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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: April 10th, 2025
  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtopolitics @lemmy.world•Cut the Failed Red States Loose: Why America Can't Keep Carrying the Dead WeightEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    Hah!

    I never got into EU or HOI (beyond just watching youtubers paint maps, with commentary), but I have definitely had moments in Stellaris when I realized:

    Fuck, this other empire doesn’t like me and is going to out economy me in a few years, if I don’t overhaul my own entire economy.

    So then I sit down and rework the whole uh, sector type governance structure, re-specialize various planetary economies… and that does essentially mean that some systems that used to be their own sector or the functional regional capitol, well, now they’re smaller fish in a reorganizrd, bigger pond.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•Distracted BoyfriendEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    It is not unethical, degrading or humiliating to socially manipulate an evil person into destroying themselves and their evil movement and their evil plans.

    Not if your own ego is fundamentally irrelevant to the ends which you are pursuing.

    Especially not when the only egoistic ‘sacrifice’ that must be made is… essentially just being a very basic level of polite, while also not comprimising on any of your positions or stances.

    I put the rest in spoiler tags so as to not blow up the thread

    Make no mistake, Trump and MAGA are objectively, definitionally evil.

    They are a hateful death cult of bigotry, incompetence, and anti-intellectualism.

    The cruelty is the point.

    They are the unbound id of insecure idiots… they are, as Chaplin put it, ‘but the passing of greed.’

    But, they are also very powerful.

    Acknowledging that real power is not contemtible, it is practical, it is effective, it is the first step toward dismantling it.

    What Zorhan does, and did here, is basically what you just call extremely effective politicking, masterful public speaking, actual negotiating, which is much more a poker-like meta game than simply a direct comparing and contrasting of demands.

    This is confusing to most people who don’t study history, because in the last 50 years of the neoliberal era, almost all of what we’ve seen by almost all politicians has been neutered, milquetoast, appeal to ‘this is normal and everyone can agree with me’, two-faced hackery…

    And the rest has largely been insane, uncompromising, highly rhetorical aggressive blustering, toward self-described extreme ends.

    We barely even know how to recognize the ability to simultaneously be a silver tongued devil, while also never actually comprimising or shifting any of your actual stances.

    Go listen to the whole presser.

    Not once does Mamdani praise any specific Trump decision or policy, he never gives him credit for anything, beyond that he, in that very moment, appears to be willing to work with him.

    Meanwhile, Trump is pretty much fawning over Mamdani, defending him from aggressive journo questions, even doing his polite version of telling journos their questions (toward Mamdani) are stupid. He literally answers some hostile questions directed at Mamdani, in Mamdani’s defense.

    He literally goes on a whole tangent explaining how something they both have in common is that the media hates them.

    Which… broadly, Mamdani can and does agree with.

    Because it is true, though obviously in different ways and for different reasons if you delve into any details beyond the most surface level… so what you do is just not delve into those details, and allow the adulation to flow, thus cementing the destruction of the MAGA movement.

    Trump is a narcissistic egomanic who is too stupid to realize that if he makes it very obvious that he is such, his base will fracture.

    It is entirely possible to impress a narcissistic egomaniac with your own resolve, unwillingness to budge on a single issue, yet also make a compelling case for your own policies, and dispell any mis/disinformation surrounding yourself or your policies.

    So, do that.

    Don’t show weakness, don’t comprimise on your core principles and policies, don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter.

    Now, the narcissist egomaniac sees/projects themselves in/onto you.

    The best part is that you don’t even have to reciprocate the ego fluffing, you just have to remain steadfast, determined, but also just not insult the narcissist, and they will love you, because you remind them of themself.

    (For a historical parallel/example, what immediately comes to mind is how Stalin, another egomaniac narcissist, was genuienly duped by Hitler into a sham alliance.

    This was an alliance that Hitler always had every intention of breaking, but Stalin was so successfully woo’d by Hitler that he genuienly did not believe it when Hitler actually launched Barbarossa.)

    Zohran did not make any deals with Trump. He did not endorse any of his decisions, actions, or policies.

    He simply explained to Trump that the media and Trump’s sycophants have been lying about him and his intentions, and that while they do certainly disagree on the how of realizing some of those shared intentions, the they do actually agree on the what of some of those intentions.

    Mamdani, you see, is actually the master of ‘The Art of the Deal’, and just gave us all a masterclass.

    Give up nothing.

    Achieve your goals to the greatest extent possible.

    In doing what Mamdani has just done, he’s shown MAGA that their cultic god believes in nothing other than his own ability to feel important, powerful, and productive…

    … and he’s shown every milquetoast toast, corpo Dem / liberal that simpering and grovelling and whining and supplicating is a guaranteed losing strategy against the core of the right wing voting base, whole, as embodied by their figurehead, simply value feeling respected, and not being bullshitted or obviously pandered to, more than almost anything else.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoRPGMemes @ttrpg.network•And the druid failsEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Holy shit, that’s hilarious, hahah!

    “Local bandit gang tries to rob wandering mercenary group, public market burned to the ground.”

    Ahem, returning to my old character:

    This is why I prefer to stay out of mouths of gossipmongers.

    … that and… an intimate death is a more respectable death… and a bit more precise…

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoRPGMemes @ttrpg.network•And the druid failsEnglish
    26·
    9 months ago

    About a decade ago, I rolled a druid/rogue hybrid, almost entirely so I could scoot around, as a rat, scout things out, give a layout of what we’re getting into back to the party, act as a surprise flank when the rest of the party engages, take out numbskulls too busy fighting to notice the rat behind them and around a corner, animorphing into an elf/human halfling, with daggers.

    That was the same run that I somehow got 2 nat 20s in a manuever that required passing I think 3 different skill checks.

    Some kind of fairly large monster. The boss of our first actual proper dungeon, all low level, new characters.

    Situation looking dire, one party member is gonna be dead dead if the only real healer dies, and the healer is almost dead. Every one is out of items, running low on everything.

    (Much of this was due to them barging in while I was still trying to scout as rat. They got bored. They ran straight into a trap that rat me saw, but could not tell them about, due to being a rat, still inside the dungeon.)

    So, after hastily finding a ssfe place to transmogrify, taking out as many henchmen type things as possible, as I move back toward the main room, I find my crew getting utterly wrecked by this thing, and despite being a glass cannon, I have the most health of any one in the party.

    I tell the DM that I want to jump on this 15ish foot tall monster’s back, and garrote it to death.

    He says… uh… well… you can try…

    You need to pass an agility and dexterity check, and that thing has pretty decent armor via its skin.

    Nat 20 the agility check, basically Legolas over here, jump, twist flip, land, straddle.

    Don’t nat 20 the dex check, but it is high enough to pass, so I get the garrote around the beast’s neck.

    Nat 20 the damage roll.

    The DM couldn’t believe it, checks the stat sheet for the monster, checks my character’s sheet, … says I decapitate it, after about 10-20 seconds of getting my grip and basically sawing through the outer layers of its skin, eventually all the way through its vertebrae.

    So anyway, hybrid builds can be fun, lol.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•It explains so muchEnglish
    51·
    10 months ago

    A lot of leftists don’t vote because:

    • They can’t get time off work on voting day, or would be fired or get into serious financial precarity if they did,

    • They got purged from voter rolls and don’t find this out untill they show up at the polls,

    • They do not have stable housing, perhaps literally no permanent address (homeless), perhaps they have to keep moving regularly and can’t keep their current address correct in every single account or system that requires that,

    • They have no reliable method of transportation to voting places,

    • They don’t have a drivers liscense because they don’t own or drive a car,

    • They have medical conditions / disabilities that prevent them from being able to get to voting places,

    • They do not have or cannot reliably use some kind of mail in voting system, often for some combination of some of the above reasons.

    Leftists, actual leftists, not liberals who think they are leftists, tend to be broke, broken, and literally disenfranchised.

    Yeah, a good number of them also just don’t vote because they know the districts they are in are gerrymandered to hell, or they are ideologically opposed to it, or something like that.

    But, a whole lot would like their voices to be heard… only to find that no one is willing to give them an opportunity to speak.

    That opportunity to electorally speak requires and assumes a basic societal baseline that everyone is at, yet society does not actually guarantee this baseline… so, the many people who fall through the cracks, they are unpeople, they don’t count, they are definitionally disenfranchised.

    (As you can see, all of what I have outlined often forms at least part of an ideological basis for why electoralism is bullshit.)

    (Personally, while I do think electoralism is indeed bullshit in many ways, I still very much think that all who can vote should vote, because I know that if we don’t try, the system will just pretend more and more of us do not even exist, more and more privileged people will hear the media report bullshit numbers telling them that we do not exist… and things will get worse, faster.)

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtopolitics @lemmy.world•Trump Says He’ll Defy Court Order, Withhold SNAP Until Dems Drop Demands and Reopen Gov’tEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    I do appreciate the Mussolini ending, but…

    What I have been saying since Jan 6th:

    Bury him alive at the feet of Lincoln, maybe a 20 foot deep shaft, just throw him in, then the concrete.

    All that would indicate anything was amiss, would be an engraved gold plate on the floor, on top of the shaft, reading SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS.

    … A more patriotic spin on the steretypical real estate developer method of assasination.

    Leave him encased in his own disgrace, literally under Lincoln’s feet, the only suitable place for a racist insurrectionist mob boss.

    And also, the plate is gold… meant to be stepped on, and the engraving wear away with time.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comtopolitics @lemmy.world•Greg Abbott threatens "100% tariff" on New Yorkers moving to TexasEnglish
    9·
    10 months ago

    Valentina Gomez, a Republican congressional candidate in Texas, wrote on X: “Greg, focus on lowering property taxes first. Hardworking people are losing their homes because of this.”

    Popular MAGA influencer Gunther Eagleman wrote on X: “Good! Now abolish property taxes for us that live here.”

    Ryan Fournier, a co-founder of the Students for Trump group, wrote on X: “Governor Abbott joked that he’d slap a 100% tariff on anyone moving from New York to Texas if Mamdani wins. Funny—but he’s not wrong. Stop fleeing liberal cities just to vote the same way you did there.”

    So here we have a spectrum of Republicans.

    1. I mean honestly that on its own, in isolation, is pretty reasonable, Texas has massive property taxes compared to almost every other state, she’s telling Abbot to stop wasting time messaging gibberish to idiots, she’s worried about her potential constituents.

    2. Ok, so uh, I guess we just don’t need a functioning, funded government in Texas. Eagleman is apparently pro-shutdown of the state of Texas… Aka, a libertarian? At least this is possibly a conceptually understandable idea, regardless of how stupid that idea is.

    3. … and now we get to the head-desk level of stupid. Ryan, are the people who voted for Mamdani going to be leaving NYC? … No? No it would be Republicans. Democrats who hate Palestinians …who apparently aren’t Republican or bigotted enough, or … Texas enough? I legitimately don’t think this person could handle making a flow chart with like, more than 2 nodes.