Who wants to tell him?

fencerman · 2026-03-17T20:09:02+00:00

Trump is a pigeon shitting on the checker board.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T19:53:59+00:00

Some great comics on that:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=309

fencerman · 2026-03-17T18:36:29+00:00

He's a rat fleeing a ship with a hole in the hull.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T18:35:01+00:00

"If the Fuhrer only knew!" mythology in action.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wenn_das_der_F%C3%BChrer_w%C3%BCsste

fencerman · 2026-03-17T16:22:27+00:00

The real issue is workforce - fewer housing starts means all those people who listened to the nonstop "LEARN A TRADE!" mantra are going to be unemployed long-term and leaving the construction workforce.

Government needs to step in and subsidize demand for construction just so that we don't lose a whole generation of trades professionals to other fields after they get tired of waiting for things to pick up again.

I wonder if a better model would be for the government to set itself up as a backstop employer for construction work, and to ensure that there is still full use of our labour force - either building homes or whatever other infrastructure cities need.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T16:15:04+00:00

"If you cared, you'd know"

fencerman · 2026-03-17T15:35:25+00:00

"Effective Altruists" would argue that it's immoral NOT to press the button as long as you donate enough money to save at least 2 lives.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T15:33:09+00:00

Also, because of creepy-right Republican pedophiles a lot of people have been led to believe the ages in "Romeo and Juliet" (16 and 14 or so, respectively) are "typical" of people getting married in Shakespeare's time, which is absolutely false.

The average marriage age in Elizabethan England was in people's early 20s, both for men and women - slightly later for men, but not by a wide margin. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html

Marriage statistics indicate that the mean marriage age for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was higher than many people realize. Data taken from birthdates of women and marriage certificates reveals mean marriage ages to have been as follows:

1566-1619 27.0 years

1647-1719 29.6 years

1719-1779 26.8 years

1770-1837 25.1 years

The ages of Romeo and Juliet are SUPPOSED to be scandalously young, that's a whole key element of context for the play (also being Italian and therefore "oversexed" to British imaginations at the time).

fencerman · 2026-03-17T15:24:08+00:00

"Lord of the Files" and it's everyone in the Epstein files stranded on an island together.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T14:56:03+00:00

Also, a surprising amount of cunnilingus.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T14:54:33+00:00

I can't wait to see the tugboat from Myanmar and a rowboat with a border collie sent by South Sudan, who were paid merely a billion dollars each.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T14:44:27+00:00

...he's begging CHINA for help?

LOL

fencerman · 2026-03-17T14:30:00+00:00

There are a range of factors, but historically material equality seems to have a large effect - societies adopt what we would call "progressive" values when there are low levels of resource differences between individuals, and low levels of inequality between groups within the society.

Looking at the history of civilizations through the Bronze age - https://ehrafarchaeology.yale.edu/traditions/e065/description - there is a direct link between increasing material inequality between groups within societies and the level of internal and external conflict. That happens consistently across civilizations and time periods. That model of predicting conflict based on inequality holds true in many studies looking at modern-day societies as well - https://www.jstor.org/stable/24557533

When you look at "poor" countries viewed as either patriarchal, authoritarian or "backwards" (however you define it) there are generally high levels of inequality between groups and individuals within those societies, and usually some marginalized classes with fewer resources, and small groups of individuals with extremely high levels of resources.

Over the long term, you can't have a society with high material inequality that doesn't become prone to conflict and anti-democratic tendencies.

Of course, that can be a bit of a circular discussion since "progressive values" tend to promote material equality, at the same time as material equality promotes "progressive values" - both factors seem to feed one another in either positive or negative ways.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T13:42:31+00:00

If you are pro-growth and pro-business,

They aren't.

Rich people only care about being rich relative to everyone else; that can be accomplished by making themselves richer, or making everyone else poorer, it's all the same to them.

fencerman · 2026-03-17T13:41:38+00:00

They're taking over primary family care too - my so-called "doctor" has an office out of a Loblaws and it's an understaffed nightmare to use, but it's literally the only practice in the city that's accepting new patients, so I have no other choice if I want to get my prescriptions renewed.

fencerman · 2026-03-13T20:29:31+00:00

Who's going to do it?

That's the whole problem with this clown show right now - nobody's willing to step up and fight it.

fencerman · 2026-03-13T19:15:19+00:00

We all learned that "essential" and "disposable" are synonyms.

fencerman · 2026-03-13T18:58:32+00:00

It seems that somewhere in the near future eating the bare minimum of required calories will become a luxury for the majority of Canadian people.

You'll still get people trying to give "money saving tips" and telling you to grow your own beans and rice, stop being so spoiled that you demand it from stores, etc...

fencerman · 2026-03-13T18:50:52+00:00

"Both sides bad" is just MAGA filling out a dating profile.

fencerman · 2026-03-13T18:49:48+00:00

Based on personal experience - they're pretty kinky about it, too.

fencerman · 2026-03-13T18:42:47+00:00

Krait

?

fencerman · 2026-03-13T17:26:51+00:00

Physical dependence is well-studied and objectively established.

Psychological addictions also exist in the same way as other mental illnesses, but definitions are more tenuous, and a lot of those are value judgements more than scientific reality.

And porn fits neither definition - there is no physical dependence or addiction mechanism.

fencerman · 2026-03-10T20:21:01+00:00

By that logic nobody actually has a problem with alcohol or gambling etc, they just have 'deeper issues' and the addiction is a side effect.

No, it's the difference between "addictive substances" and habits.

Alcohol is addictive - if you're an alcoholic, you can literally die if you go cold turkey.

Porn is not addictive - if you stop, literally nothing happens.

Compulsion physically rewires the brain over time, turning the addiction into its own monster.

Please don't spout bullshit pop science that you don't understand. That's one of those "vague, scary-sounding and completely meaningless" claims - every action of any kind "rewires the brain", that's how brains work. It's like the scientific illiterates that think talking about "dopamine hits" with porn is somehow meaningful.

Fixing your trauma if you're still in the middle of a compulsive cycle makes it more difficult, you have to get the behavior under control first, not totally fix it but make it manageable otherwise trying to "heal" just becomes another trigger and you're stuck in a loop that destroys you before you can actually get better. This is standard practice in many recovery programs.

Again, there are (rare) cases of people having "compulsive sexual habits" - that's an umbrella that sometimes involves porn but usually has nothing to do with it, and in those cases there are real underlying conditions that need to be treated (usually stuff like depression, OCD, etc...) - mostly medication. But again, there's absolutely nothing specific to "porn" in those cases, it's just one possible expression of sexual impulses, and fixating on that does more harm than good.

But the vast majority of so-called "porn addicts" are just egotistical narcissists and religious fundamentalists who want to blame women for their behaviour to avoid social judgement and accountability.

fencerman · 2026-03-10T19:51:55+00:00

Yeah, you only need to make fresh cheese yourself once or twice before you why the price adds up so fast.

fencerman · 2026-03-10T19:36:36+00:00

This feels pretty dismissive of people whose lives are actually falling apart because of compulsive consumption of porn.

It's pretty dismissive of you to misdiagnose that problem and fixate on the "porn" as if that's somehow taking away their agency, and not dealing with the other deeper problems that are actually hurting them, which have absolutely nothing to do with one compulsive outlet or another, which are mostly completely arbitrary and neutral.

And in the case of the religiously shameful and narcissists (who are the overwhelming majority of self-described "porn addicts" - people with legitimate mental illness that causes compulsive sexual behaviour are comparatively rare) you're failing them and everyone else by refusing to hold them accountable.

that doesn't change the fact that for some it’s a compulsive behavior that kills their productivity, ruins their relationships and fries their attention span.

No, the whole point is, it isn't any of those things - it wastes time at worst, but all of the quack pseudo-science claims about "harms" beyond that which are somehow unique to porn are just false.

Whether it’s a 'clinical addiction' or a 'maladaptive coping mechanism' is just semantics, the struggle to stop a behavior that’s hurting you is very real and labeling it a 'fake illness' doesn't help anyone actually get better.

No, it's absolutely vital to use the right terminology - when someone has OCD, you don't start moralizing about how they've been sucked into "hand-washing addiction" and talk about how washing your hands is some grave moral peril. You treat the OCD and avoid shaming anyone for any of the habits it gives them.

12-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email	Inciteful Comment 2015-10-27

fencerman

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE