The Mentalizer posted:

I don't know how you guys can read that thread. It was the only thread I've ever had to stop reading because it made me legit crazy, and if I kept up with it I would have had a meltdown. Day by Day was enough to cause psychological stress, then add in the McCoys, Ramirez and Joe loving Liccar (also the dude that beats his wife whose name I can't recall at the moment); god it was just loving terrible.

Bertrand Hustle posted:

Is Liccar the one who draws Obama as a cluster of enormous triangles with a racist caricature of a face?

Bertrand Hustle posted:

Is Liccar the one who draws Obama as a cluster of enormous triangles with a racist caricature of a face?

forbidden lesbian posted:

As long as your normal, you can read things you disagree with without becoming some kind of broken person.

forbidden lesbian posted:

As long as your normal, you can read things you disagree with without becoming some kind of broken person.

NoEyedSquareGuy posted:

No, he draws Obama as a goomba. Not really sure what you're talking about with the triangle stuff.

The Mentalizer posted:

That's right, a goomba. I couldn't think of the proper description. Maybe he's thinking of Ramirez?

WarpedNaba posted:

And if you can't, there's always tumblr!

Small Frozen Thing posted:

ironically it's actually easier to avoid things you disagree with on SA than on tumblr, due to tumblr not having a built-in ignore function

Lumberjack Bonanza posted:

It is impossible, however, to truly ignore Irish Joe.

NoEyedSquareGuy posted:

To be fair, goomba isn't that great a description either for whatever the hell Liccar's Obama is supposed to be. Ramirez consistently draws Obama as a hideous worm creature.

Sweevo posted:

SA has ~15 servers because radium is the sort of person who thinks nine women can make a baby in one month

El Laucha posted:

My Imaginary GF posted:

With the advent of precision-guided munitions, the west has forgotten the value of community-based strategix bombing.

There is nothing to negotiate, there is only eliminating the system of jihad which exists and is perpetuated in the ungoverned regions of our world.

If your enemy is motivated by humanitarianism and perceptions of god, your nation must be greater than their god. They must feel the fear of our nation more than they feel the imminent wrath of god.

It's time to recognize that jihadism is a system that is in no way compatible with western civilization, and treat it as such at all its levels. If jihadists are radicalized in the west by foreign nationals, eliminate all foreign nationals who radicalize westerners and ensure that their community cannot use the wrath of god to justify further radicalization. For far too long the world has been assuming humanitarian intentions behind power-crazed radicals. Well, I'm here to tell you, that poo poo needs to end, it needs to have ended a generation ago, and if it doesn't end this generation then there may not be their next.

Radicalization is a lot like sexual predation or cult recruitment. These movements attract two kinds of individuals: humanitarians and the ambitiously craven. Foreign recruitment works by identifying the humanitarians through their expressions of kindness, compassion, and empathy.

It starts with a rocket fired from outside a hospital or across the street from a hotel frequented by foreign journalists in Gaza strip. A foreign attack must be responded to; there is no other answer for representative government held accountable by its people. Conveniently, pre-positioned cameras capture the result of jihadist attacks and cry bloody murder at the response while justifying or ignoring the talking points for why the attack occured. In rubble, bodies are uncovered and symbols of youth, innocence, childhood, potential, whatever resonates with the target audience's self-identity are placed, photographed, and disseminated to the world.

This is stage 1: generate propaganda to attract funds and sympathy. Its easier to say "never kill children" than it is to explain "sometimes children will die as a result of actions which are no fault of their own." Simpler message, less logical leaps required. To identify recruits, foreign jihadists then monitor self-reported exposure to their propaganda's earned media.

You see a girl in Columbine share this:


And you commend her for finally recognizing the hardship of life by those corrupt men in power who only seek to repress your simple and honest way of life. You either do this as someone from the target's region just out of range for travel, or from someone identifying themselves as being a subject of abuse. Sometimes, you do one to develop perceived social capital before introducing the target to the second account perported to be from the region; this motivates sympathizers and unaffiliated individuals to undertake the introductory step for you.

Next, the target is slowly encouraged and rewarded by their new online community, while being groomed to run away from home to somewhere which understands them and they are made to feel they can do more good than in their home environment. You slowly indoctrinate them, incrementally exposing them so that by the time you have them going from normal teenage conspicous consumption to visible and unavoidable rejection of that consumption, its too late for all but the professional de-programmer to intervene.

You probe the target for all they're worth during this process, and uncover two friends with similar humanitarian bent. The target makes the introduction for you and uses their social capital to radicalize by proxy. Then, you consolidate your gains before officials have raised sufficient red-flags and before former friends, family, and community are able to intervene and acquire professional de-programming: You pick a meaningless date at random and make it symbolic to your target by having them suggest coming to assist first-hand with humanitarian aid work over that date.

This is the key part, as the radicalized individual must genuinely believe they're special, have unique skills to offer, and have confidence in the justification for whatever you label your cause to madquarade its jihadist intent. With documents in order, you arrange coordination for objective attainment at the final, or intermediary, stage. You have the target traffic themselves or you have them create and obtain the weapons they intend to use.

By this time, the odds of mission incomplete are greatly reduced, as bureaucracies are reactive and rarely proactive in a sustained and efficient manner. How can they be? Sustained preparation has constant costs without immediate effect, whereas reactive responses cost 10x as much as the course of prevention.

So what options do western nations have while maintaining freedom of the press, freedom of associstion, and self-representative democracy? There are eyes on everything, yet an unfocused eye cannot always see the speck of dust across the planet; there are travel bans and known associations, yet you cannot ban someone who never enters your jurisdiction; there is repression and indiscriminate jailing of dissidents, yet those policies violate the innate right of a population to determine self-representation within the bounds of acceptable and stable political discourse.

So what are options are left when responding to terrorism? You either eliminate targets at an individual level, or you eliminate all targets at a community level. Opponents to this policy will call it monstrous and uncivilized, arguing that it kills children through no fault of their own. Those individuals do not care about lives, they care about a cause. For if they cared about something greater than their petty cause, they'd measure the number of children saved by deaths caused through no faults of their own.

Jihadists: Bomb Them, or Bomb Them All?

Mans posted:

Mans posted:

EXAKT Science posted:

Holy poo poo I just read all of that. MIGF is either a literal crazy person or a Markov generator.

pentyne posted:

Literally every MIGF post in the China/Japan politics thread is him/her completely contradicting people who actually live in the country on "the way things are" and being a borderline incomprehensible moron.

my dad posted:

Add the Eastern Europe thread to that list.

Hat Thoughts posted:

Why is this like a D&D thread now

The Mentalizer posted:

I don't know how you guys can read that thread. It was the only thread I've ever had to stop reading because it made me legit crazy, and if I kept up with it I would have had a meltdown. Day by Day was enough to cause psychological stress, then add in the McCoys, Ramirez and Joe loving Liccar (also the dude that beats his wife whose name I can't recall at the momentMike Lester, I knew it would come to me); god it was just loving terrible.

EXAKT Science posted:

Holy poo poo I just read all of that. MIGF is either a literal crazy person or a Markov generator.

AppleTalk posted:

The official numbers from Apple’s U2 promotion: the Songs of Innocence album was downloaded 26 million times, with 81 million customers experiencing songs.

Pinterest Mom posted:

"81 million customers experiencing songs."

you experience a U2 song like you experience an outbreak of chlamydia

Norv Turner posted:

I know this is a couple pages old, but drat Matt Ryan looks like a pretty successful businessman who is rapidly closing in on 40. He competes in triathlons in his spare time and he has come to the realization that he never really loved his wife. He goes on long runs early on Saturday mornings, and the last several weeks he's been arriving at the river trail a few minutes later than normal so that he spends part of his run staring at the rear end of the 20-something grad-student who he has started to chat up. Maybe this weekend he'll invite her to get some coffee after their run. He's fantasizes about the impending divorce. He doesn't hate his wife; he plans on making sure that she is comfortable and well taken care of, and he'd prefer to not have a contentious split since he knows that would be harder on his daughter. He tells himself that he wants to make sure he is still a part of his daughter's life, but he hasn't really ever been that involved with her and deep down he knows their relationship will devolve into the odd phone call and birthday card. If he could pinpoint where it all started to go wrong it would probably be after his wife had her third miscarriage. He had always wanted a big family, but at that point it was just too much for her and they stopped trying. He thinks that if they had more kids they could have made it work, but he's still not quite 40 and it isn't too late to start over. He wonders if the grad-student wants a big family...

Norv Turner posted:

You guys can't tell me that when you look into that picture of Matt Ryan you don't see a man who grew up in the shadow of an older brother. Jerry was the better athlete, Jerry had all the girlfriends, Jerry was the charmer who could roll around in pig poo poo, flash that million dollar smile, and come out smelling like roses. That’s not to say Matt wasn’t a decent athlete or didn’t have any girlfriends, but Jerry was the star player on the high school football team (although “star” is a relative term on a team that won 6 games in 2 years) and Jerry’s wife (then girlfriend) was the prom queen, and how exactly was Matt supposed to compete with that? Matt would say he had the last laugh now that Jerry is a balding, over-weight claims adjuster living in Overland Park Kansas, but Jerry and Cynthia found Jesus and have five kids and Matt is preparing to divorce his wife whom he hasn’t seen naked in over a year so it’s difficult to feel superior. Matt stopped being bitter at Jerry a long time ago anyways. Once they grew up and stopped competing with each other at everything Matt realized that his brother is just like everyone else, trying to do his best and get by day to day. Matt sometimes lies awake at night wondering if his financial success, which he considers moderate but which any sane person would consider substantial, has really bought him anything but heartburn and a failed marriage, but it’s the sort of crisis that doesn’t lead to any meaningful change and is forgotten by the time the alarm goes off and it’s time to hit the river trail. It’s a cold morning and Matt hopes the grad-student doesn’t decide to hit the snooze button.

Norv Turner posted:

You misunderstand. It’s not fan fiction. I’m just trying to describe what this picture looks like:

And what it looks like is a man who has been calling his lawyer’s office for the past week and a half and hanging up as soon as the receptionist answers because he feels guilty for beginning this process and blindsiding his wife with divorce papers. But it isn’t really blindsiding is it? Shannon has to know this is coming. She has to. She knows what has been going on for the past five years, or, more to the point, what has not been going on. Hell, she’s probably been seeing someone else behind his back. Who the gently caress knows what goes on all day when he’s at the office? But then again, this is a woman who spends forty-five minutes in the bathroom at a time and he can hear the sobbing through the door on occasion when she forgets to run the sink to drown it out. She still isn’t well and probably never will be, and if he were to serve her and she were to hurt herself he’s not sure he could forgive himself, not to mention the damage that would do to their daughter. So he continues to put it off, and most nights when he gets home from work he parks his Lexus in the driveway and rehearses what he’s going to say when he walks through the door. “Shannon, we both know this isn’t working. It’s not good for either of us to go on this way.” But what if she wants to work things out? He’s well past wanting to try and make it work, but what if she wants to? Could he actually say no to counseling? Wouldn’t that make him a bad person? And as soon as he’s ready to finally say it, he walks in the door and into the bedroom and the master bathroom door is closed and he can hear the sink running. So he changes into his running clothes and heads out to the river trail.

Norv Turner posted:

Sorry jefe, it’s June and the Halos are bottom feeders so I feel empty inside.

Matt looks like he feels pretty empty inside, sort of like a man who just had a two hour argument with his wife because she felt “Way too loving fat” to go to dinner at the club with the Applebaums. But he’s tired of making excuses for her, “Oh sorry, Shannon is a bit under the weather,” “Oh sorry, our baby sitter canceled at the last minute,” “Oh sorry, Shannon is feeling way too loving fat to come tonight.” So he begs and pleads and she slams the bathroom door so hard the windows shake. They ride to the club in total silence. He reaches for the radio, but she shifts in her seat and groans so he retracts his hand and curses to himself internally. At the club it’s all handshakes and smiles, though she does manage a subtle glare at him when he orders a double Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Janice Applebaum asks if she’d like to share a bottle of wine, and she says “No thank you, I think one of us should remain sober.” Other than that little dig things go smoothly enough, but before they’ve ordered dessert she excuses herself and doesn’t return for twenty or so minutes. She claims to have run into Emilia Parker in the ladies restroom and she just couldn’t get away any sooner, but he notices the hastily reapplied lipstick and he’s sure the Applebaum’s do as well. On the way home he catches a brief whiff of sour breath from her and he almost says something, but before he can she asks if he wouldn’t mind sleeping on the couch tonight because he always wakes her up when he leaves early to head out for a run. As they walk through the door she heads straight into the master bath and shuts the door.

Chichevache posted:

The original thread is missing, but if anyone finds it I would love the link. (kudos to fartknocker for saving what does remain)

pentyne posted:

None of this makes sense to me at all. Unless that's the real Norv Turner saying those things.

The Mentalizer posted:

I don't know how you guys can read that thread. It was the only thread I've ever had to stop reading because it made me legit crazy, and if I kept up with it I would have had a meltdown. Day by Day was enough to cause psychological stress, then add in the McCoys, Ramirez and Joe loving Liccar (also the dude that beats his wife whose name I can't recall at the momentMike Lester, I knew it would come to me); god it was just loving terrible.

Chichevache posted:

The original thread is missing, but if anyone finds it I would love the link. (kudos to fartknocker for saving what does remain)

XMNN posted:

njark posted:

isn't this the Maoist guy that was hanging out at occupy saying if he lived in mao's china he would have a job lmao

Fandyien posted:

im pretty sure the only job someone like that could've gotten in mao's china would be person who is surrepetitiously murdered and eaten in a rural famine zone

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Well there is precious little chance he'd be mistaken for an intellectual, come to that.

Chichevache posted:

The original thread is missing, but if anyone finds it I would love the link. (kudos to fartknocker for saving what does remain)

Chichevache posted:

The original thread is missing, but if anyone finds it I would love the link. (kudos to fartknocker for saving what does remain)

loquacius posted:

I've been saying for years that Matt Ryan looks like Mitt Romney and/or the whitest person I have ever seen; I think this post was what I was really trying to say all this time

generative grammer posted:

Socialism: democratic control of the means of production, eg. state/municipal/worker ownership of large industry, mining, large-scale farming, banking etc.; the most radical idiots may include all enterprise including barbershops (communism is the classless utopia that will come after years of socialism)

Not socialism: public health care/insurance, public pensions, public schools, poverty relief / safety nets, fire and police departments, EMT units, national service, the post office, state-managed infrastructure, large-scale public transit (eg. long distance trains), co-operatives, nonprofits and credit unions, state control of markets (cf. mercantilism, protectionism) etc.

All of those have either existed before socialism became a "thing" or have been historically promoted by non-socialist governments. For example, old-timey Christian conservatives supported public health care for the well-being of the national spirit; public schools were supported by Hegelian conservatives and liberals because of the enlightenment of the masses (and to get skilled, obedient workers for the factories). In our country, the Public Health Insurance Bill was passed by a centre-right government (a coalition of agrarians, "folk liberals" and big business conservatives).

When you mix some state ownership / nationalization of industry with a market economy you get social democracy (the Nordic countries pre-90s)

When you leave out state ownership you get various kinds of decidedly non-socialist ideologies that differ in terms of market intervention, land ownership, collective bargaining / labor rights, public services, civic society, civil rights and social cohesion like Social Liberalism (where municipal services don't have to be produced by the municipality itself but can be outsourced to private companies or NGOs; also support for local co-ops, small businesses and family farms), modern American liberalism, populism, fascism/nazism, Christian democracy / One Nation Conservatism / Social marketplace (class harmony and huge boner for national institutions), Liberal conservatism/conservative liberalism (what modern conservative parties adhere to after the aristocracy was replaced by business interests) and Classical Liberalism (aka laissez-faire, even though few liberal thinkers actually promoted unfettered free markets)

The sort of "left is all public and right is all private" doesn't reflect actual ideological history and nuance and is a libertarian invention, hth. The reason why fascists and nazis are considered far-right even though they support somewhat centrist/populist economic policies is because they are more about ultranationalism, militarism, traditionalism, social cohesion and "natural hierarchies" rather than corporatist economics mixed with welfare policies (for the right kind of people only, though); just like the classical rightist monarchists in the late 18th/early 19th century were against capitalism and free trade.

So left/socialist is more like "good of the working class", centrist is "good of the small community" or "good of the individual", and rightist is "good of the nation" or "good of the 'natural born' rulers / aristocracy"

GrrrlSweatshirt posted:

did u write this? did u tap ur 10 gay fingers on the keyboard until this was written and then post it in the penn jillette is fat thread, on gbs?