The NYT Opinion page goes on and on about Intellectual Diversity, yet they only ever have smug liberals, Enlightened Centrists, and #NeverTrump Catholic Republicans.
Given that the NYT’s high water mark of intellectual diversity was when it published the Unabomber Manifesto, I propose this lineup for their Opinion section:
One anarcho-primitivist;
One Christian Dominionist;
One jaded Singaporean technocrat;
One incel;
One TikTok Witch;
One editor each from the People’s Daily and the Epoch Times;
One monarchist;
One normie (control group).
Tags:
#politics cw #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(”one editor each from the People’s Daily and the Epoch Times”) #((the Epoch Times keeps trying to convince us to subscribe and we are kind of weirded out tbh))
While mask wearing has become far more common, it is far from universally accepted. Instead, whether to wear a mask or not has become a new front in America’s bitterly partisan culture wars.
In broad terms, wearing a mask has become associated with the progressive side of politics. Not wearing one has become a symbol of conservative defiance.
Americans are compelled to do this for every possible thing huh
It used to be that paragraphs like the above would make me wish for a deadly plague to kill everyone, but now we know that even a deadly plague is not enough. There is no escape from this hell.
I don’t know, from where I’m standing these days (at a Canadian customer-facing “““essential””” job where maybe 10% of customers are masked), [convincing 50% of the population to wear masks in exchange for giving up on the other 50%] vs [what we have now] seems like a genuinely difficult choice.
(especially if you can convince a half that’s disproportionately young and therefore disproportionately likely to be asymptomatic carriers…)
Though I find it a bit confusing that the people known for actually giving a shit about purity and contamination are the people *against* masks. I mean, I suppose there’s a distrust-of-hostile-authorities thing at play here, but that seriously outweighs the filth?
are masks not mandatory in your region? my area is mixed politically but last time I was at the grocery store I saw one person not wearing a mask (out of maybe 50-100 people)
God, I fucking wish.
*Overall* I think Canada has been handling this better than America (though it’s certainly no South Korea or anything), and overall the Ontario conservative government has been fairly competent (certainly relative to American conservatives), but they are not pushing masks anywhere *near* hard enough.
My last five-hour shift, I was literally the *only* person wearing a mask. I saw a co-worker (the one who made fun of me the first couple times I showed up masked, and you *bet* your ass I isolated a clip of that for when I’m no longer dependent on this place for food money and can afford to rat them all out to corporate [link]) *carrying* a surgical mask on her way out of the store, but she didn’t wear one on duty. Not one customer was masked.
A couple shifts previously a pair of (non-masked) people walked in, looked at the menu for a minute or two, and walked back out, and the franchise owner insinuated that they’d left because I’d scared them off with my mask-wearing. (Though it’s a good sign that he’s stuck to insinuations: it suggests that he doesn’t think he can get away with overtly telling me not to wear it, that he *believes* I’m in the right, even if he doesn’t like it.) (Also, the customers–actual customers, who actually bought stuff, they’re not your customers by right just because they walked into your store dude–immediately before *and* after that pair *were* masked.)
A shift or two before that a (non-masked, age maybe fifties or sixties) customer tried to *commiserate* with me over “having” to wear a mask and gloves at work: I told her that while the *gloves* were mandatory (they always have been), “masks are not mandatory, but they didn’t *stop* me”, and she made some backtracking noises about “whatever makes you feel safer”. (You know what would make me feel safer? If *you* were wearing a mask. Surgical masks have saved my bacon–including against pathogens–too many times for me to ever believe the claims that they’re *useless* for the wearer, but I’ll absolutely believe the claims that it’s far *more* effective to convince your *interlocutor* to wear one. Also I’ve since had to switch to cloth masks for work, rationing my few remaining surgical masks for the fortnightly Errand Days where I’m probably coming into contact with more people.)
The last three or so fortnights I’ve finally started seeing other grocery shoppers with masks. Uptake is somewhat higher there, probably because even non-assholes need groceries, but I’d guess it’s only maybe 30%.
—
Maybe New York has had the seriousness of this beaten into them more by having so many cases? I was gonna say “official stats are that about one out of every thousand people in my regional municipality† has had COVID-19 (though tests are rationed enough that who knows what the real stats are)”, but apparently even with our growth being more linear than exponential it’s up to 1/550 now. Although it’s majority nursing-home residents and staff, so I suppose if you don’t have contact with nursing homes you should re-weight your probabilities accordingly. (OTOH, how *much* of it being majority nursing-home people is that nursing-home people are high priority in the test triaging?)
—
†Like a county, but with more of the government operating at county-level rather than town-level.
rustingbridges replied:
regional municipality sounds sort of like unincorporated areas of counties, maybe? I don’t know the procedures for your area but official stats of 1/550 probably implies pretty high actual rates… shit sucks
I agree mask wearing probably has better uptake in NY than anywhere comparable in the US since we’ve had such a large volume of cases it’s got to be enough to convince almost anyone it’s serious
Tags:
#(update: I saw an article in the local paper recently complaining) #(that tests in our area are getting rationed even harder than in the rest of the province) #conversational aglets #replies #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #in which Brin has a job #discourse cw? #(oh also some good news: coworker-who-made-fun-of-me seems to be expressing interest in getting a cloth mask like mine) #(if I see her wearing one on multiple occasions I’ll remove the clip from my dirt file: sometimes people improve)
While mask wearing has become far more common, it is far from universally accepted. Instead, whether to wear a mask or not has become a new front in America’s bitterly partisan culture wars.
In broad terms, wearing a mask has become associated with the progressive side of politics. Not wearing one has become a symbol of conservative defiance.
Americans are compelled to do this for every possible thing huh
It used to be that paragraphs like the above would make me wish for a deadly plague to kill everyone, but now we know that even a deadly plague is not enough. There is no escape from this hell.
I don’t know, from where I’m standing these days (at a Canadian customer-facing “““essential””” job where maybe 10% of customers are masked), [convincing 50% of the population to wear masks in exchange for giving up on the other 50%] vs [what we have now] seems like a genuinely difficult choice.
(especially if you can convince a half that’s disproportionately young and therefore disproportionately likely to be asymptomatic carriers…)
Though I find it a bit confusing that the people known for actually giving a shit about purity and contamination are the people *against* masks. I mean, I suppose there’s a distrust-of-hostile-authorities thing at play here, but that seriously outweighs the filth?
are masks not mandatory in your region? my area is mixed politically but last time I was at the grocery store I saw one person not wearing a mask (out of maybe 50-100 people)
God, I fucking wish.
*Overall* I think Canada has been handling this better than America (though it’s certainly no South Korea or anything), and overall the Ontario conservative government has been fairly competent (certainly relative to American conservatives), but they are not pushing masks anywhere *near* hard enough.
My last five-hour shift, I was literally the *only* person wearing a mask. I saw a co-worker (the one who made fun of me the first couple times I showed up masked, and you *bet* your ass I isolated a clip of that for when I’m no longer dependent on this place for food money and can afford to rat them all out to corporate [link]) *carrying* a surgical mask on her way out of the store, but she didn’t wear one on duty. Not one customer was masked.
A couple shifts previously a pair of (non-masked) people walked in, looked at the menu for a minute or two, and walked back out, and the franchise owner insinuated that they’d left because I’d scared them off with my mask-wearing. (Though it’s a good sign that he’s stuck to insinuations: it suggests that he doesn’t think he can get away with overtly telling me not to wear it, that he *believes* I’m in the right, even if he doesn’t like it.) (Also, the customers–actual customers, who actually bought stuff, they’re not your customers by right just because they walked into your store dude–immediately before *and* after that pair *were* masked.)
A shift or two before that a (non-masked, age maybe fifties or sixties) customer tried to *commiserate* with me over “having” to wear a mask and gloves at work: I told her that while the *gloves* were mandatory (they always have been), “masks are not mandatory, but they didn’t *stop* me”, and she made some backtracking noises about “whatever makes you feel safer”. (You know what would make me feel safer? If *you* were wearing a mask. Surgical masks have saved my bacon–including against pathogens–too many times for me to ever believe the claims that they’re *useless* for the wearer, but I’ll absolutely believe the claims that it’s far *more* effective to convince your *interlocutor* to wear one. Also I’ve since had to switch to cloth masks for work, rationing my few remaining surgical masks for the fortnightly Errand Days where I’m probably coming into contact with more people.)
The last three or so fortnights I’ve finally started seeing other grocery shoppers with masks. Uptake is somewhat higher there, probably because even non-assholes need groceries, but I’d guess it’s only maybe 30%.
—
Maybe New York has had the seriousness of this beaten into them more by having so many cases? I was gonna say “official stats are that about one out of every thousand people in my regional municipality† has had COVID-19 (though tests are rationed enough that who knows what the real stats are)”, but apparently even with our growth being more linear than exponential it’s up to 1/550 now. Although it’s majority nursing-home residents and staff, so I suppose if you don’t have contact with nursing homes you should re-weight your probabilities accordingly. (OTOH, how *much* of it being majority nursing-home people is that nursing-home people are high priority in the test triaging?)
—
†Like a county, but with more of the government operating at county-level rather than town-level.
Tags:
#I’ve been thinking about this so much that it’s hard to keep track of #which of these things I’ve said publicly and which I’ve said privately and which I haven’t said at all #I hope I’ve included the correct amount of context‚ let me know if I haven’t #replies #rustingbridges #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #in which Brin has a job #discourse cw? #rants
While mask wearing has become far more common, it is far from universally accepted. Instead, whether to wear a mask or not has become a new front in America’s bitterly partisan culture wars.
In broad terms, wearing a mask has become associated with the progressive side of politics. Not wearing one has become a symbol of conservative defiance.
Americans are compelled to do this for every possible thing huh
It used to be that paragraphs like the above would make me wish for a deadly plague to kill everyone, but now we know that even a deadly plague is not enough. There is no escape from this hell.
I don’t know, from where I’m standing these days (at a Canadian customer-facing “““essential””” job where maybe 10% of customers are masked), [convincing 50% of the population to wear masks in exchange for giving up on the other 50%] vs [what we have now] seems like a genuinely difficult choice.
(especially if you can convince a half that’s disproportionately young and therefore disproportionately likely to be asymptomatic carriers…)
Though I find it a bit confusing that the people known for actually giving a shit about purity and contamination are the people *against* masks. I mean, I suppose there’s a distrust-of-hostile-authorities thing at play here, but that seriously outweighs the filth?
Tags:
#I used to enjoy my work! #it wasn’t a Career (and I didn’t intend for it to be) #but it was easy and it helped people #now it’s dangerous and composed entirely of assholes #(it’s still rare for people to be rude to me in the *ordinary* sense) #(but under the circumstances just showing up is an asshole move) #reply via reblog #home of the brave #politics cw #discourse cw? #illness tw #covid19 #in which Brin has a job
#Star Trek #Brexit #politics cw #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(tiny pedantic part of me: ”but 2387 would be about a decade post-Voyager”) #(”while this picture’s special effects are clearly pre-Voyager”) #(”this seems like more of a 2200’s picture”)
it’s really a beautiful moment when it clicks and you suddenly realize you know what like half the members of the alt-right shamefully jerk off to
“free use… cuckold porn… noncon… racist cuckold porn… ooh, that’s a forced fem type, haven’t seen one of those in a while”
friends, romans, countrymen, embrace your fucked-up sexual fantasies and stop sublimating it into questionable political ideologies
take: okay, but now i want to know what questionable political ideologists the looners and foot fetishists and inflat
double-take: oh. never mind, on second thoughts i believe that with the help of some background reading on economic policy, i can figure out for myself what political ideology repressed inflation kinksters sublimate their thing into
third thoughts: now i’m sorting through every australian poltician by inferred kink, and i do not know how to handle this new insight (apart from “using appropriate sanitary methods”)
Tags:
#sexuality and lack thereof #politics cw #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I *would* say ”ask game: infer my kinks from my politics” #but if anything I’m more open about my kinks here than I am my politics
TOASTYSTATS: Did the US election influence fanfic production?
I’ve heard some folks talking about using fanfic to cope with/distract themselves from the recent US election (I’m in this camp, though I’m not ignoring the real world), and others, like the hosts of @fansplaining, discuss not being able to focus on fandom right now. I wondered which of these impulses was currently stronger overall in fandom.
TL;DR: as of two weeks following the 2016 election, there’s been a big post-election spike in fanfic production on AO3 (~30% increase) – which is unusual for this time of year. Though, of course, correlation is not causation – there could be some other cause(s) at play. And while some people may be turning to fandom for distraction, there’s a bigger increase in ‘Angst’ than ‘Fluff.’
I gathered daily data from AO3 for the pat 5 years in order to compare this year to past ones. I figured even if we did see a spike or a drop in fanworks, that might be normal following an election – or just normal for November. The past 5 years have the benefit of containing another presidential election, as well as a midterm election and two off-years. I looked at the total amount of fanworks produced in each of the two weeks leading up to the US election, and in each of the two weeks following it. (If you look at the above graph, 0 on the x axis is Election Day – Nov 8, 2016.)
Based on the above graph, we can see that most years have a fairly flat production rate surrounding the election. 2016, however, departs strongly from this pattern with a 32% increase from the two weeks leading up to the election.
The United States is about to elect a new president. I’ve previously polled UK Grindr users on Scottish independence, the 2015 generalelection, and Brexit. This time, I decided to poll US Grindr users on who they think should be leading their country.
The following is a representative sample of the replies.
(Identifiable faces have been censored.)
For every state, I aimed for a number of responses equivalent to each state’s number of presidential electors – from 55 for California to 3 for Delaware, Vermont, Alaska etc. A few fell a little short as I was banned (my 10th Grindr ban to date) just before I could finish, though most matched or exceeded the target. The number next to each state is the number of responses I received, though the percentages are only taken from the responses that can reasonably be interpreted as a decisive answer – undecided voters, non-voters, and evasive responses are listed separately. Major candidates who received 0 votes are also listed.
CALIFORNIA: 53
68% (21) Hillary Clinton 6% (2) Donald Trump 6% (2) Bernie Sanders 6% (2) “Yo momma” 3% (1) Gary Johnson 3% (1) Barack Obama 3% (1) John F. Kennedy 3% (1) “Myself”
0% (0) Jill Stein
2 Undecided 4 None of the above 3 Not eligible to vote 13 Evasive or unclear responses
0% (0) Donald Trump 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
1 Evasive or unclear responses
0 Did not respond
SOUTH DAKOTA: 3
100% (2) Hillary Clinton
0% (0) Donald Trump 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
1 None of the above
1 Did not respond
NORTH DAKOTA: 2
100% (2) Hillary Clinton
0% (0) Donald Trump 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
1 Did not respond
WYOMING: 2
100% (2) Donald Trump
0% (0) Hillary Clinton 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
1 Did not respond
MONTANA: 1
100% (1) Donald Trump
0% (0) Hillary Clinton 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
8 Did not respond
WASHINGTON, D.C.: 2
100% (1) Hillary Clinton
0% (0) Donald Trump 0% (0) Jill Stein 0% (0) Gary Johnson
1 Evasive or unclear responses
3 Did not respond
The overall US-wide vote is as follows.
63.25% (191) Hillary Clinton 17.88% (54) Donald Trump 3.31% (10) Jill Stein 1.99% (6) Gary Johnson 1.99% (6) Bernie Sanders 0.99% (3) “Yo momma” 0.66% (2) Deez Nuts 0.66% (2) Cthulhu 0.66% (2) Mickey Mouse 0.33% (1) Evan McMullin 0.33% (1) Vermin Supreme 0.33% (1) Don Bacon 0.33% (1) Barack Obama 0.33% (1) John F. Kennedy 0.33% (1) Ronald Reagan 0.33% (1) Vladimir Putin 0.33% (1) Eric Andre 0.33% (1) Beyoncé 0.33% (1) Harambe 0.33% (1) Mighty Mouse 0.33% (1) Patti LuPone 0.33% (1) Prince 0.33% (1) Cardi B from Love & Hip Hop 0.33% (1) Jesus 0.33% (1) Katya 0.33% (1) “Space raptors” 0.33% (1) “A giant meteor”
In addition, 1.99% (6) voted for “Myself”, although these aren’t lumped together as they refer to separate individuals – namely, “WOOF!”, “MiamiLatino”, “nICE GUY!!!!!”, “2017 ready now”, “no pic don’t”, and “DatFckboi”. 0.66% (2) also voted for their own penis – 4 if we count pictures of a respondent’s penis as an actual answer to the poll.
Not counted towards the percentage are the following responses:
19 Undecided 60 None of the above 9 Not eligible to vote 181 Evasive or unclear responses
“Evasive or unclear responses” can be roughly divided as follows:
55 Miscellaneous evasion 41 Explicitly declined to answer, “none of your business” etc 25 Irrelevant or incomprehensible 18 Too horny to engage politically 13 Total bewilderment 12 “Anyone but…” (10 Trump, 2 Clinton, 1 Johnson, 1 Stein) 7 Overt hostility 3 Nudes
Here are the number of states candidates win when only Grindr votes.
Hillary Clinton: 42 (6 as part of a tie) Donald Trump: 13 (7 as part of a tie) Bernie Sanders: 3 (3 as part of a tie) Jill Stein: 1 (1 as part of a tie) Evan McMullin: 1 (1 as part of a tie) Deez Nuts: 1 (1 as part of a tie) Beyoncé: 1 (1 as part of a tie) Ronald Reagan: 1 (1 as part of a tie) ″A giant meteor”: 1 (1 as part of a tie) ″My big fat cock”: 1 (1 as part of a tie) Gary Johnson: 0
In the electoral college, this should translate into the following numbers of electoral votes. When dealing with ties, electors are divided evenly between candidates.
Finally, here is the electoral map, according to Grindr.
Hillary Clinton comfortably clears her target of 270 electoral votes, and the Democrats are re-elected. Grindr is, for once, with her.
Tags:
#long post #nsfw text #nsfw image #Grindr #oh my god they’re doing a series of these #I remember seeing one of the previous ones #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #election 2016
Remember: Do not move to Canada in response to this election.
Move to Florida. To Ohio. To Pennsylvania. We need you there for Warren/Booker 2020.
Here is a fact that it seems like a lot of people don’t know, and which is relevant to the decision: in America, you do not lose your vote if you move out of the country. Even if your move is permanent. Even if you were a minor when you moved away. Unless you renounce your citizenship–note that most countries will let you hold up to three citizenships simultaneously, and Canada in particular is perfectly happy to let you keep your American citizenship while becoming a Canadian citizen (if you don’t already have three, and if you do it presumably doesn’t have to be the American one you give up in exchange)–you retain voting rights indefinitely. Jurisdiction-wise, you vote as if you still lived in your most recent American residence.
(People who are American citizens only through their parents and have never actually lived in the country may be able to vote depending on where their parents lived: states vary. Check out the website linked above for details.)
I don’t know what happens if you move to a swing state just to establish it as your voting jurisdiction, then move to Canada. I don’t know if there are any consequences if the government catches you at it, and I don’t know how likely they are to catch you. Anyone interested in doing that should look into it further. But at the very least, if you already live in a swing state, you don’t have to choose between voting there and leaving the country. You can do both.
I mean, you do lose going door-to-door canvassing and whatnot, I suppose. But people planning on moving to Canada because of Trump who wouldn’t have done it anyway are probably doing it because they expect to be in danger if they stay. Staying in a dangerous situation in order to go canvassing is…well, if you want to do that, you do you, but it seems above and beyond the call of duty to me.
Tags:
#home of the brave #election 2016 #our home and cherished land #reply via reblog #this is the third post I saw on Tuesday which #appeared to be written under the assumption that People Like Me do not exist #I’m responding directly to this one because its People Like Me #is ”people whose relationship with the American government is like mine” #and our existence is an external fact that I can point to #the others were ”people whose minds work like mine” #which is much harder to prove and much likelier to lead to goalpost-moving #”we totally believe you exist! we were just using universal language for rhetorical effect! stop derailing!” #and for all I know maybe they’d mean it when they’d claim they were being rhetorical by pretending I don’t exist #let’s just say I’ve been feeling that authoritarianism post again lately
Brinens and Things 