Swagnarok

The difference between the normie Yahoo article about the guy and discussions about his background on the deep web is pretty hilarious. Having recently gone on a TCAP watching binge, the similarities between him and the kinds of guys who appeared on that show are kind of unnerving. He apparently wanted to insert tampons into preteen girls, evidenced by snapshots of text conversations he's had, including one rather inappropriate convo with a 14 year old girl. In fact, much of the armchair investigating into him has dated back to at least 2018, long before this present controversy. But there's no mention of any of that in the article. This guy is pretty much just painted as a warrior for social justice (though the article is more fair than I would've expected), whereas in fact even some prominent transgender YouTube personalities have openly and unreservedly disavowed him for his seedy past.

Discuss.

I distinctly remember the first part of the song from when I was a kid, so I managed to find this song online and the more I listen to it the more familiar it sounds. Without further ado:

Everyone in the comments mentioned how, erm, rape-y the lyrics might be construed as. What do you think? Good song or inappropriate?

To understand what I'm talking about, take the example of YouTube.

Let's say that you're a content creator. You want lots of people to view your content, and you want to be monetarily compensated for a large number of views in accordance with some kind of algorithm.

Any video streaming service can in theory provide you with the latter thing. HOWEVER, YouTube is where most people turn for user-generated videos to watch, because the vast majority of stuff is already on YouTube. So what do you do? You post it on YouTube, because that's the most rational decision for you. Maybe you could post it on some other website instead, so as to help them out, but that doesn't do you much good. There's little economic reason for you to post your content other than on YouTube, so you don't.

What was YouTube's advantage here? The size that it's already accumulated. It hit a critical mass long ago that virtually assured further growth. For that reason I predict that YouTube will continue to be a widely used service even into the 2030s decade, because it's basically a digital city.

But anyways, critical mass ensuring further growth. That's the principle I'd like to talk about here. Entrepreneurs and investors are "gravitationally attracted" to commercial hubs that've already achieved a certain size.

These hubs are called cities. The expansion of a city is a nearly unstoppable force, absent a massive disaster that strikes a city and disperses a significantly large sum of its accumulated capital elsewhere (and even then it might recover). Most of the economic growth happening in the United States today is happening in cities, whereas but a smaller portion trickles down to the countryside. As a natural consequence, inequality between urban and rural areas is naturally slated to increase over time. For whatever reason some of us assume that the latter ought to be able to mostly keep up, but that's just not the case too often.

The cities receive the talented people and the bold risk takers who have a business model in mind. These they receive from lesser developed areas, and of course from among the burghers themselves, since there are demographically more burghers than otherwise. But more importantly to this discussion is the process of brain drain.

The best and the brightest from rural areas rarely stay there, and instead move to the cities to seek opportunity, because opportunity is of course centered in urban areas, because those services which would help make their dreams a reality had already moved to the cities long ago.

The advantage of the city is twofold: first, geography. It is the natural midpoint between opposite areas. However, for services which can be facilitated over the internet or by telephone this is far less important in the emerging economy.

So what is the principle advantage of cities? It is their critical mass which they've already achieved. It serves as a magnet to the surrounding areas. While the burghers themselves (descendants of people who moved from the countryside) do produce, there is also something distinctly parasitic about cities.

It's also important to keep in mind that when we talk about "Trump Country" (and especially in the pejorative sense), we're talking about areas that have been victimized by the market forces of urbanization. Revolutionary start-up companies that might've been centered in their towns, and provided jobs to their towns, but which instead went to the cities. The people who stayed behind were indeed left behind.

In the modern world, there exists a potential to do things differently. A more geographically dispersed economy. And perhaps a more equitable one as well.

It would allow us to take better advantage of our large landmass, and so make land and home ownership more affordable for the average American. Most people would enjoy better air quality, less noise pollution, and even a natural landscape surrounding their homes.

Total ruralization is unreasonable, but a shift from urban to a somewhat more natural (and I don't mean a centrally planned grid whose only shrubbage was 1 centimeter tall plastic grass) suburban setting wouldn't be. It'd require a gradual relocation of American workplaces (mostly offices designed to provide long-distance services) to make this vision a reality.

It could happen naturally, but most likely it would require no small amount of government intervention. The city-rural divide could be bridged, and our politics might stand to become less polarized as a result.

When they have the opening for Season 3 Part 2 I'll be sure to update here.

(I mean Attack on Titan, If you still don't know.)

Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's long-running dictator (since 1989), a figure who is internationally wanted for perpetrating the Darfur Genocide, has been ousted in a coup d'etat by the Sudanese military, whose head is now the national leader of Sudan. A two-year transitional period has been announced, with intent to stage elections sometime soon. Reportedly he is still alive, but his fate is uncertain. Whether he'll be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice remains to be seen.

The Islamic State's last territorial holding in Syria, the town of Baghouz, has been declared liberated. Unfortunately the likes of al-Baghdadi had long escaped, but this still marks a significant victory against the group, which once controlled a piece of real estate the size of Great Britain.

Behold, O America, thou who hath abandoned the old piety, thou who now wanders aimlessly in a thousand directions, chasing after a thousand ideological gods to find one whom might be worshipped, a new gospel is proclaimed in thy midst, uniting these feuding lands under a holy banner of righteousness and wokeness.

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!

Liam Neeson, the famous "tough guy" actor, recently admitted in a public interview that there was once an incident in his life where, after a friend of his was raped by a black man, he waited outside a bar for a week hoping that he'd get heckled by a black man (any would do) so that he'd have an excuse to murder that person.

For the record, this goes far, far beyond anything that President Trump, Roseanne Barr, heck, even Richard Spencer, Strom Thurmond, or George Wallace had ever said. If this guy gets a relative pass (that is, if he faces consequences that are comparatively light and his career survives), then that's it. Anybody on the Right will be deserving of a pass for virtually anything they say from that point on.

So, uh, we'll see how this plays out.

The Texan government has discovered 95,000 persons registered to vote in that state who might not be citizens. Of these, roughly 58,000 have voted in at least one election from 1996 to 2018.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/texas-finds-95000-non-citizens-registered-vote-encourages-local-election-1306592

He just was an ordinary man, trying to make ends meet for himself and for his family, in a cruel world that'll chew you up and spit you out. His name was Gunther Black. And this is his story.

And on her first day she flirted with the notion of indicting a sitting President. Marvelous.

George Herbert Walker Bush, former President of the United States (1989-1993), has died at the age of 94. Jimmy Carter is now the oldest surviving former President, both men having been born in the same year (1924). A distinguished WWII veteran and the President who led America during the Gulf War and the dramatic fall of the Eastern Bloc, Bush will be missed.

Consumerism is:

-Owning a washing machine, instead of washing everything by hand in a tub with a crude homemade soap and then hanging it out to dry

-Having a house that is centrally heated, or cooled, instead of simply opening a window in the summer and having a fireplace in the winter (both of which are wholly inadequate to regulate the temperature of a large house)

-Taking a car from point A to point B, instead of walking (roughly 3 mph), taking a bike (10 mph), or taking a horse (15 mph)

-Owning a kitchen stove instead of gathering wood to make a fire, lit manually instead of with a match

-Being able to throw lukewarm food into a microwave to make it more palatable, and to reduce the risk of bacterial infection

-Being able to take a hot bath/shower every or almost every day

-Having indoor plumbing, and running water, enjoying the luxury of brushing your teeth twice a day with brand toothpaste and an industrial-grade toothbrush

-Having reliable metal tools (even if just pots, pans, and metal utensils), which probably could not be produced at home

-Buying your clothes at a store from a name brand instead of making it by hand or with a loom

-Owning ceramic plates and cups, washing these in a dishwasher instead of by hand with a homemade soap

-Wearing deodorant or antiperspirant

-Taking medicine when your stomach's upset

-Having a refrigerator/freezer so that you can wait several days/weeks/months to eat certain perishable foods, such as eggs, milk, or meat

-Being able to regularly apply a razor to your body, with shaving cream, and being able to apply a band-aid/antibiotics if you get a cut anywhere

Let's not kid ourselves: by world and historical standards we are obscenely wealthy, and the average guy here who talks crap about consumerism would not be willing to give half of these things up (and I didn't even mention entertainment like television, radio, internet, movies, or books). You might self-righteously believe that cutting back just a little bit will somehow make you not a rabid consumer, but in fact you still are, because that's just the nature of the society into which you were brought up and which you have always been a part of.

Sorry to break it to you.

As a history major who's (hopefully) about to graduate after three years, ask me anything about history. Alternately, ask me questions about myself or about religion/politics.

During President Obama's first term the CIA, the latest in a very long series of failures by an organization that is often lionized in pop culture, it has been revealed that the agency had scores of its agents compromised in places like Iran, China (where thirty agents were subsequently murdered by the regime), and North Korea. The breach started in Iran, which used fricking Google to track down covert CIA websites used for communications, and then they helped China do the same, and then began aggressively exposing agents in other countries as well.

You can read about it here:

The biggest event of the year that nobody's talking about.

In response the War in Donbass and the annexation of the Crimea, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has asked the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (the highest authority in Eastern Orthodoxy) for autocephalous status.

This request was granted. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is now recognized as being independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. In response, the Russian Orthodox Church has severed ties with Constantinople.

That is, Russia has excommunicated itself from the global Eastern Orthodox community (though it's possible that this situation could be resolved soon). There are two ways of looking at this:

1. This is a good thing for the West. Russia's just suffered a majority propaganda loss; the Eastern Orthodox populations of Georgia, Serbia, Belarus, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, and so on might have in the past seen Russia as the protector of Orthodoxy. However, now that Russia is cut off from such, this might spur them to keep away from Russia and find new partners.

2. This is a bad thing for the West. Moscow is trying to assert its dominance over Constantinople and thus over all of Eastern Orthodoxy, something that it last tried with limited success from 1448-1589. Should he succeed, the gains for Putin would be massive.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh is, at the time of posting, testifying before the Senate. At the opening of such he issued a lengthy statement defending his reputation and repudiating the allegations levied by Mrs. Ford.

This statement can be read here:

Kavanaugh is extremely lucky in that he was able to provide extensive documentation of his day-to-day whereabouts in his high school years in the form of calendars, which served also as diaries. The calendars should be enough to prove that Kavanaugh was never at the party that is at the core of Mrs. Ford's accusation. He has been investigated by the FBI already on 6 different occasions, all of which were standard background checks. None turned up any dirt on the man Brett Kavanaugh.

I don't know how this is ultimately going to turn out. But I have a feeling that most Americans are skeptical of the allegations. In the comments section of a recent Yahoo article about Kavanaugh (this was yesterday), the comments were pro-Kavanaugh at least 10 to 1, even though normally the majority of commentators for this media outlet are rabidly anti-Trump.

So at this time I am *very cautiously* optimistic that justice will prevail and Mr. Kavanaugh will get his seat on the highest Court of this land that he so rightly deserves. Then again, only time will tell.

The vote on his confirmation is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:30 AM.

If you're not well-established on here socially, then PM me and provide me your name and a link to your Facebook profile (I may require that you accept a Facebook friend request from me). You'll be put on a "list", and if you stop posting for a long time then I'll check out your Facebook profile to see if you're still alive. If I observe by looking at your profile that you've died, then I will notify the DART community. If you stop posting but you appear to still be alive then from time to time I'll go back and check. Because I'm just some guy on the internet doing this, it may be the case that there's some delay in between when you die and when I find out about this and notify the DDO community. Also, you can be pretty much guaranteed no matter who you are that if your death occurs more than, say, 5-10 years from now then I won't bother to check for this, much less notify anyone.

If you've made virtually zero effort to participate here in any meaningful way (for example, your total count is 10 posts) then I'll be especially likely not to follow through on my obligations here towards you. But maybe. Who knows.

All such information disclosed to me in confidence will remain confident. If the Admin has a problem with this idea then he's free to just shut it down now and delete this thread. Otherwise, think of this as insurance of sorts that should you just suddenly die this fact won't go completely unnoticed by the DART community. I say "DART" community but this extends to whatever website this general bloc of people might one day migrate to, such as perhaps back to DDO or to some third party site.

I'm currently on what could be my last semester of college, provided that I don't fail or drop anything. If I fail a single class, I won't meet the requirements to graduate, and I'll have to take another full semester in Spring 2019.

If I'm not mistaken, I'm taking fewer hours this semester than ever before (12 a week). But as one class is the big capstone for history majors and another is apparently at the level of a law school course, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Of the remaining two, one is ridiculously easy, like freshman-level stuff.

And then there's the art class. Having to write case briefs and a 20 page senior thesis paper is quite annoying, but neither of these things have actually driven me to the point of rage as of yet. Art class, on the other hand, has.

I'm not lying or exaggerating: with the possible exception of one other guy in the class, I am the single worst student there. Everyone else just goes ahead and makes these amazing sketches of cow skulls (which is pretty much all we've drawn in the class so far) whereas I keep spewing out these sh*tty doodles of the same. I've done it over and over and over and over and over again, and I'm not getting a lick better, whereas everyone else apparently is. And apparently, it's even harder whenever you try it with a brush and ink, but for everyone else the change in tools just seems to raise the quality of what they're drawing.

Again, it I fail this class then I'll have to do another whole semester. But there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to keep from failing. Soon enough the teacher's inevitably going to lose his patience with my near-total lack of progress and then he's gonna start marking me up, until finally I'm gonna get awarded an F. It's not as though I'm not trying, but...

Alright, I never bothered to do this in the past, and I don't know how well this little experiment will work out.

There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that the press works tirelessly to help the Democratic Party win elections by painting President Trump, the GOP, and conservatives in the most negative light humanly possible. In this thread, I will attempt to provide proof of this, and perhaps convince a few people in the process.

They're small, but they can be hitched to a truck and moved anywhere. The owner of the trailer doesn't have to own the land that the trailer's on. Instead, he/she can just opt to pay rent. The price of the mobile home itself would be about 1/4th the same price of a conventional (and, to be fair, considerably larger) home. According to one source, a mobile home manufactured c. 2014 would have an average lifespan of about 30-55 years, and I will not discount the possibility of construction design improvements in coming decades increasing this figure somewhat. In any case, a person who bought their moved out and bought a mobile home of their own at 18 would find that he'd likely only have to purchase and move into a new house once more in the span of his life, barring damage incurred from close proximity to natural disasters and whatnot.

It would serve to make housing significantly more affordable in America if mobile homes became more popular, and, perhaps equally importantly, it'd allow for greater flexibility in the jobs market: in today's climate, many Americans are reluctant to move into a new house because they're not sure they'll be able to sell the old one, which would straddle them with extreme debt. So they may turn down more lucrative job opportunities elsewhere in the state/country. If all you needed was a moving truck and a new trailer park somewhere, I suspect we'd have a much more dynamic economy.

A big barrier to this is the sordid reputation associated with trailer parks: they're thought of as low-income housing units, where you'd be surrounded by distasteful and even dangerous neighbors. If the image of trailer parks could be rehabilitated so that it was a socially acceptable option for the middle class, that'd solve the problem I think. Also, the government could work with manufacturers of homes to design a model of more "serious" mobile homes which are better insulated, ventilated, and energy-efficient.

Thoughts?