that's made me start thinking about maybe fostering one day instead of bio parenting. Which is not to say I have decided not to ever have a kid. I haven't decided anything yet but it's something I think about a ton.

the future is going to be the best time ever

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/15/15-future-rapper.w529.h352.jpg

ok even if you don't feel as optimistic about me, there's still good reason to be suspicious of your own forecast of an apocalyptic future

for example, people born in the 1970s: many people of your parents' generation were extremely pessimistic about the future. however, people born in the 1970s (in america or wherever) live super sweet lives

*optimistic about IT as me

people who decided NOT to have kids in the 70s for that reason are now old, and see other people's children living wonderful lives as they die alone. you wanna risk being that person?

we all die alone

Worth noting I get a sweet pension

lol having kids so that you don't die alone seems insanely selfish and is also ridiculous considering how many people have kids and die alone anyway

however, people born in the 1970s (in america or wherever) live super sweet lives

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 2:38 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no they fucking don't. what?

I was born in 1971, and my life's pretty sweet. But then, I don't have kids.

yeah you want to meet my cousins? idk maybe they are upbeat but their lives seem more than a little dire, and they are 70s kids

my cousins born in the seventies lead amazing lives, at least by external measures.

Even struggling people today have material comforts that couldn't be dreamed of 100 years ago, so direness of life is relative.

yeah but for the wider polis the world's been pretty much straight downhill since the 70s. dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program, bowie stops making good records

xpost but whatever

in the scheme of human existence, americans born in the 70s (of which i am one) are #blessed. that doesn't mean they're happy tho, nor does it explain why i should care what y'all get up to when i'm outie

thomp: i agree there are some things that have been not so sweet since the 1970s, but you gotta put it in perspective, and something like the stagnation in US real median wages is nothing relative to the apocalyptic predictions of people in the 70's

otm signed someone also born in the 70s who is largely #blessed and leads a pretty amazing life by external measures

also like, yeah wages were flat for a while in one big country, but like, we also have the internet now. we didn't even have VHS in the 70's. or like, just barely.

i realise bringing up the internet on a board of self-loathing internet addicts is not the best argument and anticipate your pithy remarks. it's still rocked our standard of living

idk mane i thought the metric here 'is life worth living by some absolute metric, and does it have the prospect of becoming more so'. i agree that post-millenial enforced leisure is better than trying to work out what parts of an irradiated cockroach are safe to eat or whatever would have been

yes the metric is about a metric. metrics 4 lyfe

that doesn't mean they're happy tho

serious question: do you guys really have the impression everyone is unhappy? i really don't feel that way, about like just about anyone i know with very few exceptions

the best reason not to have kids are selfish reasons. i feel bad for anyone dumb enough to convince themselves not to have kids for perceived altruistic reasons

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

Even struggling people today have material comforts that couldn't be dreamed of 100 years ago, so direness of life is relative.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 8:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

life's anxieties and pain really expand to meet their demand -- there are so many ways we've expanded in ways of reaching out to others and creating community and support, but until you meet a certain threshold of comfort, your personal stresses will echo those of the aggrieved people of the past -- even if they didn't have indoor plumbing

it sucks to think that human misery is relative, but it is. ppl born whenever might have it sweet as far as economics and social attitudes but we're on a continuum where we inherit attitudes and fears from those around us.

idk growing up in the 70s might be nice until your dad who was a vietnam vet was erratic and mostly absent made for a weird home experience

a bunch of recent weird activity in my area made me realize again how many people around my age are either veterans or peers of veterans who fell into some really heavy drug shit

'is life worth living by some absolute metric, and does it have the prospect of becoming more so'

Life is meaningless and death is inevitable. But there's fun to be had in the meantime.

Re external/material comforts: I am a diabetic. So was my father. When I think about what he went through as a diabetic child in the 1940s and 1950s, there is no way I wouldn't want to be the age I am, with the drugs and technology available to me.

i feel bad for anyone dumb enough to convince themselves not to have kids for perceived altruistic reasons

idk I have a few coworkers who adopted because of their genetic conditions that were highly inheritable. kids? pretty good. not wanting to have their kids deal with shit that makes their life difficult? fair.

wait what how did you misconstrue that to make me against adoption, my sisters are adopted i love adoption someone adopt me

feel like that still counts as 'having kids'!! haha xp

many x-posts - Everyone? No, of course not. That said, I do think that I know a lot more unhappy people than I do happy people, yeah.

Jean Stapleton was hot

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:06 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man last time i spent a summer working in a factory pretty much everyone there moaned about life under late capitalism, albeit not in those terms

fair, it's raising kids but those are kids who are already here! it's not "does the world need a kid", it's "do I want to raise a kid in this world"

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson

This. God.

I have friends who worked in plastics factories or candy factories in their hometowns before later moving to where I am, and have siblings who live in those areas. fwiw they have strong amounts of Trump support there, so idk, human misery

My boss is a Trump supporter. Has one of those red hats on a shelf behind him in his office. But he has never seemed particularly miserable or rage-filled; in fact he's quite happy, laughing and smiling all the time, and we get along great.

Imagining ppl itt like, blowing their fringe out of their eyes, like, yknow, capitalism man yknow, life sucks, man

wtf even is this thread now btw

what your kid majors in

basically in the US getting a college degree is inferior to a lot of other trade programs unless you have a specific field you're aiming for

which isn't necessarily bad, but I feel like the most clued-in people to this in my area are kids of immigrants, and they are doing pretty great! and that comes with its own political and social understanding that a wite kid like myself had to learn

dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

2) conservatives and non-anti-capitalists exist, so maybe half of those 25% cheer the former and are actively happy about it. maybe 1% of people are anti-capitalist? so 99% are cool with the latter. so you've got 6.25% of people who wish the liberal consensus hadn't ended, and 0.25% who are sad that capitalism hasn't ended

3) how many, among these 6 and 0.25 percent, feel actively sad about that, like to the extent that they are bummed out about it on a day to day?

xxp place to talk about the feels without cluttering up one of the current events threads imho

I'm not attracted to men with fringes over their eyes

*controversial opinion*

you wanna risk being that person?

you can discuss happiness now or throughout history etc etc but if this is yr baseline reason to have children then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

life is generally good, you have to take yr lumps, some ppl weren't built for that because they think harsh reality is for others

it helps if you're from a people of grievances, darragh

idk man last time i spent a summer working in a factory pretty much everyone there moaned about life under late capitalism, albeit not in those terms

― thwomp (thomp), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:15 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can definitely imagine that life is shitty for people who work in factories in england, but the % of people who work in factories in the UK must be approaching zero fast, so that's good, no?

I consider myself a beneficiary of what Freud termed "normal human unhappiness." I don't really believe in "happiness" as a persistent state of living, but I feel like my life is worth living.

many x-posts - Everyone? No, of course not. That said, I do think that I know a lot more unhappy people than I do happy people, yeah.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:13 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:-(

Flopson otm mookie otm

I come from a fuckin *family* of grievance mh but idk that having access to the entire misery of the internet means that life day to day ain't always gettin better like buddy holly was still around and narrating it

you can discuss happiness now or throughout history etc etc but if this is yr baseline reason to have children then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― mookieproof, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not my baseline reason to not have kids, it's my attempt at a persuasive argument to the idiot who wouldn't have kids for the fear of the opposite happening

:)

Should clarify I just don't want kids cos fuckem

lol

i can definitely imagine that life is shitty for people who work in factories in england, but the % of people who work in factories in the UK must be approaching zero fast, so that's good, no?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:21 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man ime factory people have it better than retail ppl and call center ppl

idk the party line was always "everything is great, get with the program" in life and I really thought I wasn't allowed to have my own problems, I'm sorry for throwing that back out at the world

i think that was a pretty common narrative at that time

also i think darragh is probably good with kids

But what's that mean thomp?

it's my attempt at a persuasive argument to the idiot who wouldn't have kids for the fear of the opposite happening

ah, then you are arguing with no one in this thread. cool

I'm great with kids cos I never have to worry about the consequences its absolutely ideal tbh

i heard darragh loves cats too

tbf mookie I may have thrown that out as a light slap at ecodoommongers earlier itt

to be clear i'm not really arguing the 'so don't have kids' bit, i am just enjoying inhabiting the apparently both niche and cliche view that life rn is not all that great

dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

2) conservatives and non-anti-capitalists exist, so maybe half of those 25% cheer the former and are actively happy about it. maybe 1% of people are anti-capitalist? so 99% are cool with the latter. so you've got 6.25% of people who wish the liberal consensus hadn't ended, and 0.25% who are sad that capitalism hasn't ended

3) how many, among these 6 and 0.25 percent, feel actively sad about that, like to the extent that they are bummed out about it on a day to day?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:20 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if i can be bothered with yr math here but for a whole minute i thought yr '3' was relating to the third item in my trifecta viz bowie and i was like man idk how many ppl are bummed that there aren't more bowie records as good as 'station to station' but there really should be

I don't like cats or kids so fuck me

ok here's my deal: have kids, if the world they are born into is an apocalyptic hellscape you can give them to me free of charge and they will join my death cult

the new bowie song is pretty cool!

Was that your summary of it

Flopson OTM throughout, incl about the Bowie

Oh! You pretty things beyond thunderdome

I'm fine with Bowie not releasing any more good albums.

my friend is now a QA engineer for manufacturing, formerly worked on the production line, think he kind of misses the production aspect and hates the non-union management-track crap he deals with now

with factory work, assuming it's *good* factory work, you end up being able to go home and leave your work at work, and created something. some call centers are just sieves of misery

one of my best friends from high school was very competent at his job, and ended up being the person who called people behind on home mortgage payments to work out payment plans. it was very seldom someone who was just irresponsible, mostly people talking about their spouses being on disability, sudden illness, family tragedy. and it wasn't a position that led to promotions -- even if he was good at it, he'd just be given more difficult cases.

I'm fine with Bowie not releasing any more good albums.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 December 2015 03:32 (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Controversial opinion itt

more boomer artists should retire, spend their dough, drink Campari, and never return

dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

2) conservatives and non-anti-capitalists exist, so maybe half of those 25% cheer the former and are actively happy about it. maybe 1% of people are anti-capitalist? so 99% are cool with the latter. so you've got 6.25% of people who wish the liberal consensus hadn't ended, and 0.25% who are sad that capitalism hasn't ended

3) how many, among these 6 and 0.25 percent, feel actively sad about that, like to the extent that they are bummed out about it on a day to day?

re 1: 'how many people are even aware that these two things happened' is not the point, 'how many people on low incomes lead worse lives than they would had the anglo-american political climate not shifted' is the point. it's a pretty high percentage!!! i would look up some numbers on food poverty but w/e

re 2: if you're not at all bothered about continuing exploitation of the under-developed world then no matter how happy you are you are not leading a 'sweet life', you are morally vacuous and/or mentally subnormal so whatever?

anyway bye comrades i gotta go do some goalless physical labour in my spare time to develop a body physically attractive by a set of arbitrary standards totally unreflective of the sedentary lives we lead now that our 'work' lives are mostly aimless sitting around, peace out guys, viva la revocion

i think that is the short version of this stage of society -- people are finally realizing the get-things-done jobs are good, but too many are disappearing, while the misery sieve ones are still there. makes ppl of my ilk realize the social safety net needs to be a lot larger because it'd alleviate the call center traffic while keeping the people who need that work afloat

more boomers in general should float off into the sunset

Thomp u mad cranky lately what's on ya

do pictures exist of darragh with a cat

ftr i love (and do want) kids and hate (but could maybe grow to like if I got to know some cool ones) cats

well darragh i sorted out my sort of homeless and can't hold down a job type problems but i moved to a country i don't speak the language in the process, it's been a ... transitional year

mh otm about .. all of these kinds of jobs, incidentally

xp yeah but they've got weird food there so

Ooof...grats on the good stuff and commiserations on the tough stuff thomp

thanks man

j this is 4u:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_9aOJ0whHVs/maxresdefault.jpg

of all the people i have been around this year, the dudes (who were mostly brothers/cousins) who i hired to build my garage and do some assorted construction stuff seem to have their shit most figured out. a couple of them worked with my dad, the main one at the same company and his cousin was actually in some construction union classes w/my dad a couple nights. they either do home stuff on the side outside of their day jobs, or have their own businesses. loved that they got shit done and i basically tried to not be the dude who chatted them up and got in their way in some weird patriarchal way, as i have seen ppl do.

the union class my dad and luis were in was pretty much their version of a "working styles" class which cracked me up, same shit i do as a corporate dude every few years. they had generational types -- here is how you deal with boomers, millennials, how they address situations differently!

not really the thread for it, but working w/that whole situation was great

is that just everything they serve put onto one bun, that seems efficient

Unless you think the most ethical think humanity can do is to die out, in which case your ethics places other species ahead of humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson

This. God.

― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 December 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God has it pretty sweet under late capitalism.

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

Don't be dumb. If you talk to ppl in terms of depressed wages and working conditions and the fact that not only 'factory' work but also a lot of well-paid work technical work in heavy industry (steel) is disappearing - and the ongoing destruction of communities that depends on these you will get a different type of conversation.

I think Orange is the New Black sucks and is racist

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping

This was really interesting, thanks! Admittedly, my question was largely based on the premise that airlines are unlikely to change the number of flights they schedule based on whether or not I book a ticket (although obv the overall aggregate demand makes a difference) but one more car is on the road, generating emissions, every time I drive anywhere. NB: I usually prefer to rent a car instead of flying to go back to Ottawa because it is cheaper and I enjoy driving.

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson

This. God.

― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 December 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poverty, homelessness, housing crises exist in the place that I am from and the place that I now live more than they did say 10 years ago - it's not the sole purview of effete leftist liberal arts grads to be concerned about these things

i care about all those things and realize they aren't on a continuous path of improvement. i even have a part time contract job studying things related to that. like here's a graph i made today that charts real weekly earnings of the bottom 10% of workers (horizontal axis) against the share of the income distribution held by people making 200% of the median income (vertical axis) (in Canada)

http://i.imgur.com/jPgU54y.jpg

and yet... i'm still optimistic. sometimes i think focusing too much on the plight of workers in the rich countries misses the forest for the trees. like, have you seen this graph by branko milanovic?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUXukb8WUAA-AHj.jpg:large

so much of the economic anxiety you read about in the guardian or new york times is worrying about people between the 85th and 95th percentiles of global earnings--while people in the lower percentiles have done really good!

i don't wanna get super into this cause last time i came out in favor of modernity on ilx shakey called me an idiot and hurt my feelings, but ya idk i think things are ok

that graph above is pretty crazy actually: over the same period the bottom 10% of workers' weekly real wages increased by 15$, the share of total earnings of people who make double median income increased by 6%

i'd like to see the version of that graph that uses the same units for both axes (either real earnings by $, or share of total earnings as %)

i can hook you up no problem

wait which one, branko's or mine?

last time i came out in favor of modernity on ilx shakey called me an idiot and hurt my feelings

no memory of this, but I apologize for hurtin yr feelings

thank you

xpost yours!

and actually, i guess you can deduce the % just by what's on the graph. if weekly earnings for 10th percentile workers went from 245 to 260, then they increased by...6%? so the weekly wage increased by 6% for both 10th percentile workers and people making 200% of the median income? i'm probably fucking something up.

yeah it's a weird graph cause it's levels on one axis and a share on the other, i was inspired by the graph in this blog post http://crookedtimber.org/2015/08/12/up-and-down-left-and-right/ but i don't have gini (and i don't really like gini) so i used high earners' income share. i just finished cleaning the data for this project and that was one of the first graphs i shot out. pretty pumped to dig in

i do love a good graph! just wanted to make sure i was interpreting it correctly

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

adult people probably should not care about star wars

deep dish pizza is good

I don't care about Star Wars that's for sure.

Marc Maron is a better comedian than Louis CK

The US Constitution really does guarantee the individual right to own firearms so even though it leads to the deaths of thousands we're stuck with it

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

Insufficiently controversial tbh.

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

Better.

It say controversial, not scary.

Stevie Wonder's harmonica is tolerable. He doesn't use it on every song. DYLAN, on the other hand, should have given the harp a rest more often.

In health care, rationing/death panels are not only good but necessary. I'm down with single-payer health care being provided for all, but you can't get there without triage and rationing. Collectively we pay like a gazillion dollars a day to keep oldsters alive for slightly longer. A fraction of those dollars could be vaccinating children / feeding hungry people for far more long-term benefit. Kill granny. Yes, even mine.

OTM

Ask me again in 40 years, but I think I would volunteer to live until a certain set age, at which point I'd be "sent to live on a farm". I don't want to be an ornery oldster tenaciously clinging to life out of spite. And having an endpoint in sight would significantly reduce anxiety about when the sweet embrace of death would finally claim my shambling, decrepit shell of a body.

we should have an auction. the highest bidders get to avoid kiling their grannies

you've got it backwards

Their grannies get to kill the highest bidders.

'death panels' not overly controversial depending on your country and how often they get referred to as 'death panels'.

'Death panel' sounds awful and it's so misleading. It's not really a panel so much as a giant pit that they throw you into.

Of course they already exist and they're called "insurance companies," but why not get it out in the open?

over here they're called NICE

there should be plenty of money for the government to help old people longer AND help children and impoverished people. but it doesn't work because taxes are evil and when the government helps too many people we teeter on the edge of communism and the apocalypse.

Wealth really only has meaning when others are living in the dirt.

just make euthanasia non-taboo idk

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

― ledge, Thursday, December 10, 2015 5:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what makes them so good, though

most stand-up comedy is lame and not very funny

not remotely controversial

understatement maybe

definitely

I really annoyed a normy with that opinion a few months ago, had some jibe about how I must not have a sense of humour or something stupid.

i think even stand-up comedians would agree? my impression is they generate an awful lot of material that gets discarded bc it doesn't work when they try it out on stage.

what's a 'normy'?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/norm3.jpg

a normy is someone who wears nonbranded clothing with solid colors so the world's most hated tech companies can't use algorithms to identify their fashion preferences and sell them to other companies without the normy's knowledge

i think we can all agree on that

http://www.bedlammag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Angus_Black_and_White.jpg

those are norms

normys are people without substance abuse / mental health problems

I didn't mean that brimstead, I meant "normal" aka dull, though it would also work with that other definition tbh

lol brimstead

there are no conspiracies

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.

nonsense, when walking on stilts, actually becomes true

living past the age of 40 when you have no kids is pointless

I think I agree with both Sanpaku and man alive.

That is, I agree that an ostensible natural right is pointless if it isn't able to do you any practical good. I have no use for a right that doesn't do me any practical good - either because it's not recognized by the rest of the world, or because it isn't backed up by something with worldly force.

If the "stilts" in the metaphor correspond to practical real-world systems of persuasion, compulsion, and protection, I agree that stilts change the situation.

A baseball player who has hit a home run has the "right" to run around the bases and score a point for his team - not because he is endowed by his creator with the inalienable right to do so, but rather because his right to do so is enshrined in the rules of the game he is playing, and both the teams and the umpires generally agree to respect those rules.

Let us say I assert that I have a natural right to not get eaten by my co-workers. Because there are laws in effect, and people generally respect them, this right has achieved some valence in the world. This "right" is helping me NOT because it is self-evidently endowed to me by my creator - I'm utterly agnostic about whether or not that's true - it's helping me because of the way the "right" has been enshrined in law and custom.

But let us say that a cow on a farm were to suddenly achieve a heretofore unseen level of intelligence, communicative ability, and moral sophistication. She could argue that she has the natural right to not be eaten. Maybe she could persuade people to not eat her, but they wouldn't be doing so out of respect for her natural rights. Because her natural rights are not enshrined in law and custom, they have no "stilts."

the "loose meat sandwich" is an abomination against god

I'm hoping I'm really hoping that's not slang for anything

its a sloppy joe without the tomaters

realizing that probably doesn't sound much better to a non-yank

brb off to lobby for an end to transatlantic travel, the cessation of all broadcasting of American programming and closer ties to the soviets

at the very least, prospective parents should need to take a month-long seminar on raising children.

(i don't care who gives birth, this isn't about that. we might be talking about adoptive parents).

ideally, however, parents would not only take that month-long seminar, but would also be required to have an iq of over 120. . . there's more. i'll probably piss people off, though.

i don't care who gives birth, because in my ideal world, more children could be put up for adoption and raised by parents more adequate.

Most heartland rock is boring.

Are you 40 yet?

whatever, I'm betting this actually turns out to be pretty funny, though I'm sure everyone else here is likely going to rain smdhs and nagls upon it

― Über, Über mensch (wins), Saturday, December 12, 2015 11:01 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is posting someone else's controversial opinion allowed? From the Sacha Baron Cohen thread.

Lol! it seems quite mild when it closely follows a pro-eugenics post

Really funny movies sometimes have awful commercials.

being over 40 and wishing death is difficult, being under 40 and hoping there is an end is par for the course

I'm under 40. But part of the statement comes from having a garbage last 2.5 years.

better days, friend

Is posting someone else's controversial opinion allowed?

Only if you agree with it. The "nonsense on stilts" quote I posted is a rather famous line from Jeremy Bentham.

He had some spoons, but he bentham. He had cars, but he rectum. He has customers, but he gypsum.

Elastica's "Connection" is the good version of The Breeders' "Cannonball."

eh love them both, don't care

Sometimes alcohol is good therapy that does what talking cant. As long as you don't abuse it

sometimes abusing alcohol is good therapy

nah

Def not abusing.

None of my opinions are controversial.

Technological human civilization squandered its last opportunity to avert suicide in my lifetime.

Climate feedback runaway, population overshoot, resource scarcity, pervasive warfare over the scraps, and an unmistakable sixth mass extinction are inevitable over the next couple centuries; barring a near-term massive pandemic.

Without accessible fossil fuels, subsequent human civilizations will remain stuck at Roman-to-17th century technical development.

This was our species test prior to expansion into our star system and the galaxy beyond, and we failed.

Perhaps this accounts for the Fermi Paradox as well.

I think that particular controversial opinion is well established

I'll continue to save a few quid in the expectation of a nice retirement myself tbh

I think everything's going to be OK

...for wealthier people and people who don't live in developing countries, yep

I agree with half of Dr. Pangloss' famous dictum, namely that this is the best of all possible worlds. The idea that everything is for the best, however, is pure nonsense.

People who are otherwise not religious or especially not Christian putting up Christmas trees are weird.

It was pagan syncretism to begin with though

Sure. But it's not now. Especially irks me when people call them secular, seasonal decorations. Yeah, if you celebrate Christmas.

it has always been semi-pagan and unexamined and the tree isn't a christian symbol anyway

an unexamined tree is not worth trimming

If you agree that the meaning of Christmas can change from pagan to Christian, why do you disagree that it can change from Christian to secular?

You talking to me? Because it's called a Christmas tree, is overwhelmingly celebrated by Christians and is usually accompanied by Santa, elves, presents and, um, Christmas?

remember that point in history when christmas was unambiguously a christian festival and everybody treated it as such and there was no tension or disagreement between christians about what it meant or how it could be celebrated and every tradition people observed was derived from theology?

like santa, elves and presents

This opinion, so controversial. Maybe I should have put it in the irrationally angry thread, because my opinion is no more rational than Christmas trees.

I dunno. It just makes me feel weird every year, how overwhelmingly Christmas everything is, and how not Christian I am, and how often I come across people claiming oh it's just a secular seasonal decoration. Meanwhile, even my kids get really self-conscious about their otherness this time of year.

mayonnaise is the third best wet condiment behind hot sauce and mustard

xp i can see lots of ways christmas is still used as a stick to beat non-christians with maybe but i want to defend the immemorial secular northern ceremonies of "please bring the sunshine back it's dark and cold and there's nothing to do except drink the endless night away" that christianity has never been able to snuff out

Yeah, having a winter festival just makes sense to me, it doesn't have to be Christmas per se (I celebrate a fictional festival I call Nuclear Winterval where I make people watch Threads every year). I guess making it be Christmas is still kind of Eurocentric at the least, but presents + trees + elves + stockings + food + booze aren't particularly Christian notions, not to mention Krampus and the Gävlebocken.

presents + trees + elves + stockings + food + booze

these comprise all the best things in the world. plus music.

could do without the stockings (controversial opinion). my mom probably likes them more than presents proper. was in the supermarket with her yesterday and she picked up a $5 lightsaber toothbrush--you press a button and it lights up and goes worp-worp for as long as you're supposed to brush your teeth for--and said "do you think dad would like this in his stocking?" and i was like "...no" and she was like "would you?"

(i said yes of course so i have that to look forward to, but aside from this and the perennial chocolate orange the stocking is a clutterbomb.)

I had no problem eating my coworker's diwali cookies, they can have my holiday ones

i want to defend the immemorial secular northern ceremonies of "please bring the sunshine back it's dark and cold and there's nothing to do except drink the endless night away" that christianity has never been able to snuff out

THIS

(said from the 44th parallel)

Thread prompted me to look up other winter festivals, obviously there's Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, among others there's also Sadeh and Pancha Ganapati, both of which are quite cool in different ways (former: FIRE YES, latter: I'm particularly down with the celebration of the arts).

I'm kind of cautious in that being all "every festival is cool, let's celebrate them all" somehow smacks of privilege, but... that pretty much is my attitude to this stuff.

I think the stockings are Christian. Something to do with St Nicholas giving gold to poor women by putting the stockings through the window.

Jesus wasn't enough for a holiday so we combined his bday with some dude who liked to gift

Nuclear Winterval FTW

People who are otherwise not religious or especially not Christian putting up Christmas trees are weird.

My family does this, I participate and (usually) enjoy it, and I agree with you.

what's weird, not to mention kind of an unconscionable waste of carbon, is putting them up in the tropics. love them tho.

trees in your house is always a good idea imo

i mean within reason

that christianity has a hegemonic grip on america is def not a controversial opinion

There are other countries in the world than America, believe it or not.

^ controversial opinion

nah

Ppl worried abt what other ppl do or don't do vis-a-vis Christmas prob could use another hobby

I've been an atheist since I was 12 but I have a Christmas tree every year and occasionally go to midnight Catholic mass on Christmas eve, I still feel culturally connected to catholicism tho, which might seem weird to some but whatevs.

It's the least weird thing in the world imo, I'm exactly the same tho so

more agnostic than athiest but p much the same

christmas is too much fun to be christian, most of the best elements are unrelated

my wife got a "rented" tree this year that will be replanted after the 25th, people come pick it up. pretty cool idea. I only celebrated the Solstice for many years, but my wife is from a Catholic family so I kinda stand by bemusedly while cookies and packages fly everywhere.

I dunno. It just makes me feel weird every year, how overwhelmingly Christmas everything is, and how not Christian I am, and how often I come across people claiming oh it's just a secular seasonal decoration. Meanwhile, even my kids get really self-conscious about their otherness this time of year.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, December 13, 2015 2:45 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did you grow up with a tree? My family is not religious but we always celebrate christmas, idk

oh nvm, awkward

are there any christmas movies with jesus in them?

Thread prompted me to look up other winter festivals, obviously there's Hanukkah and Kwanzaa,

Kwanzaa was devised explicitly as an alternative to Christmas, but Hanukkah isn't a winter festival, per se. It just typically occurs around Christmas. Often well before. Last year - year before? - it started on (American) Thanksgiving.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Christmas lights and stuff. They're pretty and brighten things up. But sure, yeah, in the States I still think of them as Christmas lights, sorry, and when someone has a tree in their house the last thing I imagine is they're just brightening up their winters. I have family in both England and Australia, where Christmas-y stuff apparently prevails yet where they insist it's totally secular and that "everyone does it." Which may be true, to an extent, but it makes me uneasy when the "secular" celebrations that "everyone" does just happens to coincide with longstanding traditions explicitly associated with a specific religion (however rooted in Paganism or non-Christianity many of the traditions may be). Just because I can sing a dozen Christmas songs does not make them secular, it means that I'm the product of decades of more or less innocent indoctrination.

I don't know, man. I guess I'd be more cool with it if it wasn't called Christmas.

are there any christmas movies with jesus in them?

Good question! I'm not sure, to be honest, but scenes set in churches and nativity decorations abound, so I guess he's sort of implicit?

As my wife just pointed out, Christmas celebrates birthday, so there aren't a lot of narrative roles for newborn Jesus to play.

Jesus's birthday, sorry. (Just in case anyone was confused.)

yeah, it was honestly just an aside that hadn't occurred to me until now. i respect your opinion

thought there might be a film where jesus showed up in 1930s london or something and teaches everyone the true meaning of blah blah blah

time traveling jesus

sorry if this offends anybody

the tree isn't about indoctrination though, no more than the gravy or presents. it all works with or without the divine baby shower

mayonnaise is the third best wet condiment behind hot sauce and mustard

on behalf of ketchup, f u

To be more specific, the ranking goes: sriracha, Dijon mustard, Caribbean hot sauce, aioli, chutney, tahini, salsa, prepared horseradish, harissa, yellow mustard, mayonnaise, Tabasco, honey mustard, Barbecue sauce, Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, ranch dressing, and then ketchup.

fp all of u

whoa, have we really never had a condiments poll?

Lifetime ketchup fan, but I've since come around to the evils of ketchup, categorizing it somewhere alongside soda as sweet things kids like that adults should not be consuming. It's basically all sugar, and having kids who disgustingly request it on everything has really made me reconsider my misplaced allegiance. I mean, I still eat it, especially on fries and burgers, but my slow re-education usually includes mixing it with at least mustard. It'll be a long road, but I think I can do it, with the help of my friends and family. Definitely an assist that Chicago as a whole almost irrationally hates ketchup. So there's that.

Dude hates Christmas and ketchup I'm off to lay a cheeky tenner on him kicking at least three puppies this week

why do we cast aspersions upon those poor souls who can't enjoy ketchup, mayo, etc, they/we deserve our/your sympathy

Mushy appeasement

i feel awful for people who are capable of enjoying mayo because they are broken

^ evidence of bodhisattva-like compassion in industrial quantities

i am a malthusian. there are too many people using too much oil on the planet, now. we cannot sustain this. i would be willing to vote for a candidate that would institute a two-child policy in the u.s., or any other western state.

i'm kind of okay with a little bit of fascism.

I recently heard that Christmas was originally in the summer but a pope moved it to win over converts. Do any Christians still do it in summer?

australians iirc

fascism is bad monster mash. you might just mean like authoritarianism i think but that kinda sucks too :( regardless you probably have much to look forward to.

Anyone who celebrates xmas in the southern hemisphere celebrates it at midsummer, basically

People who are otherwise not religious or especially not Christian putting up Christmas trees are weird.

My family does this, I participate and (usually) enjoy it, and I agree with you.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Sunday, 13 December 2015 23:55 (Yesterday) Permalink

I like blinking lights so there.

Should only Christians eat Easter Eggs?

Christians have so much fun, yay Christians!

I thought Christmas Trees was a pagan thing, anyway.

Go on, where in the nativity does a tree have a particularly important role?

Frankincense and (I have no idea how to spell) Mhyrr come from trees

Myrrh.

But anyway,

Christians have so much fun, yay Christians!

― Anyway, it's not a three, it's a yogh. (Tom D.), Monday, 14 December 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We should adopt whatev religion affords us more time off work. Do Hindus have more holidays?

Frankincense and (I have no idea how to spell) Mhyrr come from trees

can probably add the manger to this list

the gold prob came from an alluvial deposit but you don't see too much tarted up alluvium in december; no consistency.

I wasn't raised with any religious affiliation whatsoever but my family has always celebrated X-Mas. I love the decorations and the spirit of the thing so I've maintained the celebration (with entirely secular decorations). My Jewish girlfriend was into it to a limited extent in previous years but she really pushed to kick the decorating up a notch this year. We also have a menorah. Ours is an inclusive household.

I totally get being weirded out by the pervasiveness, though, as someone who's never had any connection to the reason for the season. Butthurt Christians doubling down on their insistence that no one ever wantonly make reference to HOLIDAY festivities just makes it weirder.

it makes me uneasy when the "secular" celebrations that "everyone" does just happens to coincide with longstanding traditions explicitly associated with a specific religion (however rooted in Paganism or non-Christianity many of the traditions may be). Just because I can sing a dozen Christmas songs does not make them secular, it means that I'm the product of decades of more or less innocent indoctrination.

This is basically OTM. I don't find it that odd when non-believers who have a Christian background celebrate Christmas in a secular sort of way but I think it is a bit funny that my Hindu family celebrates it, although I'm not religious at all myself. I couldn't even tell you when any Hindu holidays are. (I think Deepawali was about a month ago? I got some emails iirc.)

'secular'

While we're on Christian hegemony, Catholicism and Protestantism should not be considered different religions, at least no more so than Saivite Hinduism and Vaishnavite Hinduism.

rum romanism and rebellion imo

(I think Deepawali was about a month ago? I got some emails iirc.)

Yes I was in India last November - it was a novelty to see emptier streets in a big Indian city (Pune)

"Just because I can sing a dozen Christmas songs does not make them secular"

I kinda think it kinda might, or at least it suggests that what's bleeding out here is not so inherent to Catholicism that you can't participate to a fairly large extent without ever encountering any yknow religion

My personal beef is muted but I understand the beef. Rudolph has nothing to do with Christianity but hearing of his mighty feats every December is a perennial reminder to non-adherents of the pervasiveness of Christianity.

Try to remember how we all felt when My Name Is Earl was still on the air.

(Perhaps only applicable to USILXors.)

christmas is so vast & inclusive it is appropriation-proof. ironic christmas trees, satanic festive jumpers; everyone can go for it

sadly my name is earl and its wider reverberations were not limited to the US in a similar way to e.g. christian guff not being limited to churches

wait is my name is earl bad now or

Rudolph : Christianity :: My Name Is Earl : Scientology

We should adopt whatev religion affords us more time off work.

OTM. Sleeping late is the universal religion.

Dude hates Christmas and ketchup I'm off to lay a cheeky tenner on him kicking at least three puppies this week

I love ketchup! My entire post about ketchup was me talking about coming to grips with the fact that I love the condiment equivalent of Coca-Cola.

I did trip over the cat this morning, but I think that was more shin contact, and yeah, he had it coming.

coca-cola is pretty good, had one this morning

looking at pictures of people loving the hell out of santa and christmas crap in japan always warms my heart

"A festival commemorating the birth of Christ has become so thoroughly mainstream that everyone participates, regardless of belief." I mean, I have fun with it too but are ILXors really unwilling to, um, unpack this? Or is it just that it's an obvious point and it's more fun to celebrate? Christmas never had a pagan meaning, even if Christians co-opted pagan symbols and rituals for a Christian festival.

Mayo and ketchup are both duds, btw, although ketchup is tolerable if vinegar is not available for fries.

how do you feel about halloween?

coca-cola is awesome, i'd assume that was a non-controversial opinion except that p much everyone i know seems to brag about how they never drink soda

whoa, have we really never had a condiments poll?

I think this should be a ballot poll and not a radio button poll, why because a) why should ILM have all the fun, b) it might even be possible to get JCLC to cough up a ballot, and c) somewhat more accurate results. I'd even be willing to run it.

Mustmayostardayonnaise ftw.

Yeah soda snobbery is the new "I don't watch tv". Just wait until soda reaches its Sopranos/Wire stage then everyone will be drinking it on their Hulus and Netflixes

xp DO IT WMC

And soda rules, btw. Who cares if it's bad for you. Most of the best things in life are bad for you: cigarettes, nuclear weapons, slap fighting

I pretty much never drink soda. So when I do drink soda, it's amazing. I used to do it on the reg but I could never allow it to become so pedestrian and underappreciated an experience again.

Coca-Cola is queen of the colas, and colas rule the roost among standard (i.e., common fountain) sodas. All reasonable people agree on this.

But non-standard sodas have their own separate hierarchy: Gosling's ginger beer, Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer, San Pellegrino Pompelmo, ginger ale, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Brown's black cherry, root beer, cream soda...

I don't drink regular soda because I'm diabetic. But the difference between Coke Zero (tastes like what I remember Coke tasting like) and Diet Coke (tastes like I poured a battery in my mouth) is astonishing to me.

Love Coca-Cola more than ketchup, but the former has even more all but fallen from my diet, even as a sometimes food. In fact, soda consumption in the US at least has been dropping precipitously. (Hence, shrinking sizes: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/less-is-more-for-coca-cola-small-packs-mean-big-business/ ;not coincidentally, American weights have been dropping as well.) Related or perhaps coincidentally, iirc Coca-Cola not too long ago started making "Mexican" Coke (that is, made with real sugar) exclusively for the US market while introducing HFCS into Mexican Coke sold in Mexico (still one of the top if not the top soda consuming nation). It's as if they've given up on the US as a will-consume-anything and are focusing their energies elsewhere. See also: cigarette companies.

FWIW, I think the "I don't watch TV" thing really coincided with the rise of iPads and stuff, and is therefore somewhat disingenuous. All those "I don't watch TV" people are clearly watching the hell out of other, smaller screens. Like, I don't watch the news, not a minute of it, and haven't for years. And I don't watch sports. So I don't have cable, and, functionally, don't watch TV. But I stream lots of movies, and old shows, and surf the web, etc., which has supplanted TV. My kids, for example, literally never ask to watch TV, and I'm not sure even understand the concept of shows you can only watch once a week. But they sure watch "TV."

nah, I know people who have done this "I don't watch tv" thing for years. Most of them just really aren't into scripted entertainment which is kind of weird, but hey, do your own thing.

it's perfectly fine for people to listen to Drake

i feel like we're so close to crossing over with unacceptable fetishes now

http://adequateman.deadspin.com/how-to-find-ethical-porn-1747377597

Show real sex and real pleasure. One producer says, “There’s no expectation that the performers be ‘open to the camera’ or hamming it up for the viewer. They simply do what they do and I try and capture what I can.” Some companies exclusively work with real couples.

is this porn rockism? lol. if you're a pornographic performer who is proud of his or her ability to earn a living from a performance & you're told that it is actually Bad For You that you've been performing, that doesn't seem v ethical to me....

i prefer my porn free range & organic

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism ppl cmon

also like the line between performance and real is not... real

feeling virtuous about your consumption choices while literally jacking off has gotta be peak america

all consumption under capitalism is ethical

ethical consumption fits right under capitalism like toast under beans

my controversial opinon is capitalism is actually pretty good and just needs to be restrained like in scandinavia

i recognize that this not actually controversial

hmm i expected you to be more of a revolutionary tbh

i guess that's hoos' field

I actually don't think consumerism is bad per se but I do think capitalism is bad

I am all for a post-capitalist consumerism. Fuck it, full communist consumerism. Bring it on.

as far as that free range appropriate porn article idgi

wanting to not watch videos where ppl are coerced or obviously incapable of consenting to the video's production seems ok

not sure thats what that aritcle is really about

hmm i expected you to be more of a revolutionary tbh

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, December 14, 2015 1:48 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

waiting for ppl to come up w better revolutions

hence why idgi

"you need to jerk off to a racially and ethnically diverse cast of happy ppl" seems kind of fucked up as a sentiment

shiny happy ppl fucking for money --rem the band

If I can't soda then I don't want to be part of your revolution

--Emma Coldcan

You can still soda in America.

-Nehi Ranger

we keep adding new varieties and possibilities to the soda experience

capitalism would be great for places that don't have it yet but is not the best for places that have had it for a while already

what is best for places that have had it for a while

fascism

to die soon iirc

wld be curious to see a low regulation high welfare state

let the business ppl run wild as long as everyone gets free everything

obvs wld need some level of regulation so they dont destroy the environment and so forth

"you need to jerk off to a racially and ethnically diverse cast of happy ppl" seems kind of fucked up as a sentiment

it seems like culturally we've determined that what turns a person on shouldn't be obligated to social justice concerns but if someone refuses to jerk off to non-white porn stars they're probably bigots right?

what if they have some thing where they only want to watch women who look like their wife

"I guess this looks a little bit like a laotian version of my wife, so it's cool"

FWIW, I think the "I don't watch TV" thing really coincided with the rise of iPads and stuff, and is therefore somewhat disingenuous.

Disingenuous now maybe, but the Onion's "Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television" piece is from January 2000 and the Mr. Show "TV is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends, and television is no friend of mine" bit is from December 1996.

yeah feel like if anything that sentiment is at its nadir

the "i don't watch tv" thing was surely usually a snobby thing coming from people who believed that tv shows were pabulum, lot less people believe that now than probably ever before in history what with the emergence of the golden age of tv drama and the prestige and critical acclaim of tv shows

i know that if i didn't watch tv shows that as a liberal arts degree having 30 something i would be a bit of a dinner party pariah

can confirm.

"I don't watch tv" is just code for "I play a lot of micecraft." people should just admit to playing a lot of minecraft imo.

Sorry, but I'm still not getting the point on the Christmas thing.

Most people are celebrating family, friends, gifts, food, drink, winter, decorations, television, films. The name is the only really Christian thing left.
At this point nativity plays seems like Dickens' A Chistmas Carol, Grinch and The Great Escape. I guess it depends on where you live.

put the crüt back in crütmas

just to clarify, it's "i don't EVEN watch tv". the even is very important

which is really only a suitable phrasing if you are famous movie actor being asked to take a TV role

it's "i don't even WATCH tv" imo

"smell tv? i don't even WATCH tv"

the accent is definitely on WATCH, sorry. I was just capitalizing EVEN to make it easier to notice the additional word. just trying to help over here

although I DON'T EVEN WATCH TV is also acceptable in some rare situations

for example, when you're implicated in a crime that somehow depends on the fact that you watch tv

"I don't whip. I don't nae nae. I don't EVEN watch tv."

this was on the car parked next to me at work today. out of respect for my christian colleagues + friends i will continue to view christmas as a religious holiday about jesus christ and resent it for attempting to use the soft power of jingles, holiday sales and red/green patterned color schemes to convert me and my family:

http://i.imgur.com/w9dxNip.jpg

Totally valid.

(Your reaction, I mean.)

red / green as a color scheme is pretty tite

Keep Shit in Christmas

For my part, I really try as much as possible to hammer home the use of 'HOLIDAY' in place of 'Christmas'.

my wife complained last night about commercials and stuff that only say 'holidays' in lieu of christmas but are self-evidently through their use of christmas iconography, music, etc about christmas. like who exactly are they trying to fool?

A former co-worker had a "Keep Thor In Thursday" T-shirt.

Please don't remind Christians that there's anything in common use which employs the names of gods other than their own.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/6-Tall-Animated-Airblown-Christmas-Inflatable-Santa-Coming-Out-of-Outhouse-Scene/17164640

In 2005, the Barcelona city council provoked a public outcry by commissioning a nativity scene which did not include a Caganer. The local government was reported to have countered these criticisms by claiming that the Caganer was not included because a civility ordinance had made public defecation and public urination illegal, meaning that the Caganer was now setting a bad example. Many saw this as an attack on Catalan traditions. One writer of a letter to the editor asserted, "A nativity scene without a caganer is not a nativity scene."

otm

<3 el caganer

The Caganer is not the only defecating character in the Catalan Christmas tradition—another is the Tió de Nadal, which also makes extensive use of the image of faecal matter (it is a log, i.e. tió, with a face painted on it, which, having been "fed" for several weeks, is told to defecate on Christmas Eve and "magically" produces candy for children, a candy that has supposedly come from its bowels). Other mentions of faeces and defecation are common in Catalan folklore: indeed, a popular Catalan saying for use before a meal is menja bé, caga fort i no tinguis por a la mort! ("Eat well, shit a good deal and don't be afraid of death!").

Learn something new every day.

the essential catalan nativity scene includes someone pooping

just think of that every time you see all the unrelated-to-jesus stuff in north america, that the most christian-related decoration commonly used in many parts of the world, the nativity scene, is not complete without someone defecating

it's a holiday for everyone

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/ed/7a/1c/ed7a1c2068b9124817268affd0560523.jpg

Now, my life isn't complete without a Vladimir Putin caganer.

that's not even a good caricature

god, the bono one.

http://www.newstalk.com/content/000/images/000127/130777_54_news_hub_121675_656x500.png

He seems to have smeared the shit around his eyes.

Sorry, but I'm still not getting the point on the Christmas thing.

Most people are celebrating family, friends, gifts, food, drink, winter, decorations, television, films. The name is the only really Christian thing left.
At this point nativity plays seems like Dickens' A Chistmas Carol, Grinch and The Great Escape. I guess it depends on where you live.

On a thread where people have advocated for a two-child policy and death panels and have stated that it is useless for childless people to live past 40, "it's weird/funny that non-Christians celebrate Christmas" has turned out to be the most actually controversial opinion on this thread. Interesting.

well there you have it, more non-christians here like holidays than there are posters who are willing defend having more than two kids or be strongly anti-estate planning or w/e

I think this says more about the number of non-christian ilxors under the age of 40 with two or fewer children who have aging parents than anything

poptimism is garbage. down with rockism. anarchy everywhere. the dawn of the self-governed individual cometh.

We should all be choosing our own winners by now. The dawn of the Internet promised listeners a sandbox with no horizons, a borderless playground where niche tastes would be cultivated by robust debate. Instead, today’s pop conversation seems driven by the latent desire for a cozy poptimistic consensus — an obsequious hive-mind tediously churning toward oblivion.

And while poptimism feels so ripe for toppling, it triumphs in a cultural space that continues to feel vast, crowded and exhausting. We need things to hold on to. We’d like to believe that Justin Bieber’s fame isn’t just a cosmic prank. We’d like to tell ourselves that Katy Perry’s infantilizing Super Bowl splurge was somehow heroic. We want to feel as though our irrational universe obeys a hidden logic and that we each belong to something greater than ourselves.

This is where poptimism does us dirty. It rightfully recognizes the complexity of pop music, but it too often fails to generate a justly complex conversation. And when everyone agrees that a shiny new piece of art is unimpeachable, how can we feel as though we’re not missing out on the truth?

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/at-the-top-of-the-pop-music-heap-theres-no-criticizing-the-view/2015/04/16/d98d53a8-e1f2-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html

its a sloppy joe without the tomaters

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Saturday, December 12, 2015 11:42 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'll be damned. I never knew this wasn't just something that Roseanne made up.

I refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid-Rite

if that was on the Roseanne tv show it probably made it in via Tom Arnold, resident of the loose meat sandwich part of the country

Ahhhh this is amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid-Rite#/media/File:Maid-Rite,_Macomb.JPG

I've never been to any of those states so I didn't know about this Maid-rite joint.

Roseanne and Jackie owned a loose meat joint!

lol from the wiki link:

In later seasons of the American sitcom Roseanne, Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) co-owns a restaurant called the "Lanford Lunch Box" in the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois, which specializes in loose meat sandwiches.[6] The inspiration for Lunch Box was a real-life restaurant called Canteen Lunch in the Alley in Ottumwa, Iowa.[7] In 1993, Roseanne and then-husband Tom Arnold opened Roseanne and Tom's Big Food Diner (based on the fictional Lanford Lunchbox) in Eldon, Iowa (less than 20 miles southeast of Ottumwa's Canteen Lunch), also specializing in loose meat sandwiches.

We’d like to tell ourselves that Katy Perry’s infantilizing Super Bowl splurge was somehow heroic.

Left Shark 4 evs

a sandbox with no horizons!

just to clarify, it's "i don't EVEN watch tv". the even is very important

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:11 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which is really only a suitable phrasing if you are famous movie actor being asked to take a TV role

― Sufjan Grafton, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's "i don't even WATCH tv" imo

― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, December 14, 2015 8:17 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"smell tv? i don't even WATCH tv"

― Sufjan Grafton, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:18 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the accent is definitely on WATCH, sorry. I was just capitalizing EVEN to make it easier to notice the additional word. just trying to help over here

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:19 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

although I DON'T EVEN WATCH TV is also acceptable in some rare situations

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:20 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for example, when you're implicated in a crime that somehow depends on the fact that you watch tv

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:20 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I don't whip. I don't nae nae. I don't EVEN watch tv."

― Sufjan Grafton, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guys

we had a whole thread about this

"I don't even own a TV"

yeah, but that thread is all the way over there, it's too hard!

alcholics are not bad people (unless they are psychopaths or suffer from affluenza)

is that controversial? i thought that was conventional wisdom in 2015

the disease theory of alcoholism

quite a few have the disease in my family, you could accuse some of them of being selfish people or wayward parents, but not bad people. The worst person I know irl is a psychopath who pretended to be a recovering alcoholic, just so he could garner sympathy and pull in a vulnerable woman to his ghastly sphere of control and domestic violence. Now he is out of prison again, he is up to his usual MO.

I personally don't like the "disease" theory of addiction. from what ive read, and seen, addictions are patterns of behavior that some people are congenitally predisposed to, or develop as a reaction to childhood neglect, or trauma (in childhood or later), or some combination of predisposition and neglect/trauma.

i don't take issue with the aspect of the disease theory that seeks to minimize the role of personal choice or agency in addiction.

but "disease" doesn't seem right to me. on a societal level I really think we should mainly look at addiction as a developmental disorder arising from unsatisfactory care in childhood.

that's very Freudian

also not v accurate ime

I don't think it's Freudian, im not looking at it from a psychoanalysis/subconscious sort of lens.

Assuming the root of a problem is based in unsatisfactory childhood care isn't Freudian?

Assisted suicide should be a human right after 30.

xp. I believe that childhood trauma and neglect has an influence on the actual physical development of the brain. I don't think that you have to ascribe to Freudian ideas, or even consider them at all, to think that this might affect later-life behavior.

ah that makes sense

psychopaths have path right in the name

Assisted suicide should be a human right after 30.

― black metal is emo for vikings (monster mash), Friday, December 18, 2015 11:35 PM (Yesterday)

Not good enough. Over the age of 18, you should be able to request this, and it should be seen as a normal process in society.

What I don't understand is why the fuck most humans want to force people to keep living even when they clearly don't want to.

If it was really easy to access assisted suicide I think a number of people I'm close to, who don't currently want to die, would be dead. So I'm a little ambivalent about offering it so readily for people who are able-bodied.

I agree that it's someone's right to put an end to their life whenever they wish.

I had been scared to post my most actually controversial opinion: I'm still working out what I think of this but it seems deeply problematic and discriminatory to permit assisted suicide only in cases of a "grievous and irremediable medical condition". I feel like it should either be legal for all mentally competent adults or illegal for all mentally competent adults.

Agreed, and it should be the former imo

Xp. Might be a Charter challenge in that. Section 15(1). Not sure if Bev Mc CJC and the gang would be into it.

alcoholism isnt a disease

tell that to your liver

My partner almost tells me she wants to die every day, usually at some point when she is having a shit time. She doesn't really want to die, she just gets depressed about living in a broken body (she has a pretty nasty rare form of MS). Talk of making assisted suicide easier is not a good thing imo. In the long term term it can only lead to easing the path to another T4 program "those not deemed worthy of life".

All of the least painful and most successful methods of suicide are put far, far out of normal people's reach. Widespread assisted suicide would not only help those who seek to end their lives, but mean that the results would be less traumatic for everyone involved - there would be fewer public suicides, loved ones would not have to cope with corpse discovery, you would know that the person involved got to go peacefully, etc etc.

we should mainly look at addiction as a developmental disorder arising from unsatisfactory care in childhood.

hmmm. Adult native americans who encountered alcohol for the first time during initial contact with settlers of European origin very often displayed all the behaviors of acute alcohol addiction very quickly. Does this mean you think they were raised 'unsatisfactorily', and the alcohol-addictive behavior only erupted when the substance became available? Seems like a weird theory to account for that well-attested historic phenomenon.

i think we could do better as a society if it was accepted that everyone would be euthanized by default at 50, maybe 60

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/d0/87/d087984306c3cf4b15300cff4cb89a03.jpg?itok=GsvEcMyH

I don't disagree with the proposition that mentally competent adults can choose suicide. But you will inevitably get into questions of who is mentally competent, who gets to rule on competency, etc. To be flippant, Miracle on 34th Street territory. Someone will test the boundaries, and hard cases make bad law.

To be nonflippant, I have a developmentally disabled child. Most of the time we're focused on Now and its challenges. However, some completely premature, completely non-constructive worries inevitably haunt us. For example: his delays are profound and will probably last into adolescence and possibly into adulthood. At that point, his cognitive and intellectual delays will start to have moral implications. Will he understand dating, sex, or sexual consent? Will he understand voting? Might he try to buy a gun? Will he understand suicide?

If at age 18 he tells me (in sign) that he hates his life and wants to die, do I say yes? If not then, when? 25? 30? If 30, why not 29 or 31?

parents pick the units at birth

What I don't understand is why the fuck most humans want to force people to keep living even when they clearly don't want to.

As far as I can tell, the answer to this is that most people think that wanting to die is an unhealthy cognitive distortion that people can learn to move past and go on to live productive, enjoyable lives. However, many people cease to believe this if the suicidal person in question is disabled or ill. In this case, wanting to die becomes a much more justifiable desire than if someone 'only' lost a job or loved one or just did not enjoy life etc. I have a hard time seeing a justification for this sort of assisted suicide policy that does not value the lives of the disabled differently than the lives of the able-bodied, which I find troubling.

tbf the study of people who were successful in their suicide attempts to determine whether they would make the same choice again has yet to gather any good data

Plenty of people have made multiple attempts tho

Pochettino has taken spurs as far as he can and decay is already settling in

sry puffin that was meant as an xp and you raise an important point in a way that i cannot

a minority, iirc xxp

xp mh that is a very difficult study to control. without looking for any data at all, i would guess that one of the biggest reasons anyone has to forgo committing suicide is that it will hurt people who care about them, but the idea is so taboo that it is unthinkable for most to even have the discussion with said people to try to come to a mutual understanding.

we should mainly look at addiction as a developmental disorder arising from unsatisfactory care in childhood.

hmmm. Adult native americans who encountered alcohol for the first time during initial contact with settlers of European origin very often displayed all the behaviors of acute alcohol addiction very quickly. Does this mean you think they were raised 'unsatisfactorily', and the alcohol-addictive behavior only erupted when the substance became available? Seems like a weird theory to account for that well-attested historic phenomenon.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

I said "mainky" because I don't attribute all addicting to those factors just that I believe the widespread public health issue of addiction in our society is greatly / primarily the product of this.

The introduction of alcohol to a society that didn't have it at the same time as a cataclysmic process of colonisation, displacement, and cultural genocide is too sui generis an example to extrapolate from imo

Damn autocorrect

aimless do you have sources for native americans first contact with alcohol

Was wondering about how "well-attested" that was as well.

xp mh that is a very difficult study to control. without looking for any data at all, .
--home organ

um...he was joking

no worries, home organ. Sorry to hit the conversation with more heaviness than was warranted at that time.

Adults with intellectual disabilities (them what used to be called retarded adults) are a gray area precisely because well-intentioned ppl are (quite rightly) trying actively to give them more say in their own affairs. Let them make choices, express preferences, experience consequences, take risks - in a gradual and regulated way.

It's still a long way off, but it's a strong likelihood that we'll face some tough judgment calls about my son's ability to handle a sleepover, summer camp, an unchaperoned date, a college dorm, a job. Those decisions can't be based on his chronological age (currently several years behind) but on an educated guess about what he can handle.

What about when it comes to having sex, signing a lease, getting married, enlisting in the army? I'm all for letting him leave the nest, but I'm not sure when I'd be ready to "let" him to sign up for suicide.

Yeah, you raise valid questions about even my condition of "mentally competent".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazine/the-last-day-of-her-life.html?_r=1

xxxp sry i left off wink emoticon

oh and puffin: i did not mean to imply you expressed too much "heaviness" at all. i truly do not know how to address what you're very generous to discuss.

aimless do you have sources

If you would like scholarly references, then I can't accommodate you, because I am not a scholar. I read whatever interests me, about a book a week, and I've been doing it for decades. I don't keep the texts and I don't take notes. I seek no more than to gratify my curiosity about the world. I've read a variety of source material that include firsthand narratives by whites -- mostly engaged in the fur trade -- who were in early contact with native north americans. but I can't cite them for you chapter and verse.

I had to pull my son out of school today, he saved the worst for the last day of term - he physically assaulted his teacher and became unmanageable. Sometimes I think after I am gone, I dread to think what will become of him in this current set-up, never mind one where voluntary or otherwise liquidation starts becoming the norm.

puffin, you have my sympathies. when your child passes the threshold of legal majority (18) you'll be faced with the thorny decision of whether to seek legal guardianship or conservatorship. in our daughter's case that decision was not in question. it had to be done. so we weren't forced to weigh the delicately balanced opposing sides of that question, as you may need to. good luck.

aimless: please append "i think i read something written by a racist fur trader once but i can't really remember" to your future statements about how "very often" oppressed people "displayed all the behaviors" genocidal colonialist attributed to them.

Westward ho, me organ

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/7/26/1374833496398/Stagecoach-001.jpg

now I am curious if you find that "unsatisfactory care in childhood" should be construed as a non-racist theory for the origins of alcohol addiction among contemporary native american populations?

I like to think twas being unprepared to meet paddy what done it

poch out

most people think that wanting to die is an unhealthy cognitive distortion

The average punter has no clue how excruciating living with mental disorders can be. And for some, there's no more cure than there is for end-stage chronic diseases.

now I am curious if you find that "unsatisfactory care in childhood" should be construed as a non-racist theory for the origins of alcohol addiction among contemporary native american populations?

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

i live in canada. first nations people here account for about 4% of the population of the country, and first nations children make up 50% of children in care below the age of 14. first nations children's advocates have attributed this to the high rates of poverty among first nations people - and social services tendency to equate this poverty with neglect - as well as high substance abuse rates in caregivers that can be seen the legacy of the trauma caused by residential schools and the sixties scoop.

did a quick google and, although youre not a scholar, here is an interesting paper on the subjec of the overrepresentation of first nations children in canada's child welfare system (it is 11 years old so not totally up to date) https://francais.mcgill.ca/files/crcf/2004-Overrepresentation_Aboriginal_Children.pdf

i would suggest that being taken into care, for whatever reason, is not an optimal childhood experience.

beyoncé knowles is as boring as coldplay

https://49.media.tumblr.com/8a9eb98c7d55555b5d88d6859d5631fc/tumblr_n8uo15RRCE1sy4wkto1_500.gif

http://www.thestrut.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/jayzchrissmall.gif

https://img1.etsystatic.com/030/0/8596301/il_570xN.566060515_5xru.jpg

all of Mick Jagger's vocal performances are tied for 'Mick Jagger's worst vocal performance'

https://blog.creditkarma.com/wp-content/2015-01-26-Relationship-Btwn-Credit-Score-and-Credit-Limit-Update_GRAPH.png

is ilx ready to talk about birth tourism

the vast majority of people on earth don't want to fight to make the world a better place. they just want to be be comfortable and not be starving. and watch every episode of Friends again on Netflix. okay, i was projecting with that last part...

That last one seems pretty obvious to me

I'd go further to say that the majority prefer freedom from decisions to freedom. Not many of us really care enough about minority viewpoints to fight for them. Martin Niemöller's lament will never lose relevance.

Also, having only seen the discussion of Friends on The Good Place, even season 8?

I do think that people can be amazing in emergencies and in times of trouble! But they are 90% selfish in general.

A Tribe Called Quest's "We the People" is kind of terrible. (Not actually controversial, but I'd have a hard time finding anyone who agrees with me.)

Apart from a couple awkward stresses in Phife's verse, I can't find anything wrong with it, so I'd love to see this opinion developed.

Musically, I don't get anything out it. And it seems really preachy and obvious to me.

we the people is a fantastic song

that is a good post for this thread though

Agreed.

Preachy and obvious is the intention; what sounded like projection in November ("Muslims and gays/boy, we hate your ways") is prophecy now. Also, the snare backbeat and the details in Tip's lines (Ramen noodles, "niggas in the hood livin' in a fishbowl") are pleasures.

I'm not a huge fan of the Mellow Candle album. THERE, i said it. consequences be damned.

I don't think I've ever listened to an entire Tribe Called Quest album. that's not a controversial opinion though. a surprising fact, maybe.

Post a Surprising Fact

haha

Angela Merkel is hot

James Brown has a song about being black and proud, but isn't this kind of obvious?

i'm weirdly attracted to Kellyanne Conway despite thinking she's the worst human being alive

Alex Lifeson is the greatest rock guitarist of the last 40 years

Well now, that's just common sense

I've mostly liked the noir classics I've seen but I thought The Killers was surprisingly "meh".

Visual aid: young Angela Merkel:

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/time-person-of-the-year-angela-merkel-young-08.jpg

i'm weirdly attracted to Kellyanne Conway despite thinking she's the worst human being alive

??? She looks human jerky that's somehow still animate

Hence why it is controversial

NE have got this

Lady gaga is garbage

Now that's not controversial: she is awful

Lorde is better than your favorite ilm-approved indietronic songstress (Grimes, Crystal Castles, Phantogram, Purity Ring, Sky, LDR, CRJ, Britney, Kraftwerk, Oum Kalthoum, I really don't care) and you are lying to yourself if you refuse to accept this.

that's just depraved

"songstress"

The alluring indietronic of kraftwerk

and Oum Kalthoum!

people should be forced to give a 30 second warning before cumming

ok, Sting

that's excessive and impossible to project accurately...like a cable company telling you theyll be there between 1 and 5 pm

i'm weirdly attracted to Kellyanne Conway despite thinking she's the worst human being alive

Lorde is better than your favorite ilm-approved indietronic songstress (Grimes, Crystal Castles, Phantogram, Purity Ring, Sky, LDR, CRJ, Britney, Kraftwerk, Oum Kalthoum, I really don't care) and you are lying to yourself if you refuse to accept this.

ffs, people, we asked for controversial opinions, not evidence you should be committed

people should be forced to give a 30 second warning before cumming
I do, it's called "foreplay".

Alec Baldwin's SNL impersonation of Trump doesn't really look or sound like him, misses any kind of satirical target, and is rarely even funny.

MatthewK i love you

30 sec warning, Tracer

I don't feel anything yet

that's how I roll

Gluten intolerance is a made-up thing

That's not terribly controversial. The existence of nonceliac gluten sensitivity has been debated for decades, and the research suggests about a third of those claiming nonceliac gluten sensitivity have some sensitivity to wheat components (though not necessarily gluten). Some NutritionFacts videos:

Is Gluten Sensitivity Real?
Gluten-Free Diets: Separating the Wheat from the Chat
How to Diagnose Gluten Intolerance