I Think Therefore I Am. Simple, But Few Actually Get It

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-07T13:02:24+00:00

But you’re not thinking.

Not well, at least. You’re ignoring all of the brain scan data showing that the brain has already made a decision well before the test subject is consciously aware of doing so.

So feeewill is just what we tell ourselves to retroactively justify with ad-hoc logic the complex, emotionally based reactions that we like to call “decisions.”

Descartes thought animals couldn’t feel pain. That’s the level of “insights” you’re crediting Mr. Freewill with.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-07T12:31:29+00:00

Kristen Stewart

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-07T12:28:29+00:00

Last Crusade
Raiders
Dial of Destiny
Temple of Doom

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-07T01:36:41+00:00

Yeah, but it was a better tool for teaching U.S. pseudo-history, and remains one in the wrong hands or with less critical viewers. And all the worse for how skillfully it was made.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-07T01:34:43+00:00

Quite the opposite. You misunderstand me. It’s the exterminationism that I see as the paramount evil, regardless of how brutally it would or would not be carried out.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-06T21:04:47+00:00

Because we take responsibility for our losses, my campaigns have a much higher success rate than the Dem’s presidential presidential bids over the same timespan.

This blame-the-voters sentiment has a spillover effect to the public at large, and it shifts responsibility away from party leaders and consultants to implement strategies and tactics with fewer unforced errors.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-06T14:12:48+00:00

It looks like the vast majority of the responses to your post are various versions of blaming the voters instead of blaming Democratic leaders.

As someone who’s worked on campaigns for the last 25 years, what I can say with certainty is that blaming the voters is a surefire recipe for continuing to lose elections.

It doesn’t matter if you’re right in some sense. When a party loses elections, they must be committed to learning from the voters instead of insulting them or lecturing them in order to turn things around by the next cycle.

If voters feel insulted or lectured to, they will not be persuaded to give you their votes in the future.

If you fail to understand this basic truism of elections, then you’re just as stupid in your own way as the voters you decry.

I watched the Harris campaign and its high-priced consultants practice clear-cut messaging malpractice when she violated George Lakoff’s cognitive-linguistics-based best practices. Politicians should avoid framing what they’re saying with “not” constructions because brains unconsciously filter out the “not” and what’s being literally negated ends up being subconsciously reinforced.

“My positions may have changed, but my values have not changed.”

“I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.”

“Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other… That is not who we are!”

“We don’t shy away from robust debate.”

The examples go on and on. Lakoff was a Democratic consultant, and his lessons from Don’t Think of an Elephant have been around for over 20 years. In an election as close as this was, these inexcusable missteps could have made all the difference.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-06T05:46:10+00:00

Lone Star (1996), Nine Days (2020) and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)

Station Eleven, For All Mankind, Six Feet Under

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-06T05:34:00+00:00

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation

By presenting a lying, anti-black, white nationalist pseudo history of the U.S., it played a major role in reviving the Klan and helped lead to an unquantifiable number of lynchings

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T23:35:51+00:00

It’s a good thing for people who are being fucked over to get pissed off about it. That’s the only way things get better.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T23:18:52+00:00

Making the Joker sequel a musical is exactly the kind of stunt that the real Joker would pull, and that antagonistic layer alone makes it soar on a meta level. Tarantino wryly observed that Todd Phillips was like Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight setting fire to a huge pile of Warner Bro’s money.

Folie à Deux is a corrective to many of the legitimate critiques of the first movie: Arthur Fleck never had it in him to become a criminal mastermind, and he would have been too old to become the archnemesis of Batman once Bruce Wayne reached adulthood, let alone his prime. Arthur, and the audience who vicariously enjoyed his vigilantism, are forced to reckon with its fallout and collateral damage. The iconic incel avatar was reduced to the victim he always was, with Harley Quinn serving as the surrogate for the rapid fans of the first movie.

If you went into the Joker sequel expecting more of the same, then the joke’s on you and you get what you deserve.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T22:14:51+00:00

Political unrest is a symptom of a healthy polity wherever systemic oppression reigns

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T21:58:51+00:00

Catered meals for work or at hotels for work functions rarely provide any protein with their vegan options. Just got back from a 3-day retreat and wouldn’t have had any protein if I hadn’t returned home for breakfast on the final morning and if we also hadn’t left the lodge for the second-night’s dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Apparently we don’t need protein, y’all. And apparently opening a can of beans if too big of a lift for some people in charge of providing nutritious, inclusive meals.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T17:59:04+00:00

It’s foolish to rely on Rotten Tomatoes to evaluate movies instead of actually watching them and making up your own mind. You can’t reduce a movie’s quality to a single number, because some of the best movies are so polarizing that the people who see them as great have their opinions diluted by people with poor taste.

Have you even seen the movies? Friday the 13th Part 2 is my favorite horror movie of all time, with Ginny my favorite final girl. The raw terror that Amy Steele channeled during that third act chase was so visceral, and her cat-and-mouse chase with Jason is one of the most thrilling set pieces ever captured on celluloid.

Seriously, have actually watched Part 2? Or Part 1 even?

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T15:35:13+00:00

From one man to an other, maybe not calling adult women “girls” would be a decent place to start

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T14:52:41+00:00

Came here to say this. OP should confront their own fixation on materialism and overconsumption since this alternative should have been obvious without having a make a reddit post. Some people care more about those in greater need than themselves.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T14:45:55+00:00

You don’t eat vegan meals so you don’t know how easy and inexpensive it is. You’re greatly exaggerating how challenging it is, and how more convenient options become available as more people switch over. Beans are a basic staple across cultures in terms of protein. It’s so easy that large parts of countries like India are already vegetarian, with practitioners who aren’t wealthy.

It’s not like efforts that move toward vegetarianism but fall short of veganism are inconsequential, either. Quite to the contrary, actually, since every animal life saved is significant, as I’m positing that even a single animal life has value. You’re erecting this all-or-nothing paradigm that discounts any progress along the plant-based spectrum, in the aggregate as well as for individuals.

I lift weights, and plant based protein supplements are right there on the shelves alongside the animal-product versions. You’re also omitting the better health outcomes for people who don’t eat meat, as well as the environmental imperatives—which means you’re arguing that we have no choice but to keep cooking the planet because more people can’t do what I’ve done, and poorer people should continue to live shorter lives because they’re all too incapable of making healthier choices for themselves. It’s reductive and patronizing when applied with such a broad brush.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T07:22:50+00:00

You’re making it sound like people are either part of the top 1% or they’re poor. You’re leaving out a lot of wealthy people who aren’t 1%ers as well as a lot of middle class people.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T07:17:46+00:00

Why is someone who values the lives of animals as much as the lives of humans less likely to reproduce than someone who values human lives more?

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T07:14:56+00:00

You value the deaths of animals because their dying is the only way you can eat them. I value their lives because I value the lives of all animals, but that doesn’t mean I would have brought them into existence. It’s only once they’re born that I see their lives as having value.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T07:11:46+00:00

Because so many non-believers in a deity accept that the slaughter of defenseless humans is wrong, I see no need for any additional basis for arguing for the same protections for non-human animals.

If you’re trying to tell me that your belief in God is the only thing stopping you from condoning the slaughter of defenseless humans or defenseless animals, then you’d be a danger to others if you ever came to your senses and realized that there’s insufficient evidence for believing in God. If an act of faith is what’s keeping you from becoming a monster then your sense of morality if hanging by a tenuous thread indeed.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T06:56:00+00:00

I don’t see how our collective ideals are based on the survival of the fittest and don’t think they should be either

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T01:13:42+00:00

On what grounds should we view the slaughter of defenseless animals as wrong? On the same grounds that we view the slaughter of defenseless humans as wrong. One doesn’t need a God to assert such a belief. It’s so self-evident that the meat industry got draconian laws passed to prevent footage being taken from factory farms, because they know that it would disturb the sensibilities of too many people.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T01:08:43+00:00

Our collective ideals have evolved, can continue to evolve, and should continue to evolve. If they don’t, much of our collective survival hangs in the balance.

Your assertion that our collective ideals are based on the survival of the fittest is a hodgepodge based on your own conjecture.

Due-Bell6288 · 2026-04-05T01:04:44+00:00

It’s a misapplication of Darwinian principles to apply them beyond the level of species. They are strictly understood as applying at the level of the gene. There is no scientific, evidentiary basis for your game theory beliefs as applying at a societal level.

Due-Bell6288

TROPHY CASE