The Atlas Asylum of absurd/ignorant posts IX

[Sol]

Let me put it this way, on a French forum or discord server whose membership had broadly the same political outlook as this site's usership, gender neutral language would be, actually is, pretty much the normal way of writing. Whereas, on this forum, most of the time it feels like I am reading the most predictable outposts of the reactionary right wing French press. So for me that is actually very surprising, because France is for the most part a very reactionary, racist country; and yet this apparently left wing forum mostly takes a position that even by French standards would be considered right wing on this one particular issue.

Well, this I think is the rub--English, in not having grammatical gender, simply is often gender-inclusive by default. The only real grammatical occasion where this sort of thing is an issue is 3rd person singular pronouns, but even there singular they has always been a thing and seems to catching on with remarkably little pushback considering its queer and trans connotations. Even before the mainstreaming of singular they it was pretty normal practice for many English writers to alternate between using a default "he" and "she."

There are also absolutely various discursive whirlpools around the use of "you guys" vs. "y'all," is "dude" gendered, etc. but there certainly isn't much intensity around this stuff in most cases because it's nearly always possible to speak in a way which simply isn't gendered.

And of course the general tendency has been towards jettisoning gendered terms for professions anyway--i.e. stewardess --> flight attendant, actress --> actor, etc. About the only English term I can think of where I would unthinkingly recreate some gendered doublet is probably waiter vs. waitress. Unsurprisingly, the common tendency has been to adopt the masculine form, perhaps because the feminine form often has negatively tinged sexist connotations, like "master" vs. "mistress." Obviously this itself is a reflection of sexism, but the result in a few generations is an inclusive word without gendered connotations (i.e. executrix used to be a term people actually used, but now everyone is an executor without much of a connotation).

Anyway, I guess my point is that probably the most natural loanword behavior in English for the word "latino" is for it to be adopted as a generic gender-neutral term. But of course that sounds weird to Spanish speakers, so English inherited the rather alien Spanish distinction between the masculine and feminine forms. And the result of this conflict between different English and Spanish ways of being gender-inclusive in speech is "Latinx," which sounds artificial to monoglot English speakers particularly because it's sort of equivalent to making a third alternative to waiter or waitress, i.e. something like "waitx."

Anyway I typed all of these words not because I disagree with you--I think the posters who can't deal when some person says Latinx are silly--but rather because I'm a bit of a linguistics nerd who finds this kind of discrepancy between differing ways of being linguistically inclusive interesting.

[Sol]

Illinois. The North Side of Chicago is suburban in character even if the South Side isn't. The suburbs of Chicago are growing rapidly, and they have more votes than rural Illinois.

This is a wild take!

[Sol]

Lots of countries have characteristic bigotries that are weirdly common there. If Britain is TERF Island then it's in the same sense that Japan is Xenophobe Archipelago, India is Misogynist Subcontinent, and France is Islamophobe Hexagon.

🤦🏼‍♂️ 🤦🏼‍♂️ 🤦🏼‍♂️

Not forgetting the whole Middle East with its prevailing anti-Semitism, and certain regions within Germany and the USA where misandrists, anti-white racists, Christophobes, ageists, and taxpayer-hostile losers live.

If racist Nathan crashes into oncoming traffic by playing ghost driver on the freeway, all the other car drivers are at fault to his thinking, of course... 😒

[Sol]

I think I'll put myself up as a neutral mainly due to my lack of feeling a strong solidarity with Ukraine vis a vis Russia, me merely disliking as opposed to hating Vladimir Putin, and my strong support for a diplomatic solution that gives Russia a tiny bit of something.

Ukraine's a near-failed state that has corruption issues worse than Russia's, that continues to suffer immense economic difficulties long-term, and that had issues even when Russia wasn't bothering it. Whatever issues Russia has had, Ukraine also has had, and it's had them more persistently worse than Russia. Oligarchs had a complete stronghold on politics until Zelensky took control (in Russia, Putin tackled the oligarchs and reigned them in - Ukraine never had quite a stabilizing figure on par with him), and they evidently don't really care about solving the people's problems either.

Ukraine's a great nation and a great people, but these problems are holding it back heavily. Only with Russian support, a degree of reforms, and a long-term game plan can the country really get on its feet. Ideally, Zelensky should be given a chance to continue in power, as he could help here immensely, if given the chance.

When I took a shower-bath yesterday, I hummed Ode to Joy in hopes of peace between Ukraine and Russia. I've also prayed to my Lord for peace between the two countries. Ukraine and Russia should not be at war with each other and to see the two brotherly peoples at war is saddening. We should defuse exceptionally high levels of east-west tensions that only would harm the Ukrainian people. Yes, Ukraine means borderlands, but that does not mean that Ukraine has to be an epicenter of battle lines. The people of Ukraine don't deserve that.

At least Ukraine will always have the best farmlands in Eastern Europe. They have always had that on their side.

[Sol]

No one is "obsessed" with you. You are currently making 50 posts a day, mostly meandering lectures both-sidesing a conflict that no one apart from you has any interest in both-sidesing. If you don't want to face pushback for that, stop posting.

Sol has engaged in personal attacks against me and some of his posts have been deleted by the mods. There are numerous occasions in which this has happened in fact.
I don't think you know what you are talking about.

Sol got tired of your bit before the rest of us did, but there's a lot more people than just Sol who're over it now.

You can just ask YE if any of Sol's posts have been deleted.
In any case, I don't need your approval to post, the Russian/Ukrainian megathread is welcome to people of varying opinions no matter how you might dislike that, and you are being as ludicrously hostile as I've ever seen.
Whatever. Have a nice day, no matter how much the more annoyed part of my mind wishes otherwise.

You really aren't making yourself look better.

I know, you don't generally look good after throwing mud, justified or not.
Just wanted to call out a problem poster for how pathetic they've been and how cold they are. Also, much credit to the mod team for putting Sol in his place. Much deserved.
It is fact Sol has brought up off-topic things, engaged in personal attacks, and seen his posts deleted, all in connection to what at least is a personal vendetta against me personally.
I'm not unhappy with the status quo in this at all.
That is all.

Didn't really want to get involved with this, but to my knowledge all of these posts were ones I've deleted myself. I sometimes get very angry on the Internet, including over your posts on occasion, and I often will go back and delete ones I wrote where I felt like I went over the top. I've done this on covid-related threads as well. The only moderated post I have is one where I called Hifly a bigot back in like 2014.

In any case I have no obsession with you, and I do not want to "throw you into the volcano." You have a habit of making thoughtless and sometimes offensive posts and I think we share several interests, so I encounter them with an extremely high frequency. My response to them I think is pretty typical of the treatment of bad posts on this forum--compucomp for example has been getting an even more kneejerk response to his unfortunate takes. I don't hate you but I do wish you were more thoughtful.

[Sol]

I would also like to express the sentiment that your view of me is, at best, very much outdated and rooted in whatever your (at least former) self's perceptions of past events was.

The post I placed in here was from Friday.

[Sol]

FWIW I've noticed the discourse on this is actually a good example of why as annoying as I find them in general the hyper-woke types are at least preferable to TERFs (referring to actual literal TERFs here, and not the term when used as a slur as it often is), the later are still mostly defending her and considering Depp an abuser despite all the evidence (although this isn't a shock, these were kind of the only people still accusing the Duke la crosse team after that story fell apart), while the woke crowd seems to be pretty much entirely anti-Heard as well. But this isn't surprising since the evidence is that she's a serial abuser and the majority of her victims are actually women.

A lot of so-called "TERFs" are themselves victims of rape and other forms of male violence, so I have some sympathy for them assuming the woman is right in cases like this. That doesn't actually make them right, and certainly it's been proven by cases like the Duke Lacrosse disaster that they can be VERY wrong (although I blame the f--king criminal DA for that particular atrocity far more than any feminists). But it does make their motives more sympathetic in my eyes. I can get why someone who had dick forced on her traumatically would be leery of the idea of dicks getting too close to her in private spaces, or might reflexively assume the one with a dick is more likely to be the aggressor in a given situation. Again this does not make them right or mean we shouldn't have an objective evaluation of each situation on a case-by-case basis; no one is shocked I have defended Bill Clinton here, not to mention Al Franken among others, so that might get me verboten in "TERF" spaces (aside from me just being male) even if I agree and sympathize with them a lot more than most men.

Anyway, regarding this particular case? I think both Depp and Heard are mentally ill. Both seem to have borderline tendencies and the former is clearly an alcoholic/addict. Again, I don't know who or what to believe exactly and care even less. Depp said some nasty things on tape; much could be excused as being emotional outbursts in the heat of the moment. At the same time, the very idea of Heard posing any kind of serious physical threat to him strikes me as a joke. It's something I agree very much with the "TERFs" on; they acknowledge fully the reality that men are significantly stronger on average than women, something much of modern feminism is extremely reluctant at best to acknowledge, even though it is one of the most essential and important distinctions between the two sexes, and indeed may be THE single thing which has historically ensured male dominance over females (considering there is zero difference in intelligence). To not acknowledge this reality is essentially to concede there is no difference between men and women at all, which defeats the point of feminism in the first place.

In any case, all I can say (and again I would get kicked out by TERFs for saying this, another distinction)? Amber Heard is hot as hell and I wouldn't kick her out of my bed even if she s--t it. And I sure as hell wouldn't be afraid of her hitting me LOL.

There's also the fact that Johnny Depp is like 20 years older and was and is far more famous and powerful than her, specifically more powerful both socially and physically. Forgive me for not buying this idea that he was somehow trapped and subdued and cowed into submission by this young, physically small woman. She had far more reason to believe he could knock her lights out than he ever had any reason to believe she posed any serious threat to him. He could have left at any time.

I was reluctant all this time to take sides on this, because I saw ALL the signs of a typical internet circlejerk a mile away. And now that more actual facts and information are coming out at trial which (unsurprisingly) muddy the waters, I feel vindicated in doing so. I don't think either party is innocent, to be clear, but I certainly don't think Depp is some martyr for the male cause or some helpless victim. That's utterly laughable.

[Sol]

Today is a great day

Sad to see you're so contemptuous of democracy.

[Sol]

Some of y'all need to get off of AH.com.

[Sol]

Some of y'all need to get off of AH.com.

FTFY

??

[Sol]

Has there ever been a stranger post than the following one?

What people don't understand is that our dislike of masks goes way beyond not wanting to wear one.  It's that we don't want to ever be reminded that covid happened.  So, I don't want to ever see anyone in a mask and I don't want anyone to ever get tested or quarantine.  The virus will always exist, but it's not a unique threat at this moment.  I want to live in a world that doesn't even think about covid.

Not sure why you find this so strange--I don't agree with this but it's a pretty understandable and relatable response to the trauma of covid.

[Sol]

As long as Abbott is doing this instead of going after LGB people I guess it's a win.

[Sol]

Haughtyness is not something anyone in this thread ought to display, and we shall keep our eyes open to various possibilities and keep in mind that fog of war is real and the need for narrative control for both sides in this war might make it hard to figure out what is actually going on. I for one welcome bilaps bringing his perspective here. If our perspective is vigorous enough, it should withstand it.
This thread ought to be a place where we ponder and look at things from the outside as observers of the biggest hot conflict on European soil in the 21st century to date.

[Sol]

Great. So Xir gets forgiveness for their massive debt from their gender studies degree while future students such as myself face tuition rates that are about to sharply rise?

[Sol]

DeSantis seems to be following the Matt Bevin strategy of "Piss off all the teachers, SURELY this will lead to me coasting to election!"

It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see how it pays off for him...

Florida teachers clearly aren't as intelligent as Kentucky teachers. 

I make no apologies for this. If any Florida teacher clutches their pearls over what DeSuckass did to their profession after voting for him in his landslide re-election, which many certainly did, they deserve what they get.

I guarantee you that Florida teachers did not vote for DeSantis.

[Sol]

In the "Is Shakespeare overrated?" thread.

Yes.

He is absolutely nothing in comparison to Quentin Tarantino or Lena Dunham.

Granted, that is a dramatic overstatement but considering that the vast majority of Americans can only quote probably one or two lines from Shakespeare (and probably can't even remember which play the line comes from) suggests Red has a point or two about the guy being overrated.  I'm not saying Americans are smart (at all lol) or should be used as a good barometer over the objective quality of something but it seems obvious there is a sizable portion of the population that subconsciously agrees with BRTD and would rather watch Lethal Weapon 3 Special Edition than read Hamlet.

Shakespeare doesn't even need to be bad to be overrated.  He just needs to be taught to the population by underpaid teachers who follow restrictive guidelines because parents and politicians really suck.

By this same metric, Baby Shark has a decent argument to being the best song of all time.

[Sol]

The "patriarchy" is mostly a myth.