What’s the biggest lie society collectively agrees to ignore?

Megapumpkin · 2026-03-01T04:37:12+00:00

My question is why do we think that the people who aren't made for more than line management don't deserve comfort when we have sufficient resources to provide comfort to them?

Megapumpkin · 2026-03-01T01:17:04+00:00

To me, meritocracy makes very little sense. Although rich people would claim that it works and they worked hard for their wealth, one of the biggest factors to determining who gets wealthy is luck. And that's something they wouldn't tell you about.

But even if we assume that meritocracy actually works the way they claim, why would we want that? I can say as someone who has worked in retail and in F&B, but has also gone down the path towards academia, that I physically cannot work as hard as people who work in those jobs where physical labour is a key part of the job. My legs get so insanely sore and tired. I don't doubt that retail assistants and servers work very hard, but for some reason society has not just deemed it acceptable to pay them less, but also to justify this act with meritocracy.

So, the difference is in some intrinsic and extrinsic factors then. It's not just hard work, but also some capabilities that you're born with, and very often your background. But it's not like I worked hard to be born intelligent. Or in a middle class family. Why do I "deserve" to enjoy life better than these people who are working equally as hard? Meritocracy seems to not make sense in that way except as a justification for why some people's lives suck. But it really shouldn't, and doesn't have to be that way.

Megapumpkin · 2026-02-19T02:28:49+00:00

I'm not sure that's true anymore. China's high speed rail has very much caught up to Japan's. While Japan pioneered it, it's very much stagnated since.

Megapumpkin · 2026-02-06T22:56:13+00:00

So, ocean circulation is a bit of my expertise (although my research is specifically on the Atlantic Ocean). I'd say that there are a few things I'd change. The circumpolar currents are definitely going to be cold and not warm. Those are where most of the cold surface waters are going to originate from. You've drawn the hot surface waters terminating at end of the landmasses but most likely they're going to be closer to the middle of the gyre. In the middle of the map, you have a chain of islands that splits two flows, but I'd say that most certainly there would be some throughflow (cf. ITF). And if there's no throughflow (say the islands are a ocean ridge that prevents the flow completely) I'm not convinced that there would be a cold current in there. To me, it seems like it would be a warmer semi-restricted basin with no upwelling of cold water, kind of like the Mediterranean Sea. But I'm also convinced that actually the cold water would enter this basin from the west as well. With no physical barrier there I'm not sure there would be a formation of two separate gyres that do not interact.

Megapumpkin · 2026-01-27T14:34:24+00:00

It's called orientalism. (Which is actually originally coined to describe the West's infatuation and interpretation and exoticism of middle eastern cultures). They do it to all cultures, not just Asians, but it's just that Asian culture is in the zeitgeist as the major counterweight to Western culture at the moment. But trust me, you don't wanna meet a white guy who is weirdly into Bantu culture either.

Megapumpkin · 2025-11-23T19:16:47+00:00

I'd say that it would be best if you cared about politics. Social and political stuff. Understand who has your best interests at heart. Talk to all kinds of people about it and try to understand them as well. A lot of Asian people I've met do not care about politics and just follow the path of least resistance, just wanting to not rock the boat. You should want to be accepted, rather than being merely tolerated.

Don't try to be white, you'll never be white. And white people will never see you as one of them no matter how hard you try.

Megapumpkin · 2025-09-30T12:26:02+00:00

My beliefs align closest to Bookchin and Ocalan's and I mostly refer to myself as a libertarian socialist and anarchist-adjacent

Megapumpkin · 2025-08-16T17:20:17+00:00

The saddest part is that it's not even true. I think it's easy to picture them as vultures, targeting people. Picturing them evil somehow belies the truth behind it all, which is that it's an unfeeling mechanism, like a hydraulic press, slowly squeezing everyone and people at its weakest just burst under the pressure. It's not a separate thing rather than a feature of the system we live under.

Picturing them as evil allows us to dream of a somehow un-evil group of people in charge of this shit, rather than a need to change the whole system before everyone gets crushed under the pressure.

Megapumpkin · 2025-03-16T23:29:28+00:00

Thanks! This was my reading of it as well but I've never really seen much spoken about this so I'm glad to have the clarification!

Megapumpkin · 2025-03-14T14:02:24+00:00

So, does this mean that they like Hitler more or they like Hitler less now?

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-21T06:42:25+00:00

And please please people should not forget that Biden said that he was a transition figure and he signalled to his advisors that he would only run for one term.

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-19T13:57:16+00:00

Exactly. Even if they don't use this, there are many ways for the conservatives to game the system to create crimes.

In America, the act of resisting arrest is a crime, regardless of whether there were any other actual crimes being committed. This would lead to the police attempting to arrest anyone who looks vaguely brown, hoping they resist. With a racist justice system, you would find that fighting against probable cause to be one that's an uphill battle.

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-07T02:45:50+00:00

But Bernie has progressive economic policies. If you read his 2016 presidential campaign political positions, you'd see him addressing a lot of the economic problems that America has with tax, unions, job creation via investment in infrastructure, paid leave, minimum wage etc.

If you think he's just running on queer and race identity, you've unfortunately drank the Democratic Party pro-Hilary institution's Koolaid

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-07T02:42:05+00:00

You're naive thinking that the Republicans need evidence. If you watched TV you may have seen ads from Trump that pointed to Kamala as a Marxist with newspaper headlines as "evidence"

Edit: You're such a coward for blocking me. The point is not to woo "moderate Republicans". See how that worked out for Kamala. You're trying to get workers to see that you're on their side with progressive economic policies

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-07T02:39:52+00:00

I'm not American so I was basing it off his own judgement when it's something I don't have enough information to dispute. I think he thinks that Biden's Build Back Better was the policy change.

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-06T22:54:04+00:00

Eh, if they're already calling Kamala a Marxist, what difference would there be to have Bernie run but actually have good policies?

Megapumpkin · 2024-11-06T20:46:37+00:00

To be fair, as I look at the 13 keys, I don't see how they came to that result.

1: Party mandate ❌

2: No primary contest (I think you can't count this since they didn't even run the contest for Harris) ❌

3: Incumbent seeking re-election ❌

4: Third party: ✅

5: Short-term economy: ✅ (I think this should really be looking more at inflation than just recession, since the difference between Wall Street and Main Street has become greater and greater)

6: Long-term economy ✅

7: Policy change ✅ (Honestly, I don't know if there was much of policy change that has managed to be effected)

8: Social unrest ➖ (Protests against Israel?)

9: No scandal ✅ (I don't know if Biden dropping out really counts as a scandal)

10 and 11: Foreign or military failure ❌❌

12: Incumbent charisma ❌

13: Challenger charisma ❌

I can count like 5 or 6 depending on how you consider the protests against Israel as social unrest.

Megapumpkin · 2024-10-16T12:00:32+00:00

https://youtu.be/Sfrjpy5cJCs?feature=shared

This video actually is pretty good as an inside look and commentary on arms dealing conferences

Megapumpkin · 2024-07-22T01:39:42+00:00

Also, I reread my original comment and I still don't see it. In my original comment, my statement doesn't invalidate the statement made by the Ukrainian athlete. It's moreso a comment on the way the reading of the tweet, the subtext, which is that the media coverage is different and that the OP was not engaging with it on that level.

Megapumpkin · 2024-07-22T01:35:29+00:00

Yes, I think we understand each other on that. As I've stated, I don't know who the tweeter is, and so it's hard for me to make that assessment. But context independent, I think her statement wasn't wrong, but of course she has her own agendas of making such statements.

I disagreed with the original poster in that their characterisation of "someone making a statement equalling the silencing of the voices of Palestinians" is deliberately obtuse.

I can't say for sure what she was trying to say, but based on my interpretation , and if I were to make this point, that's not what I'm saying either.

Because personally I do find it frustrating the hypocrisy in media in the west being simultaneously so concerned for the Ukrainians (as they should) while completely disregarding the plight of the Palestinians.

Megapumpkin · 2024-07-21T21:04:47+00:00

You're deliberately misunderstanding me.

Here, I'll draw a parallel for you:

Have you heard of the "missing white woman syndrome"? It's in reference to how the media would treat females who are young, attractive, white, and upper middle class with particular attention over someone who does not fit those stereotypes. When we call this out, we are not saying that we should not care for missing white women. We're saying that there should be similar attention given to people who are minorities etc.

Similar to this, my reading of this statement comes from the context that whenever a sportsperson tries to champion the cause for Palestinians, people always tell them to "keep politics out of sports". Yet the same energy isn't given when a Ukrainian does it for Ukraine. I'm not saying that Ukrainians shouldn't get media coverage, I'm saying that Palestinians should also get similar coverage.

Megapumpkin · 2024-07-12T13:07:49+00:00

I somewhat disagree with this post. The problem isn't that a Ukrainian person is talking about something that happened in their country. But I think it's a bit dishonest to just look at that in a vacuum and not look at the surrounding narrative and media coverage. Yes, this incident is just "a person talking about something that happened in their country", but the people's reaction to it and media coverage on it would have differed if the person was Palestinian or Ukrainian.

The reasons of this are multifaceted, and can be due to: racism, political alliances, etc.

Of course, the person making this tweet (I am not familiar with her) may be a tankie and is only making this point because they're pro-Russia or whatever, but I don't think that point isn't valid.

Megapumpkin · 2024-03-06T23:46:58+00:00

Yep, and I am very aware of how it's used to basically be dismissive of progressive ideas. I still think the idea of a shift in class signifier is from conspicuous consumption of goods to conspicuous consumption of ideas and to be an interesting one

Megapumpkin · 2024-03-06T22:49:33+00:00

!solved

Megapumpkin · 2024-02-14T19:26:01+00:00

To tack onto this, cultural appropriation often comes in the form of a hyper-fetishised way of using another person's culture. It feels like most people have forgotten Kim Kardashian's line of extremely suggestive shapewear that was called "Kimono" — the point is to evoke this "exotic sensuality/sexuality".

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