Best posts made by GreenFlashlight

I'm glad so many people are dragging that stupid "Imagine" video making the rounds right now, even if I wish they'd show a little more perspective and remember a dumb publicity stunt from celebrities deserves to be held to a lower standard than, for example, our elected officials.

@killer-klown said in Races in fantasy settings:

On the flip side, I'll just paraphrase a line from the Humanis Policlub contact in Shadowrun: 'Who cares about that tan looking guy standing next to you, when that thing over there has hands the size of my head?!'

I'm not sure how I feel about that quote. It seems to imply that there's a rationality to racism and whom we choose to ostracize/oppress, such that we'll just forget generations of hate against one minority when a new one pops up rather than making room to hate them both. In my experience, that is not how it works; especially in the kind of capitalist hellscape cyberpunk is built on.

On the other hand, I can play a troll wizard asking my pet crocodile ghost to please hack the web for me, so maybe I should be okay with accepting "rational racism" as just part of the escapist fantasy.

@Ganymede said in Landlord Bitching:

I can appreciate a spot of idealism, but I draw the line with unsupported suppositions. I am willing to go out on a limb and say that you, like the vast majority of people here, have no idea of what it is like to live in a non-capitalist country. We should talk a little about places like China.

Then don't do it the way China does. Do I really need to say that? Do I really need to say that if there already exists a shittier alternative to a bad system, then don't emulate the shittier alternative?

Below security needs are physiological needs.

Shelter from the elements is a physiological need.

I presume you do not oppose the idea that someone's income must go to farmers.

Directly? Yeah, I do. I think food, water, housing, and medicine should all be guaranteed by the government. I suppose we can quibble about whether paying taxes counts as giving income to farmers if you think that's a useful conversation to have, but for-profit production of food is just as bad as for-profit rental of homes.

Joe Murphy is probably going to die homeless, but it isn't because people have not tried to give him free housing.

I don't know who Joe Murphy is and cannot comment.

I know several people without homes at the moment, and while I might want to open my house to them my partner would likely object because she doesn't know them and may be concerned for our kids' safety.

I am confused to why you bring this up. Do you think I can't tell the difference between protecting your family from people who are apparently dangerous versus just not letting people live because they don't give you enough money? If that's the case, please let me know, so I can stop wasting my time having a good faith conversation with someone who apparently thinks I'm an imbecile.

But she's a landlord, right? So she has to be a piece of shit, if you are to be believed.

I don't care about the color of your client's soul or whether she is presumably going to Heaven when she dies. I care about her participation in an inherently predatory system. If she's doing the best she can within that system, then sure, laud her for her accomplishments, but she still bears responsibility for being part of a system that holds people hostage, demanding their income under threat of death.

There is literally nothing in the world stopping us from giving every living human the relative comfort and dignity of a home except for the murderous greed that tells us our landlords should have the power of life and death over us unless we tithe to their coffers.

Actually, there is something that stops the people from doing this in the United States: the U.S. Constitution. Incorporated into that document is the Bill of Rights, which guarantees certain fundamental rights against encroachment by the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment extends those rights to the states, if those states did not already incorporate similar rights into their state constitution. Ultimately, the people through their government cannot simply take someone else's property and give it to another; not without just compensation, at least.

There is no difference between what I said and what you just said. You just reframed it so it sounds like murderous greed is okay as long as we build a government around murderous greed, which is not a great argument.

In order to pay that compensation, a government needs money. Presumably, it gets that money through taxes; however, the federal government could feasibly just print more and more until it has enough to buy up every parcel of vacant land and every empty residence in the country. One would simply have to convince the Federal Reserve and the other members of Congress of the wisdom of the solution.

Or the government could exercise eminent domain, seize all the land currently being denied to the people on the basis of profit, and dole it out. The existing American government has that power, never mind the utopian government I imagine. It does not exercise that power because it thinks money is better than people.

My mouth drops a little because of your presumption that millions of people die of exposure every year because of landlords in the United States. It isn't because of systemic racism, sexism, or genderism; it isn't because of familial or collective hatred for the mentally ill or non-dangerous deviance; and it isn't because of political cowardice, misguided priorities in governance, or simply societal indifference to the plight of others.

bear_necessities asked me why I said "Fuck landlords." They did not ask me about the general evils of racism, misogyny, ableism, and capitalism.

No, people are dying because of landlords, folks.

Yes. Systems of power can only hurt you when human agents of those systems of power participate in and enforce them, because without those human agents, a system of power is just an idea in someone's head. Landlords are accountable for their actions, just as we all are.

@bear_necessities said in Landlord Bitching:

That is not what I asked. I asked what is the alternative to renting (and/or buying) a home.

That question does not make sense to me except in the context of accepting that the default is sacrificing the value of your labor to be able to live, which I do not accept. That is an artificial construct society put in place. It can be taken out of place and thrown on the scrap heap where it belongs.

What you envision is basically a utopia.

Yes. And if the option is to envision a society where we kill people for not being financially lucrative enough to our corporate overlords, then I will continue to defend utopia over the murderous regime currently in place.

I have a home that I rent to a military veteran.

Snipping most of this because everything I said about Ganymede's client applies here too.

He's a good person and has a family and deserves a place to live that isn't going to cost him an arm and a leg.

Quibble: He deserves a place to live without any cost at all, and he deserves that whether he's a good or bad person.

His rent pays the mortgage and I'm building equity in a house that I hope will someday pay for my children's education.

And equity is why I have little to no patience for people who claim being a landlord is so onerous, since even in your case which you seem to believe undercuts my point, you can simultaneously operate at a financial loss while generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit.

So while it would be nice and wonderful and indeed idealistic if everyone in America could be freely given a home, it is not realistic.

If you want to cleave to the reality of the situation, then you bear even more responsibility for your participation in the exploitative system of land rental than I assign you, because that is the reality of the situation.

Saying "fuck landlords" as a blanket statement is misguided, it discounts people who are trying their best and who are trying to do a decent job.

No, it refuses to let people present passive violence as somehow not being a form of violence from which people die regardless of the intentions of people who are trying their best.

Finding humor in people who's livelihoods are being destroyed by this because they are landlords sucks and I honestly don't know what was funny about the original post.

I'm uncertain whether this is addressed to me specifically or the conversation in general, so just in case, let me assure you I find nothing funny about any of this, and I hope the anger in my language makes it clear that I don't think any of this is funny. None of it is.

These are actual serious problems that can't be fixed by saying "fuck landlords, everyone deserves a house for free".

For the record, I never said my angry post on a tiny internet forum is a solution. It is an expression of my anger, nothing more. I wonder if I should even bother explaining what my solutions would be, since I get a powerful feeling that my attitude of "human life > money" is already too radical for the prevailing environment, which means my solutions to support that attitude would probably be heresy dismissed with even more bitter sarcasm.

@jeshin That's kind of missing the point. People who were part of this community have an emotional investment in it. Some of us even have a little bit of our sense of self tied up in it. We don't want it to die; we don't want to lose it. We want it to be better than it currently is.

"Better for whom" is a fair question to ask and we can bicker all night long on that topic, but the point is, this isn't about giving up and walking away. It's about fighting for something we think is good enough to be worth keeping.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I think the unfortunate thing is that quarantine is still 'novel' to a lot of people and seen as a fun-thing-to-do.

I don't drink, but I'm learning a lot of recipes for quarantinis.

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

I'm just at the point that someone said, hey lets stop this until we can rationally look at things.

I mostly agree there's not much point to talking about it, but only because we can't talk about it. Otherwise, I'd be happy to sit down with you and hash this thing out until we're both satisfied.

Anyway. You're cool and I got no grudges against you. I'm not interested in re-litigating the dumb crap that's been going on around here because honestly, at this point, done is done. The only reason I bring it up is because I have this dumb hippie fantasy that if we could just all sit down and talk about shit without getting all weird and defensive, we could sort this whole thing out.

I'm... I don't know, probably eleven. It's summer vacation and we're at Big Surf, the (nearest) local water park. Entire geological eras have passed in the time I've been waiting in line to go down the big corkscrew slide. I still remember the dinosaurs, but not how they sounded.

But it's my turn, finally. I'm sitting on the little platform you launch yourself from, and I'm doing a thing I saw the big kids doing, where you grip the sides of the platform with your hands and slide your body back and forth. I don't know why they do it, but it reminds me of lining up a pool cue, so I think maybe it's to make you go faster down the slide or something. That sounds scary and fun, so I mimic it.

I mimic it too enthusiastically. I shoot myself down the wet, slippery, plastic canal at least two seconds sooner than I should have, and the lifeguard squawks an indignant, "Hey!" Mortified, I piston my arms out to the sides to catch the sides of the slide and I do, arresting my motion immediately. Wanting to make my mistake right, I plant my heels against the sides of the slide and start chimney-rock climbing my way back up it. The lifeguard, exasperated, yells, "Don't climb back up, just go!"

The speed and the spiral are no longer fun. The water does not cool my scorching cheeks. I spend the entire slide down thinking, "Please don't let the lifeguard at the bottom yell at me."

I could have saved that prayer.

But I'm eleven (or however young I actually was), so I bounce back. I don't ride the corkscrew slide again, though.

@reimesu said in Something Completely Different:

No one called me a rape apologist for saying believe-but-verify. Why is that, do you think?

I am not certain I can answer that while remaining within the boundaries of the current code of conduct. I probably shouldn't be guessing at other people's motivations anyway, but in the most general and hopefully acceptable terms, I would guess the difference is your track record on that and similar topics compared to Derp's.

@Kestrel said in RL things I love:

My depression has basically disappeared completely and I'm both shocked and perplexed as to how tf this happened.

Obviously you went for a walk and drank some water.

I would argue that if there is a silent majority, then its will is to be silent, not to effect change; so their stance isn't really relevant to issues the vocal majority weighs in on.

@Kestrel

Wishing you all the best.

@JinShei said in Critters!:

Oh, and we ate late yesterday and someone was starving to death.

Look at how hungry that pupper is! Why, nothing but skin and bones!

@SuperiorHuron said in MUSIC:

Get out of my head!

Could be worse. It could be this song (NSFW vid).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZAFo4jXhW0

Do any of you ever find that you can't focus on a big picture because you're hyperfocused on one part of it? Like, if there are two people on a screen I'm looking at, I focus on one of them. If I'm trying to hold eye contact, I have to focus on one eye. Stuff like that. Does it sound familiar to any of you?

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Honestly, your landlord sounds like a special type of stupid to want to evict a paying tenant when the real unemployment rate remains above 20%.

Possibly unrelated, but I've been hearing people refer to the (local) housing market as a seller's market due to the pandemic, and I don't understand how the seller has all the power when so few people have the means to buy.

@Quinn said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

This kid, man. Clumsy as hell but somehow, SOMEHOW has managed to avoid any serious injury. But today we're going to go learn the drive to the local hospital. Just in case.

Kids are resilient. Still, it's scary every time. I'm glad it was nothing serious.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in RL Sads:

Had to put our dog to sleep this morning. 11 1/2 years. Going to miss the shit out of the old man, but he was done. He just wanted to sleep.

I'm so sorry for your loss, but thank you for being kind to your furbaby in the hardest moment.

Here is a YouTube channel devoted to short (about ten minutes) video essays on horror movies. I enjoy it. Perhaps you will also enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdX6lI1cnIaznkmokdxJQ2Q/videos

I just can't get my COVID symptoms under control, but none of them (separately or together) rise to the standard of going to a hospital and risking infecting others or exposing myself to whatever dangers would be in an ER. This is keeping me out of work, which is fine since I'm getting comp while I'm out, but I'm starting to feel bad about how work must suck for my coworkers since we operate on skeleton crews anyway.

I just finished Cobra Kai a couple of days ago, and I have... feelings about it.

I love the Karate Kid. It's garbage in a lot of ways, but I love this bizarre movie where a scrawny teenager catches the attention of and then continues to provoke a gang of would-be murderers (seriously, that scene on the bikes is attempted murder) until a wise old man from the far east teaches him how to kickpunch better than the murderers can and he beats them up one by one, thereby teaching them to respect him. That's the attitude I came to the show with.

The first and second seasons of the show feel almost like different beasts. The first season seems more concerned with the source material than the second, and also more self-aware about its silliness, like the scene where Johnny is trying to get Cobra Kai Dojo reinstated in the tournament and he all but looks at the camera to say, "I never heard of the villain from the third movie!"* The persistent mockery made me feel a little uncomfortable, though. The first season is about two fifty-year-olds who are arrested in nostalgia for their high school days, so the show making fun of them while marketing itself to people whose main draw to watch it would be nostalgia for that same period feels a little mean to me.

That's not to say the season is bad. I like and believe Johnny, Miguel, Robby, Daniel, Amanda, Aisha, and Hawk. There are a lot of very honest moments about failure and humiliation and self-realization that make the show extremely worth watching. It's just that the writing is also pretty ham-fisted at times, going into really tiresome Boomer pandering, complaining about safe spaces and participation awards with a complete lack of self-awareness while painting people who think it's bad for children to punch one another as flighty airheads who can't handle the real world.

I kind of like the second season more, but it's still a mixed bag. The stakes feel more personal and real, being mostly about the relationships between the students of the competing dojos and the adults running or peripherally connected to them. The fight choreography becomes amazing, especially in the final episode, where my jaw literally dropped when I realized how long the camera had gone without a cut during the final brawl. The villains generally become more relatable in their villainy as their motivation becomes clearer and the acting is more capable of portraying the kinds of damage driving them, which the good guys feel less saintly and more human.

My big complaint is the sexual politics.

The second season is all about the shipping. Daniel and Amanda's marriage suffering because he's focusing too much on the past and leaving her alone? That's good stuff! Johnny trying to date and not being able to because he thinks dating apps are for nerds and you're supposed to just alpha dominate a woman? That's... less good, it's pretty over the top but it's also mostly in character, I guess. Miguel, Sam, Robby, and Bad Girl Whose Name I Already Forget having a weird love quadrangle? I don't totally hate it because Miguel's actor sells the hell out of it, but it's not very good, and the camera really likes to perv up Samantha; Samantha, whose age is unclear but who due to the rules of the tournament cannot possibly be older than seventeen. There's this scene where she's kissing her boyfriend and the camera pans slowly down her back to focus on her ass, her child's ass, in a way that still makes me uncomfortable to think about. (It also inspired me to check my suspicions, and yes, the actor playing Daniel's wife Amanda is twenty years younger than Ralph Macchio is, so that's pretty gross too.)

Despite my negative tone, I do like this series. I watched it all the way through, didn't I? I just wish the writing was a little sharper and there were fewer creeps directing the camera.

*As an aside, when the character of Robby first appeared, he had that villain's hairstyle and I was sure the show was going to tie him to Terry Silver's character somehow. It never happened, though, so I'm guessing it was just a visual in-joke.