Jace, Extat

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Before I abandoned twitter several months ago I ran into far too many partisans for the non-state actor making that precise argument for me to be particularly skeptical of it.  The non-state actor is really bad news and that doesn’t excuse the excesses of the State actor.

God, I love it when you talk dirty. 

Ah, Count Fenring. A genetic eunich and the Emperor's only friend...

"In this I do you a favor, Your Majesty." 

Respect, Varys. Respect. That's a sublime deep cut. 

Get it? Deep. Cut. 

38 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I feel like watching the children of dune miniseries now just to know what happens next,would you guys recommend it ? Haven’t read beyond Dune. 

It's superb. Go for it.

Or the planet was just behind the Highliner...

Tease.

I don't get to go 'till Saturday (70mm IMAX, though ) but can someone reassure me that Alia is not an adult in this film?

Somebody told me she's played by Anna Taylor-Joy and I'm left hoping that's only in Usul's visions and that she doesn't experience some freaky rapid-growth nonsense to get an adult in the role. That would be stupid.

I was stunned when Sean Payton benched Wilson, I thought he'd been playing fairly well.

9 hours ago, Many-Faced Votary said:

No. Delivering a modicum of justice is not, in fact, "opening fissures."

 

We've never had states taking candidates off ballots before. It doesn't matter that he's guilty, we all know he's guilty. What matters (to me) is that it's a cycle of escalation, of course Texas was going to look into taking Biden off the ballot as a response. Anyone could see that coming a mile away - you don't see how that's catastrophic for the health of the nation? I never said he wasn't guilty, or that he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions. Only that I don't find joy in them. 

Whatever can be said about your examples of Republican skullduggery, we at least didn't have states taking candidates who enjoy half the country's support off ballots. 

Again, I'm not even necessarily saying Colorado and others acted wrongly, I'm just saying that the situation is not good at all when we're crossing these kinds of bridges.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

How in the world can you blame the fissures and dysfunctions and hatreds on  HIS legal situations? All of his own making? Thus suggesting further his manifold criminal and treasonous actions should be ignored,?  That's what he says!

U may not have meant that but what you commented comes through like that.

 

Like I said above, the right answer wasn't to just let him skip away. I know that. I just can't enjoy the most popular politician in the country tearing holes in the fabric of our political system on his way down. I don't hate Trump more than I love my country, I just don't. I can say that easily while knowing he's guilty, that he deserves to be shot, and that his legal flailing is like an unregulated cancer devouring our structures of justice and government. 

I'm not saying he shouldn't be facing charges, just that I find no joy in them. The overall picture is too dark for that.

9 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

So... Trump wins Super Tuesday this month. His trial for insurrection gets underway in June. He claims the Republican nomination in July - and then gets convicted of insurrection in September. This could be a can of worms..

Yeah, the republic is not in a healthy place. Even though I despise the man and we all know he's guilty of any number of things, I can't find joy in his legal woes. They are opening fissures in our society that will not be easily closed.

16 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Aquaman 2 just hit streaming here.

Should I? Hrmm. I don’t know…

Maybe? I…

Don't do it, son. You're a young man with your whole life ahead of you. You're worth more than that.

4 hours ago, JGP said:

M I L K S O P

Just keeping it real. War is a part of life that we've been spared in the west for a long time. 

I supported sending weapons and cash to Ukraine, still support sending weapons (though not cash). But the arguments for doing so are strategic in nature, not based on morality. Russia being weakened as a global actor pleases me and my U.S.-based interests.

42 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Also I will note that this is exactly the strategy Putin uses himself in Russia and hes been pretty sucessful taking out his enemies. I think the World should adopt his own techniques on him and his support network.

39 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

We can be sure that the ongoing conflict WILL in fact continue to cause untold death and destruction.

So I propose improvement and not the status quo.

Although to quibble, the Russo-Ukraine war doesn't even hold a candle to the great conflicts of the previous century.

But, although, to encourage... I don't see why an advantageous moment should be wasted. Projection of U.S. power should be a consideration for every leader, not just despots. That power should certainly include the... solving of a dictator's question: who will replace him? If not with one of our creatures then we should solve on down the line until we get an animal more ameniable to our ends.

I like the way you think. Didn't know you had it in you.

It takes two to nuclear tango out of Russia. That means we only need one. If I take your resolution to its conclusion.

But, to quibble again, why? The status quo costs nothing more than has been spent already, weakens Russia by the hour. You propose to invite armageddon for the sake of lives unlost, the lives of many more remain untouched... Interesting. 

Radical.

BSG:Deadlock, I never really got into it, but I was really high on the Devil's Lettuce when I tried so... maybe another attempt is in my interest. 

I've severely curtailed my videogaming since I disavowed Hearts of Iron 4 and Total War, so who knows how another foray into the game may unfold. 

16 minutes ago, karaddin said:

You don't need to agree with the logic to accept it's motivated by the same concern in both cases though, that's still consistent.

I suppose. It was probably uncharitable, but I got the impression that for the sake of newly-exposited appreciation for radicalism he was willing to advocate a risk of all lives for the sake of saving some lives.

But again, that's probably a negative interpretation of the position- I am not above such.

That... doesn't make sense to me. But I'm an armchair extat who sees no downsides to the conflict as-is, so 

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Well played. I am forced to admit that either my radicalism blinded me to facts, or that I really applied my radicalism selectively, out of bias or fear, as I am accusing others of doing.
I am inclined to believe the latter, which means to admit that I was a coward - not morally but materially. The best way to end the Ukrainian war swiftly was to ignore the threat of Russian nukes and to advocate for full-blown NATO intervention from the start to ensure that the Russian forces were crushed and the war ended right away - obviously, it was a mistake to leave Putin a fighting chance.
So the lesson here is that you can only be a radical humanist if you are able to cast away the fears you have for your own life ; if one wants to defend the moral strength of positive radicalism, one must be prepared to actually put their life on the line.
This is useful, thank you.

So correct me if I'm wrong here, but...

You progressed from a reasonable concern about money and investment in defeating Russia via proxy to --

Blithe disregard of the dangers to every soul and structure on earth for the sake of radical humanism? Specifically, for the sake of the radical part? Risk losing all lives rather than acknowledge impotence to save some lives? 

Am I misunderstanding or is that just batshit crazy?

23 minutes ago, JGP said:

 

 

* apologies for the misogynistic language, I can regress when I'm angry

Apologies are for apologists. We'll see you convicted and hanged for this outrage! 

All rise for Presiding Judge Jace, whose authority and magnanimity go without question... 

For the prosecution I appoint @Ser Scot A Ellison

For the defense, I appoint myself and hereby waive all rights of the accused and submit to sentencing on the mercy of the court. 

Sentence: Death!

Oh, please! Skywalker was paid in room and board. And how dare you suggest he meant to go to Tosche Station for any other reason than to waste time with his friends! There's chores need doing!

All this talk of Biden losing votes over supporting Israel in their defensive war against Hamas' terroristic statelet misses that most democrats approve of his handling of the issue. Abandoning an ally who has been attacked and had their citizens hauled away by an enemy would be a great way to lose my vote, and I'm sure that of many others. 

So y'all asking for a reputation-destroying flip flop aren't making any sense. And I'm far from a fangirl of Biden's. Way I see it, he has the backing of the American people and of his broader party in supporting Israel in their defensive war against a terrorist state. He should continue to do so. The numbers are on his side.

2 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Anyone else rewatching Part 1 right before going for Part 2? 

I probably will. And when I'm done with Part 2 I'll probably go home and put in the Children of Dune miniseries, which is so underrated.

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Honestly I only clicked on this thread because of muscle memory. I need to work on that.

I made it through seven episodes of Ashoka. That was the end for me. I said I was out and I'm out, dammit. 

Breathe the free air again, my friend.

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 

I'd say that using words like 'insane' or terms like 'mentally disturbed' is also charged, just in a way that you prefer. 

Fair, to you and @kissdbyfire

But I'm using charged language to oppose self-destruction when oneself is not in danger. I'll live with that.

In frank speech I have a motive in calling the man unwell, I don't want others to emulate him.

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But...this guy literally attained what he sought. He said specifically that he wanted to get the word out and say that his suffering was nothing compared to what people were suffering in Palestine. 

I think the point that should be made here is that many people have tried those options and they haven't succeeded. For him, he felt that he had no other option available to him. It's even reasonable to say that this was not an option either - but that's unknown, honestly. What we do know is that other types of protests in the US have not achieved their goals, so attempting those is clearly not going to work. 

Given that as a framing - trying something that has already been tried and failing, or trying something else - I think it's likely a more sane option to do something different. It's certainly more sane than joining an online protest and expecting some actual outcome. 

You can not condone it, but that doesn't make him disturbed, mentally ill, insane or somehow otherwise non compos mentis; it means you don't agree with it.

We just see this competely differently. Anybody who wants to know what is happening in Gaza knows or has the ability to know.

He killed himself to create a spectacle, what he meant to draw attention to is less important to me than the idea that people would celebrate such an act with language that encourages others to act similarly. I see it as a disease.

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

And this is one subject area where the research supports this being a genuine concern which is why reporting on suicide has a lot of best practices around in. This story is rampantly breaching those best practices even if you don't elevate his message - just reporting on the method used is a risk.

It's one thing to report or opine on the news of the day, it's another to use charged terms like "martyr". Martyrdom is an intoxicant that has caused untold amounts of human misery, dressing violence in the language of love or selflessness is not the way.

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Did you read my post to the end? Because I have serious concerns about this type of protest as well and I articulated them later in the post. I think most of the rationale presented against the protest here are good arguments and that is the point of the comparison to the military. You claim that you'd be guaranteed to be getting something if you wind up sacrificing your life in combat in the military, but history is full of the graves of soldiers who believed that and whose leaders completely abused that devotion for absolutely no gain. There's no guarantee that your sacrifice would be defending your country compared to thrown away on some stupid pointless colonial expedition.

This man clearly weighs the "pros" vs "cons" differently to you, so his equation delivered a different answer. I wouldn't make either of those choices though. 

His protest was legitimate, potentially effective but also potentially forgotten in a week, and deeply problematic/concerning in what it may inspire others to do.

I did read it, I didn't respond to the end of the post because I think we agree there. And on the bolded above. That, in fact, is my chief concern. I do not want suicide celebrated or popularized in any way. I regard the social contagion risk of such an action as an accute danger.

35 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Isn't accepting the risk of sacrificing yourself for the sake of a cause you care about exactly what's going on when someone joins the military of a country?  This man had already made that choice in a way that you're all entirely ok with, he just moved it from a risk of self sacrifice to a guaranteed choice and for a cause less universally accepted.

Risk vs guarantee is a chasm of difference. When you assume such risk as a soldier you are getting something guaranteed for your service, for your possibility of death or disfigurement. This man we are discussing received nothing for his guaranteed death except this debate and others like it - that may be a fair trade to some, but not to me.

35 minutes ago, karaddin said:

 

Personally the choice to join the military seems pretty irrational to me, and while the risk of dying might be low most of the time, it's guaranteed to do harm to you/your humanity in the form of the training done to attempt to make you capable of taking the lives of the others.

 

I've been a soldier: trained to kill with guns, grenades, and my arms and legs. 

Yet I'm the one making the argument that no cause not imminent to oneself is worth suicide. Not even one life.

I beg you to rethink which of us is acting less humanely here.

51 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But you're also saying that someone cannot be both rational and take their own life or sacrifice it for something else. I think we fundamentally disagree; people can and do often harm themselves to attempt to achieve something beyond them, and they are not acting in a disturbed or altered way or show any other sign of mental impairment. 

I get that you can think that, but I think that barring some other evidence that this person was not in full mental capacities you're simply wrong. Humans are capable of doing this and it is common enough that we have many different words for flavors of it. 

I would say that I am arguing one cannot be rational and end their life for nothing attainable. Hitler's decision to kill himself was certainly his most rational action in years, but in that circumstance he was faced with impossible options otherwise. 

Staying behind at Thermopylae, certain death, or manning a machine gun position so your comrades can make good their escape is perfectly rational, because you achieve something beyond a few arguments on book forums. 

Killing yourself rather than succumbing to an incurable and unbearable condition is rational, in its way- but precisely again because there are no better options than to die in agony.

This man had other options to try and call attention to his concern, just because they were less extreme doesn't make them impossible.

The word I apply to such extreme political protest is suicidal. And suicide is not to be condoned for the sake of spectacle.

50 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Right. And insane = mentally ill. 

 

The "or" there is key. Insane OR disturbed.