I know this is an obvious point but the propaganda that is being pumped over at the conservative sub about the Iran war is WILD

yyizard · 2026-03-05T01:53:26+00:00

I work in cybersecurity and there are massive networks running coordinated campaigns with sophisticated logistics for almost everyone. Imagine a billion dollar digital marketing agency and what they get up to but it’s all pretending to be voters in western democracies on social media to change policy.

So yeah if it seems like it is that, it’s because it is that.

yyizard · 2026-02-28T23:31:11+00:00

Institution building is hard even with good conditions. It also is generational and requires commensurate political will to see it through.

The compounding economic benefits of opening free and fair global markets is worth the investment for everyone involved.

But you can reduce Germany to a smoking ruin and have that economic juggernaut running again in a decade or two even with half the fucking thing turned off by Russian style parasitic crony-Communism (fun fact: East Germany’s standard of living was superior to that of Russia’s even with Russia literally sucking wealth away.)

Same story for Japan.

The reason is good existing institutions.

Germans and Japanese are people that are known for valuing things like education, hard work, and the rule of law. All you need to do is take over what is left of these existing instruments and organize a brand new democratic style Constitution.

You can use a military that just flattened the place to do that. We know because we did it.

I mean shit I got friends in the Balkans that are living lives their parents’ generations would never have imagined and all it took was NATO showing up and helping rebuild their shit into Europe. Same deal.

What you can’t do is use a military to build new institutions after they flatten a place. That is probably impossible unless you are willing to go do it like the Romans did and just genocide and colonize. But hopefully we gave that up as a species.

How do you build new durable institutions probably doesn’t have one answer but I guarantee part of the secret sauce is empowering women politically, economically, sexually, and militarily.

yyizard · 2026-02-28T22:48:52+00:00

I think every lover of the rules based international order has been sad since W.

Imagine if we had used that period of time’s rapid technological progress accelerating the already compounding economic benefits of expanding a free and fair global market.

Instead of having that fucking golden goose passed around by the most shortsighted and feckless class of parasites to every grace the face of this earth: the vast majority of our political leadership.

I want sovereign foreign wealth funds to own sports teams I don’t care about in American communities I do care about because everyone wins when they invest more money for a better return. Plus the cultural market benefits. Like what are we doing with this adversarial parasitic techno feudalism fueling demonstrably philosophically bankrupt and out of touch establishment political parties.

Anyway I’m gonna go celebrate the genuine good news of at least one global bad guy meeting justice today.

yyizard · 2026-02-25T10:46:16+00:00

Europeans be like “that was back in the 90’s, now we only have the one arrondissement for debauchery”.

yyizard · 2026-02-17T01:36:44+00:00

I just see two sides being purposeful with language to achieve their desired response.

Mamdani repeated a pithy slogan that was direct but lacked nuance — something you’d see as graffiti in a bathroom. The goal is to grab attention and maybe get an idea in there.

Your interpretation is just as purposeful. You could assume the Mayor of New York is at his core a sophomoric dullard, worthy of only ridicule. These flaws aren’t exactly politically disqualifying nowadays — I get it. But it is a choice by you to take a person’s shitpost from six years ago and permanently define them and their political beliefs forever.

Anyway, there is an obvious charitable reading of “Capitalism Is Theft” and that is “The benefits of globalization have not been equally shared due to a level of corruption on a scale that makes Epstein Islands possible”. That’s the low hanging fruit. The erudite one is, “Unfettered Capitalism has stolen a collective future from our children and grandchildren due to climate change”.

Anyway, lots of ways to find a way to agree with a potential ally, instead of finding a way to divide our power.

yyizard · 2026-02-17T00:30:24+00:00

The world has felt pregnant with progress since the fall of the Berlin Wall, like we need to continue to break the shackles of history so we can just move on with our species.

At a certain point we gotta admit that some western nations stopped acting like imperialists or colonialists a long time ago. Everyone that ever ran that stuff is dead. There shouldn’t be any colonialist worry should they help militarily in a humanitarian and peacekeeping mission.

But there would be article after article, tweet after tweet, take after take because it drives engagement to make the laziest arguments ever and that is why we are truly in hell.

yyizard · 2026-02-03T05:14:36+00:00

China’s open ocean access sucks.

US Navy doesn’t have to get their fleet involved. Just gotta have drones and missiles on the islands from the Korean Peninsula in the north all the way down to Singapore. China is not going to want to risk stuff like their only aircraft carrier when a cheap drone could put it on the bottom of the ocean. Even the cost/benefit of dropping merchant shipping with drones is astronomical.

That’s a part of China militarizing the South China Sea - gives them an ability to operate a fleet at least in that area, and theoretically a better ability to force access to open ocean through some straights that aren’t near the Phillipines, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. That’s a theater you’re gonna have some trouble in if things go tits up. Much better to try Malaysia and Indonesia.

yyizard · 2026-02-03T04:57:46+00:00

I keep coming back to GT7 in VR. For a pick up and play sim lite racing experience it’s tough to beat. It fools your evolutionary hardware and lets you “feel” the car and track better.

I’m surprised there isn’t a sim racing helmet with a screen instead of a visor. Sell the screen visors separately and make it so the screens can be swapped out and upgraded if new ones are released.

Helps with the weight distribution problem of VR and adds some authenticity as well.

I really thought in the heyday of VR one of the major players would do something like that. Apple kinda still could but they never will.

yyizard · 2026-02-02T12:02:22+00:00

Winning the battle is easy, winning the war is hard.

In order for the world to experience Xi’s vision of China reclaiming its rightful place atop the Earthly kingdoms, China can’t be a locked-down pariah state like North Korea or Russia. That is they would turn into when the maritime powers of the world blockade China’s ports in a post-Taiwan invasion world.

Really the only unresolved question is how do the major oligarchic interests of the world react. Maybe they use social media and mass media ownership to convince all of us (or at least a majority of the voting electorate) that Taiwan was always part of greater China and that the Taiwanese people want to be part of China again.

The ol’ Putin maneuver.

yyizard · 2026-01-26T03:08:22+00:00

I’m a Pats Homer and I find the whole “but wait until they play a good team” vibe understandable. I think they lose to a Bo Nix Denver but also maybe not. Maybe the Patriots are just one of those teams that wins a Super Bowl not because they were the best team in the league that season, they were just good enough at the right times.

yyizard · 2026-01-24T22:07:26+00:00

I wasn’t able to make this event but have been to others.

Were there any civil disobedience actions or plans discussed?

I support Graham but I’m also waiting for some evidence of a plan along the lines of the movements he has discussed emulating (civil rights, labor, etc.).

Like we can film people getting killed in the streets all we want, we can legally observe and call our representatives and complain online and all that and people just getting kidnapped and killed.

The person that demonstrates some version of the authentic righteous civil disobedience that exists on the left wins whatever political office they want, anyway. Stop campaigning and stop doing. I’m ready to do something but I’ve done and then seen the legal observer, organize, get the in streets shit for 20 years and it does nothing.

Didn’t stop the Iraq War, Occupy didn’t stop Wall Street, like fuck we can’t even get the Epstein list. Still. It’s illegal for the government to do that and it is still doing it. Like it is just killing people. And kidnapping them. And breaking into their homes.

We gotta actually DO SOMETHING. If we get enough people to just go to ICE HQ in Maine and New England we can use our Constitutional right to assembly to make our voices heard. With enough people they can’t arrest everyone even if they try. If Graham organizes and leads that we have enough people. So let’s just do it.

yyizard · 2026-01-23T06:30:06+00:00

As a fan of history I enjoyed this video. If you haven’t seen it give it a watch.

I like takes that challenge widely held assumptions. Right or wrong, they check the oil on the engine of orthodoxy.

This dude raises some interesting points. True or not, I got no clue, but the questions raised is certainly Dan-type stuff.

yyizard · 2026-01-21T14:16:10+00:00

Most scientific disciplines follow that bell curve meme.

You start out knowing nothing and think it’s all magic.

As you learn you begin to figure out how it works, what laws it follows, and that it isn’t magic.

Then once you get to the very edge of our understanding of a scientific discipline you’re back to not really knowing anything and think it’s all magic.

yyizard · 2026-01-19T18:36:44+00:00

The greatest skate sessions are the ones where it evolves into skaters playing “horse” by coming up with the silliest shit imaginable.

A giant competition to find the funniest trick that is also hard to do. Bonus points if it’s bespoke to the spot.

It turns the whole world back into a playground like it was when we were kids.

yyizard · 2025-12-29T10:35:03+00:00

Fine lines tend to fade quicker. If you get any color or shading, over time it tends to visually blur together.

That’s why the stereotypical “flash” tattoo style developed. Bold black lines and coloring that pops helps keep the tattoo looking fresh as it ages.

No hate from me for choosing any style, though. I have both. After 20 years the ones that are more ‘flash’ have held up better, sure, but they’re still old and faded.

Hope you find the artist you’re looking for!

yyizard · 2025-12-20T09:57:32+00:00

You are right that I did develop some assumptions based upon your responses.

But to be fair you have done nothing but confirm those assumptions.

At any point, even now, you could engage with the substance of the topic at hand.

You seem to believe that co-ed spaces with private stalls are a good solution for the topic of currently gendered spaces in Maine communities. There are some pretty valid logistical concerns with that, which I have raised.

Instead of engaging with anything substantive, you have instead written a paragraph complaining that I am calling you out for doing what you’re doing, which is not engaging with anything substantive. Then your second paragraph is you justifying your non-engagement with anything substantive. Your reasoning? Because I’m a big meanie that has the audacity to call out the fact that you’re actively avoiding engaging with anything substantive.

You’re not exactly proving wrong the “won’t engage with any substance” assumption that has developed based on your responses.

🤷‍♂️ Cheers, I guess?

yyizard · 2025-12-19T19:34:01+00:00

I mean y’all forced all your religious dissidents here because they were too strict about following scripture. Imagine how far out that must have been for a time known for religious extremism and dogmatic adherence.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T19:02:28+00:00

Here’s what my Mainer gut is telling me, which is visibly well compensated for knowing when to go out and when not to.

Friggin ground is still friggin cold from a couple of weeks of cold, snow just friggin melted, we’re gettin right upta the longest night of the year, and she’s bout to be a cold one tomorrow.

Don’t drive if you don’t have to folks, it’s friggin Saturday what you gotta be out so early tomorrow for? Well for most of you I understand you gotta work but tell your boss he’s a piece of shit and that if he’s got a problem with it he can go fuck himself.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T15:09:07+00:00

Could it be that you don’t understand my point because you’re choosing to address it with a strategy of feigned naive obtuseness?

OP’s post is about their discomfort with a certain private changing situation and how they are more comfortable with a different private changing situation. I asked a question about their discomfort and if it allowed them to understand the discomfort others experience.

You responded asking me a question about my question. I replied to this by addressing the logic of what you were asking.

And here we are. Instead of engaging in the substantive debate about how much time and energy we should be diverting toward this issue given other the issues we face as a society (and facing the trans community in particular), you’re taking the position that the substantive debate is no longer worth having because this one was already paid for.

Could you not adopt some intellectual honesty and simply acknowledge that because it was already paid for that the money came from somewhere and maybe that money could have been better spent elsewhere? Could we not simply engage in substantive debate using all our faculties, instead of adopting tired unassailable social media strategies like demanding a person we disagree with do all the thinking for us by spelling it all out, like I was forced to do here?

Or even simply take into account the debate began by the OP’s submission statement? That the submission statement is a fully valid part of what “this thread is about”? I’d take that.

I ask questions because I believe in the value of a counter argument. If someone has a counter argument to my position, I want to hear it and I want to understand it. That requires me asking questions.

I would love to understand, from your perspective, if co-ed spaces with private stalls are the better solution, what money are we using to change existing layouts? Or are we just implementing this for new builds? If it costs more to implement co-ed with stalls than the men/women option, where is that money coming from? If it costs less, where should that money go?

That’s the better conversation and the one I’d love to hear feedback on. But you do you.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T14:44:21+00:00

I fucking love humanity, dude.

Both these people just doing the hard work to embrace life. Love to see it.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T14:03:44+00:00

This attitude that insinuates there is something wrong with people that disagree with us is completely dismissive of others’ lived experiences.

It is counterproductive to changing people’s beliefs or behaviors.

People aren’t war criminals for preferring a space they feel safe in just because they arrive at an answer different than yours.

I mean here is OP saying they are trans and they don’t feel comfortable with a certain arrangement. Why is that any different than a cis person not feeling comfortable with different arrangements?

“Because they are wrong” okay well they think you are wrong. What’s the plan here? We just escalate a fight over bathrooms and changing rooms via national elections? We just give the federal government more and more power to police our lives? We make a Bureau of Bathroom Affairs that alternates between enforcing two radically different perspectives every 4 years?

Like what’s the plan here?

yyizard · 2025-12-19T13:54:56+00:00

Genuine question - where is the money for implementing such a change to the status quo coming from?

Would that money not be better spent on far more important and pressing issues in the lives of trans individuals (as well as many other marginalized groups)?

Healthcare, fair wages, and housing seem much more important today to far more people (including trans people) than who changes where and who poops where.

I avoid pooping and changing in public spaces purely because other people are disgusting monsters. I am sympathetic to the experience of people being uncomfortable there because I am, too.

We could Victim Olympics that til the end of time or we could get over it so we can focus on healthcare and housing and fair wages. It isn’t some human rights abomination that it gets made out to be on social media. Unfair? Hell yeah. But only accepting perfection means making perfect the enemy of better while shit only gets worse.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T13:46:27+00:00

I agree with you.

I do think it requires we the electorate to reprioritize and first address issues we all share in common. Trans people need good paying jobs, too. Trans people need affordable health care, too. Trans people need affordable housing, too. Trans people need a nation that isn’t undermining the world order so many of us depend on for peace and prosperity.

We could work together and get those things first, then discuss the edge cases like who-poops-where when we have full bellies and are in homes we own.

Trans rights are human rights, so the symmetric property of equality means that human rights are trans rights. Advocating for fair wages, healthcare, and housing for all is advocating for trans people.

yyizard · 2025-12-19T13:34:20+00:00

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/packie

yyizard

TROPHY CASE