So interesting, Anonymous Coward is trying VERY HARD to vote. Anonymous Coward can be anybody. And, anybody can be Anonymous Coward. Serious problem if they count those votes. Massive FRAUD!!
Unfortunately I'm not the dictator of SoylentNews -- that's ~martyb. But if I was I'd put Sneaky Leaky Dianne Feinenstien on this ballot. And the Space Skull that, possibly, will destroy the Earth. They say it won't. But there's a lot they don't know. Kind of a toss up as to which is the scariest!!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @01:31AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday November 09 2018, @01:31AM (#759642)
Ah yes, nothing like gerrymandered voting districts to cheat your way to victory. Obviously you know this or you trumptards wouldn't still be angry after 2 years of "winning". Enjoy the last breaths of your racist culture.
I'm just happy to be on the right side of history.
God Emperor, sir, I'd like to kindly suggest Mr Kemp's strategy that "Anonymous Coward" can't vote if we strike him from the voter registration lists; perhaps replacing his name with "NPC". NPC is more memetically correct in concept than AC anyway.
"Mindlessly hyper-partisan political zombies" is what came to my mind. It's becoming difficult to believe that people across the political spectrum used to regularly discuss relevant problems topics online without large numbers launching into stupid name-calling.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday October 22 2018, @12:37AM
(5 children)
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the zombie-free conversations were anything recent; the last time I recall it being completely normal was sometime before 2001.
Godwin's Law was formulated in 1990. Prior to the existence of the Internet, BBS's got quite heated too, and prior to widespread computers you weren't supposed to talk about religion and politics in polite company.
In short, those good old days you're pining for never existed.
-- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
Can go all the way back to Socrates WRT people getting really butt hurt about sophistry and arguments in general. A more biblical scholar might find an anecdote pre-dating Socrates.
Its an "emergent phenomena" plenty of interesting wiki articles and google results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:56PM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:56PM (#758635)
Can go all the way back to Socrates WRT people getting really butt hurt about sophistry and arguments in general. A more biblical scholar might find an anecdote pre-dating Socrates.
Maybe, but since the Bible is nearly all fiction, those citations won't mean a thing. At least Socrates actually existed, something which cannot be said for most of the fictional characters in the Bible. And those that did exist are completely misrepresented by the document ("spin" old- and new-testament style)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:10PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday November 12 2018, @04:10PM (#760945)
Maybe, but since the Bible is nearly all fiction, those citations won't mean a thing.
Whoever wrote those texts certainly existed. And them including such things in their texts means at least that such things were not alien to those authors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:05PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:05PM (#760732)
Sure. God himself doesn't like arguments any more than people. From Numbers 16 [biblegateway.com]:
Korah [and others] became insolent and rose up against Moses. With them were 250 [..] appointed members of the council. [They asked Moses] “Why do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?” [..]The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” [..]fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men [..]The Lord said to Moses, “[..] remove the censers from the charred remains and scatter the coals some distance away, for the censers are holy [..]The next day the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. “You have killed the Lord’s people,” they said. [..]the Lord said to Moses, “Get away from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” [..]14,700 people died from the plague, in addition to those who had died because of Korah.
Almost 15,000 people were killed by God because one dared to question Moses' leadership.
Most horrifying thing this Halloween is the continued hegemonic encroachment of US holiday traditions into non-US parts of the world. We don't have Thanksgiving or Black Friday here (YET), but Halloween looks like it is in Australia to stay.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jjr on Monday October 22 2018, @12:19PM
(4 children)
I'm sorry, but you're doomed. Here in Spain we didn't have these too, but about 10 years Halloween (specifically people in costumes and kids performing the trick or treat) started substituting the All Saints celebration and while we have both, Halloween is gaining terrain each year. And for Black Friday, since the online shopping explosion like 5 or 6 years ago, all big stores promote a Black Friday nowadays. At least Thanksgiving has no place here. I'ts like the Borg, resistance is futile.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM (#757876)
A little-known fact about Thanksgiving is that it celebrates the result of abandoning communism. Yep. Marx wasn't the first to come up with that bad idea.
Initially, the settlers agreed to share nearly everything. They would work the fields together. They would harvest together. They would equally share the results. Even the clothes washing was a shared duty.
Men objected to women caring for other men. Women claimed they were too frail for the farming work. The farming barely happened, leaving people near starvation. Many died.
After a couple years of this, they were desperate. The governor abandoned the original plan. He allocated individual plots of land to all the families. This changed everything. Women worked, and they brought along their kids to work. The resulting harvest was plentiful.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 22 2018, @02:41PM
(4 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday October 22 2018, @02:41PM (#751981)
civilization has a name for it. I can't remember if it's "cultural win" or something like this. it's basically like the roman empire helped spread christianity, and christianity survives even though the roman empire went to hell. we will still be wearing blue jeans when the sun turns supernova.
I really liked putting a town in the one available square after tricking my enemies with open borders and then throwing a couple of saved up great artists into it and flipping the surrounding towns.
It ebbs and flows even at the demonic source, USA. Keep a close eye on post-thanksgiving opening times. Used to be Sears, Boston Store, Radio Shack, Toys R Us, Comp USA, GatewayPC, Gander Mountain, they'd all open at like 4pm on Thanksgiving, but now they're either out of business or opening Friday morning, sometimes even at normal time. There's no real point in opening a legacy brick and mortar store if you're not gonna have customers because people just order from Amazon online anyway. They also put a lot of PR effort into showing enormous crowds at opening, but two hours later its a ghost town as you'd expect.
Its been many years since a store opened on thanksgiving evening or at midnight; at least WRT stores my wife actually shops at with her sister. In fact even weird early morning stuff like 2am or 4am is pretty much gone. Sunrise on Friday is the "new" 3pm on Thursday.
Something oft overlooked WRT shopping, especially post-thanksgiving christmas black friday shopping, is its often a very feminine social activity (chix like to shop, news at 11!). Honestly my wife and her sister enjoyed going out at night as a crazy adventure to drink coffee and catch up on their girlie gossip under the clandestine cover of "christmas shopping". Sure technically they're doing some gross hypercapitalist BS but in practice they're doing feminine gossip while sipping coffee and very lightly exercising walking around, and if they buy grannie some collectible figurine or whatever BS because they're together when they see it, eh, its not the worst thing in the world. Retail brick and mortar is collapsing such that fewer people every year have to serve them, and its not really all that much worse than being a cop or fireman or doctor or sysadmin over the holidays anyway, so I can't even feel all that bad for the retail service workers, heck its part of the job they knowingly signed up for..
If the point of black friday is sipping coffee while gossiping like fiends at midnight in a hunting pack of your normally distant female relations, good luck shutting that stuff down with a PR campaign of "marx was right capitalism sux retail workers of the world unite". Its like trying to halt the entire marriage industry because of blood diamond PR campaigns, I'm sure it feels really good and righteous while also being completely and utterly ineffective because its missing the point of why people actually participate, which usually has nothing to do with progressive virtue signalling.
In summary why people complain about shoppers is mostly a failed attack against a straw dog that doesn't exist anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @08:00PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday October 29 2018, @08:00PM (#755314)
Most horrifying thing this Halloween is the continued hegemonic encroachment of US holiday traditions into non-US parts of the world.
Err, hate to tell you this, but this 'holiday tradition' is mostly Scottish and to a lesser extent Irish in origin, a bastardised and sanctified vestige of the old Celtic Samhain festival, and I know there are a number of Scots and those of Scottish ancestry in Australia (got relatives down there), ditto wrt the Irish, so the tradition shouldn't be that much of a stranger to your shores.
Yes, the 'Scottish Holiday', as one late Victorian USian writer WASPishly called it, has been well and truly Borg'd. commercialised and 'made theirs' by the USians then re-exported globally, even back to the source (e.g. I see lots of carved pumpkin lanterns here now instead of the neep lanterns of my youth, I suppose it makes sense as they're a hell of a lot easier to carve), but that's the USians for you, Cultural Magpies..brash noisy Cultural Magpies...
As an asides, some of the 'Witch' costumes I've seen on sale are neither part of the Scottish or American traditions, but bear a hell of a lot of similarity to the costumes worn by some of the witches in various Animes, albeit usually cheaply faux-Gothed up a bit versions, so I'm assuming a Chinese/Eastern influence is now working its way in to the mix.
Besides, what are you complaining about? you Aussies should be used to the USian hegemony by now as they've pwned you lot since Gough Whitlam got 'Royally backstabbed' at the behest of the USian TLAs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @01:01AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday October 30 2018, @01:01AM (#755450)
Interestingly, of all the traditional 'feast' days, Halloween is my favourite. It's one of the only day of the year where the neighbours actually talk to each other. Until about 5 years ago, I knew the people on either side, and a few other random people. But, since the recent growth in popularity of 'trick or treating' in Australia, I've met pretty much half the street and people from the surrounding area.
Contrast that with Christmas and Easter, where families get together, but in general don't really socialise with anyone else. Easter has faded quite a bit where most people wouldn't even know anything was going on if it wasn't for the 4 day long weekend. But Christmas day is still like a ghost town where all the shops are closed and tumble weeds are blowing down the street. There's a bit of life in the middle of the city where people are generally ignoring it, but these are no longer big holidays with deep cultural meaning beyond a few days off work for anyone but devout religious folk.
A good thing about the way Halloween has developed here is that since it is summer time, the trick or treat hours are light, and kids only 'trick or treat' houses that are decorated. So, you don't have to turn the lights off and hide in the back room pretending you're not home if you don't have any candy.
Conceived in the secret black tarpits in Redmond. It ooozed its way into Linux. Then it replicated quietly. Secretly. Relentlessly. It infected all the major distributions. It's coming for us all! It cannot even be stopped by our wonderful government that fixes all other problems in our lives.
-- The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:14PM
(6 children)
Or at least that's what the retailers make me think. Halloween decorations are hitting sale prices already and Christmas Trees have been in the retail shops for a week or more already.
-- Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 23 2018, @06:41AM
(3 children)
Because of me. Under the Trump administration, folks are saying "Merry Christmas" again when they go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. They’ve been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You’re going to be saying "Merry Christmas" again, folks.
Don't worry, I'm sure a continuing and complete lack of any sort of war on Christmas won't stand in the way of your favorite holiday tradition: complaining about a war on Christmas.
Christmas is back, bigger and better than ever before. We’re bringing Christmas back. People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again.
I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. We're winning. But unfortunately the fight is not over. Starbucks, they call it the Holiday Cup. Not the Merry Christmas Cup. By the way, I don't drink coffee, I've never had coffee in my entire life. So they say, "oh, free Holiday Cup for your Holiday Drink." Not the Christmas Drink. It's Christmas, you're drinking, they don't say Christmas Drink. Because they're very Politically Correct. With Muslim, they're all in. With the Ramadan Cup. The very special brown cup for the brown people in Middle East. They do the Date Frappuccino. The date juice infusion and the date drizzle. Eid al-Fitr, so many Muslims making pigs of themselves at Starbucks. Totally pigging out, they literally turn into pigs. Disgusting!
So, America. You want your Holiday Drink in your Holiday Cup. You take out your iPhone, you do the App, right? To order that drink. Or, maybe some food, you know? But, App is "crashing" very badly. Otherwise known as, Hacked. And nobody knows who that Christmas Hacker is. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? You don’t know who broke into Starbucks. Possibly a VERY LOYAL American. Also known as Christian. I'll tell you, if that's what it turns out to be -- TOTAL AND COMPLETE PARDON. 100%. For the Hacking and for the everything else. Like I gave to Sheriff Joe. Like I'm going to give to so many of our fantastic Florida Felons. To the ones that will vote for me in 2020. All agree that I have complete power to pardon. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Yeah, you'd think there would be a stopping point somewhere but apparently there isn't. At my local Walmart I saw a full display of Christmas trees in the lawn+garden department on the 2nd week of October, and an inflatable one put up outside on the day before Halloween. I bet a century from now the "holiday season" will officially begin in July or some such shit.
The biggest monster is the rampant cynical commercial exploitation of a date in the Church of Rome's liturgical calender for the purpose of reverencing the Saints and praying for the souls of the recently deceased. It ritualises and make begging with menaces culturally acceptable.
Bah. Humbug.
Get off my lawn.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 23 2018, @06:40PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @05:05PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday October 29 2018, @05:05PM (#755198)
Reverencingism is a well known subject at least since 2018! A web search engine will find at least 100 results (this one included), if you search at least 100 times!
> Funny that. I thought it was the Welfare State and the National Health service. "Capitalism" is just a label.
Both the Welfare state and the NHS exist because they can leech off the capitalist economy in a parasitical fashion. On their own they are unsustainable, so arguably, capitalism did bring people out of poverty, even if it was done by siphoning a portion of that generated income out of the system and into welfare projects.
Best images.google.com search so far as been "sexy handmaidens tale" so I voted for that. The one thats little more than a bikini, cape, and plain white bonnet looks pretty good. I feel like a very elite, politically woke, and smart media consumer after viewing that, although maybe its just my CPU overheating.
There's a marketing problem with Halloween where my kids don't participate because they're way too grown up for "cute little mermaid costume" designed for toddlers shorter than 2 feet tall, but mom and dad have too much control to permit the purchase of "slutty little mermaid costume" designed to use less than 3 square inches of cloth. So costume mfgrs are kinda leaving money on the table... In practice, costumes seem to sell to two age groups, toddlers begging for candy with their parents, or college girls underage drinking at keggers until the police shut the party down, and not much else, so I'm not sure what my kids would do with a costume other than help me hand out candy, which might not be a bad idea anyway.
Something that bugs me as a guy who makes stuff is there isn't much creativity in Halloween anymore. When I was a kid I wore a cardboard box and crayoned the hell out of it to decorate it robot style, kind of a square R2D2 theme, didn't look half bad and it kept me busy for a couple hours. Now a days lazy as hell people buy "sexy little mermaid costume" in a plastic bag for like $50 and its merely a bi-color bikini with two sea shells hot glued on the man magnets, which is kinda lame no matter how good it looks.
Personally I think the vote should have included the now stereotypical NPC meme mask. Or what would be funny is "pick VLM's Halloween costume" as a poll. Should I wear the "Make Zimbabwe Rhodesia again" tee shirt like its just any other day, or my "Orange man bad" tee shirt with laser printed NPC meme mask, or should I go as something very abstract like 6502 assembly language or should I take a big ass amazon shipping box and some crayons and color like its 1970s again and go dressed as an Altair 8800 ... Given the climate in my northern recreational state its always cold so I can't do anything incompatible with a winter coat...
I'm tempted to turn a giant cardboard shipping box and some crayons into a costume of a cassette tape and wear a sign reading something like "If you don't know what this costume is, then fuck you no candy"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 29 2018, @02:44PM
(1 child)
Personally I think the vote should have included the now stereotypical NPC meme mask.
I would have to check the dates, but I think I made the poll before that meme blew up. The meme lifespan is very compact these days. You blink, you might miss it.
Their pervasive control [freworld.info] is so insidious that they actually have many people believing that "bipartisan" (R and D taking turns sticking it to you and high-fiving each other) and "nonpartisan" (R and D not able to stick it to you) are synonyms.
Er, I've read it several times but what does it mean? A 'monster' what? Halloween was 2 weeks ago and lasted for 1 evening - did something happen on that specific evening?
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday November 15 2018, @05:57PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 20 2018, @02:30AM (2 children)
What Kanye really showed Trump in the white house [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:14AM (1 child)
Your grandchildren were playing with a video application? I guess they did pretty well, for five and six years old.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:48AM
Nah this channel is actually pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLANUP4L1yA [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAxGRg2kU_w [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @06:21PM (14 children)
...o the beginning and try again." and it didn't count my vote.
This halloween and last halloween... Is this maybe a cookie problem? JavaScript?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday October 20 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
Your computer is haunted, please call Mamhoud at official MS help to helps you removal your Windows virus.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Touché) by requerdanos on Sunday October 21 2018, @04:13AM
Or just wait. He'll probably call you.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @01:34PM
It means that the biggest monster is the Cookie Monster.
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday October 21 2018, @02:53PM (10 children)
So interesting, Anonymous Coward is trying VERY HARD to vote. Anonymous Coward can be anybody. And, anybody can be Anonymous Coward. Serious problem if they count those votes. Massive FRAUD!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday October 22 2018, @05:50PM (6 children)
May I suggest that you set the unreliable voting results aside, to protect democracy, and specify the election results yourself.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 23 2018, @12:34AM (2 children)
Unfortunately I'm not the dictator of SoylentNews -- that's ~martyb. But if I was I'd put Sneaky Leaky Dianne Feinenstien on this ballot. And the Space Skull that, possibly, will destroy the Earth. They say it won't. But there's a lot they don't know. Kind of a toss up as to which is the scariest!!!
(Score: 3, Funny) by jasassin on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:15AM
I nominate Nancy Pelosi (especially with no make-up).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday October 31 2018, @10:38PM
I missed that the first time.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 28 2018, @09:46PM (2 children)
Now, I'm here to tell you, the poll let me vote twice! I voted against the orange guy, btw. Twice! They're right!!!!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:39PM (1 child)
Reflecting reality, "orange man bad" is still not tired of winning with 44 votes in the lead.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @01:31AM
Ah yes, nothing like gerrymandered voting districts to cheat your way to victory. Obviously you know this or you trumptards wouldn't still be angry after 2 years of "winning". Enjoy the last breaths of your racist culture.
I'm just happy to be on the right side of history.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:43PM
God Emperor, sir, I'd like to kindly suggest Mr Kemp's strategy that "Anonymous Coward" can't vote if we strike him from the voter registration lists; perhaps replacing his name with "NPC". NPC is more memetically correct in concept than AC anyway.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:45PM (1 child)
MHGA Make Halloween Great Again
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:38PM
Make American Seem Huge Under Great And Nebulous Aims.
MASHUGANA.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday October 22 2018, @12:30AM (6 children)
"Mindlessly hyper-partisan political zombies" is what came to my mind. It's becoming difficult to believe that people across the political spectrum used to regularly discuss relevant problems topics online without large numbers launching into stupid name-calling.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday October 22 2018, @12:37AM (5 children)
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the zombie-free conversations were anything recent; the last time I recall it being completely normal was sometime before 2001.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 23 2018, @12:42AM (4 children)
Godwin's Law was formulated in 1990. Prior to the existence of the Internet, BBS's got quite heated too, and prior to widespread computers you weren't supposed to talk about religion and politics in polite company.
In short, those good old days you're pining for never existed.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @01:49PM (3 children)
Can go all the way back to Socrates WRT people getting really butt hurt about sophistry and arguments in general. A more biblical scholar might find an anecdote pre-dating Socrates.
Its an "emergent phenomena" plenty of interesting wiki articles and google results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:56PM (1 child)
Can go all the way back to Socrates WRT people getting really butt hurt about sophistry and arguments in general. A more biblical scholar might find an anecdote pre-dating Socrates.
Maybe, but since the Bible is nearly all fiction, those citations won't mean a thing. At least Socrates actually existed, something which cannot be said for most of the fictional characters in the Bible. And those that did exist are completely misrepresented by the document ("spin" old- and new-testament style)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:10PM
Whoever wrote those texts certainly existed. And them including such things in their texts means at least that such things were not alien to those authors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:05PM
Sure. God himself doesn't like arguments any more than people. From Numbers 16 [biblegateway.com]:
Almost 15,000 people were killed by God because one dared to question Moses' leadership.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Monday October 22 2018, @05:04AM (15 children)
Most horrifying thing this Halloween is the continued hegemonic encroachment of US holiday traditions into non-US parts of the world. We don't have Thanksgiving or Black Friday here (YET), but Halloween looks like it is in Australia to stay.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jjr on Monday October 22 2018, @12:19PM (4 children)
I'm sorry, but you're doomed. Here in Spain we didn't have these too, but about 10 years Halloween (specifically people in costumes and kids performing the trick or treat) started substituting the All Saints celebration and while we have both, Halloween is gaining terrain each year. And for Black Friday, since the online shopping explosion like 5 or 6 years ago, all big stores promote a Black Friday nowadays. At least Thanksgiving has no place here.
I'ts like the Borg, resistance is futile.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Monday October 22 2018, @07:57PM (3 children)
IT would be pretty fucked up if we got the shithole countries like Australia and Spain to celebrate God's American Thanksgiving ha ha ha.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by jjr on Tuesday October 23 2018, @12:04PM
In the world we live nowadays.... never say never ;) but yeah, preeeetty weird.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
A little-known fact about Thanksgiving is that it celebrates the result of abandoning communism. Yep. Marx wasn't the first to come up with that bad idea.
Initially, the settlers agreed to share nearly everything. They would work the fields together. They would harvest together. They would equally share the results. Even the clothes washing was a shared duty.
Men objected to women caring for other men. Women claimed they were too frail for the farming work. The farming barely happened, leaving people near starvation. Many died.
After a couple years of this, they were desperate. The governor abandoned the original plan. He allocated individual plots of land to all the families. This changed everything. Women worked, and they brought along their kids to work. The resulting harvest was plentiful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @07:42PM
Actually, Abe Lincoln basically just pulled the whole thing out of his ass. [abrahamlincolnonline.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 22 2018, @02:41PM (4 children)
civilization has a name for it. I can't remember if it's "cultural win" or something like this.
it's basically like the roman empire helped spread christianity, and christianity survives even though the roman empire went to hell.
we will still be wearing blue jeans when the sun turns supernova.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)
It's called a "Cultural Victory" in the Civilization series. Though, that wasn't an option until Civ III.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:36PM
I really liked putting a town in the one available square after tricking my enemies with open borders and then throwing a couple of saved up great artists into it and flipping the surrounding towns.
Blue Jean and Rock & Roll
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday October 28 2018, @04:34PM
The unofficial uniform of the Human Race. What will the aliens make of us?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:23PM
The sun is too small to turn supernova.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:09PM (2 children)
It ebbs and flows even at the demonic source, USA. Keep a close eye on post-thanksgiving opening times. Used to be Sears, Boston Store, Radio Shack, Toys R Us, Comp USA, GatewayPC, Gander Mountain, they'd all open at like 4pm on Thanksgiving, but now they're either out of business or opening Friday morning, sometimes even at normal time. There's no real point in opening a legacy brick and mortar store if you're not gonna have customers because people just order from Amazon online anyway. They also put a lot of PR effort into showing enormous crowds at opening, but two hours later its a ghost town as you'd expect.
Its been many years since a store opened on thanksgiving evening or at midnight; at least WRT stores my wife actually shops at with her sister. In fact even weird early morning stuff like 2am or 4am is pretty much gone. Sunrise on Friday is the "new" 3pm on Thursday.
Something oft overlooked WRT shopping, especially post-thanksgiving christmas black friday shopping, is its often a very feminine social activity (chix like to shop, news at 11!). Honestly my wife and her sister enjoyed going out at night as a crazy adventure to drink coffee and catch up on their girlie gossip under the clandestine cover of "christmas shopping". Sure technically they're doing some gross hypercapitalist BS but in practice they're doing feminine gossip while sipping coffee and very lightly exercising walking around, and if they buy grannie some collectible figurine or whatever BS because they're together when they see it, eh, its not the worst thing in the world. Retail brick and mortar is collapsing such that fewer people every year have to serve them, and its not really all that much worse than being a cop or fireman or doctor or sysadmin over the holidays anyway, so I can't even feel all that bad for the retail service workers, heck its part of the job they knowingly signed up for..
If the point of black friday is sipping coffee while gossiping like fiends at midnight in a hunting pack of your normally distant female relations, good luck shutting that stuff down with a PR campaign of "marx was right capitalism sux retail workers of the world unite". Its like trying to halt the entire marriage industry because of blood diamond PR campaigns, I'm sure it feels really good and righteous while also being completely and utterly ineffective because its missing the point of why people actually participate, which usually has nothing to do with progressive virtue signalling.
In summary why people complain about shoppers is mostly a failed attack against a straw dog that doesn't exist anyway.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:26PM (1 child)
I modded you up for writing well.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 30 2018, @08:08PM
Not quite. Try again?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @08:00PM
Err, hate to tell you this, but this 'holiday tradition' is mostly Scottish and to a lesser extent Irish in origin, a bastardised and sanctified vestige of the old Celtic Samhain festival, and I know there are a number of Scots and those of Scottish ancestry in Australia (got relatives down there), ditto wrt the Irish, so the tradition shouldn't be that much of a stranger to your shores.
Yes, the 'Scottish Holiday', as one late Victorian USian writer WASPishly called it, has been well and truly Borg'd. commercialised and 'made theirs' by the USians then re-exported globally, even back to the source (e.g. I see lots of carved pumpkin lanterns here now instead of the neep lanterns of my youth, I suppose it makes sense as they're a hell of a lot easier to carve), but that's the USians for you, Cultural Magpies..brash noisy Cultural Magpies...
As an asides, some of the 'Witch' costumes I've seen on sale are neither part of the Scottish or American traditions, but bear a hell of a lot of similarity to the costumes worn by some of the witches in various Animes, albeit usually cheaply faux-Gothed up a bit versions, so I'm assuming a Chinese/Eastern influence is now working its way in to the mix.
Besides, what are you complaining about? you Aussies should be used to the USian hegemony by now as they've pwned you lot since Gough Whitlam got 'Royally backstabbed' at the behest of the USian TLAs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @01:01AM
Interestingly, of all the traditional 'feast' days, Halloween is my favourite. It's one of the only day of the year where the neighbours actually talk to each other. Until about 5 years ago, I knew the people on either side, and a few other random people. But, since the recent growth in popularity of 'trick or treating' in Australia, I've met pretty much half the street and people from the surrounding area.
Contrast that with Christmas and Easter, where families get together, but in general don't really socialise with anyone else. Easter has faded quite a bit where most people wouldn't even know anything was going on if it wasn't for the 4 day long weekend. But Christmas day is still like a ghost town where all the shops are closed and tumble weeds are blowing down the street. There's a bit of life in the middle of the city where people are generally ignoring it, but these are no longer big holidays with deep cultural meaning beyond a few days off work for anyone but devout religious folk.
A good thing about the way Halloween has developed here is that since it is summer time, the trick or treat hours are light, and kids only 'trick or treat' houses that are decorated. So, you don't have to turn the lights off and hide in the back room pretending you're not home if you don't have any candy.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday October 22 2018, @05:47PM (7 children)
Conceived in the secret black tarpits in Redmond. It ooozed its way into Linux. Then it replicated quietly. Secretly. Relentlessly. It infected all the major distributions. It's coming for us all! It cannot even be stopped by our wonderful government that fixes all other problems in our lives.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:14PM (6 children)
Red Hat's headquarters are in Raleigh, North Carolina. Microsoft is the one in Redmond.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Saturday October 27 2018, @03:15AM
That is correct. Microsoft is who I intended to invoke by mentioning Redmond.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Webweasel on Saturday October 27 2018, @06:04PM (4 children)
Woosh!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 4, Funny) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:07AM (3 children)
Standalone whoosh has been deprecated.
You need to replace it with whooshd.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday November 03 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
As long as wooshd has a minimum of 40 dependencies.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:26PM
I'm pretty sure it has 42.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:04PM
It can woosh several people asynchronously.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 22 2018, @06:34PM (5 children)
Or at least that's what the retailers make me think. Halloween decorations are hitting sale prices already and Christmas Trees have been in the retail shops for a week or more already.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 23 2018, @06:41AM (3 children)
Because of me. Under the Trump administration, folks are saying "Merry Christmas" again when they go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. They’ve been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You’re going to be saying "Merry Christmas" again, folks.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Friday November 02 2018, @01:36AM
s/Merry Christmas/Merry fucking Christmas, asshole/
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @07:45PM (1 child)
Don't worry, I'm sure a continuing and complete lack of any sort of war on Christmas won't stand in the way of your favorite holiday tradition: complaining about a war on Christmas.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday November 09 2018, @10:30PM
Christmas is back, bigger and better than ever before. We’re bringing Christmas back. People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again.
I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. We're winning. But unfortunately the fight is not over. Starbucks, they call it the Holiday Cup. Not the Merry Christmas Cup. By the way, I don't drink coffee, I've never had coffee in my entire life. So they say, "oh, free Holiday Cup for your Holiday Drink." Not the Christmas Drink. It's Christmas, you're drinking, they don't say Christmas Drink. Because they're very Politically Correct. With Muslim, they're all in. With the Ramadan Cup. The very special brown cup for the brown people in Middle East. They do the Date Frappuccino. The date juice infusion and the date drizzle. Eid al-Fitr, so many Muslims making pigs of themselves at Starbucks. Totally pigging out, they literally turn into pigs. Disgusting!
So, America. You want your Holiday Drink in your Holiday Cup. You take out your iPhone, you do the App, right? To order that drink. Or, maybe some food, you know? But, App is "crashing" very badly. Otherwise known as, Hacked. And nobody knows who that Christmas Hacker is. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? You don’t know who broke into Starbucks. Possibly a VERY LOYAL American. Also known as Christian. I'll tell you, if that's what it turns out to be -- TOTAL AND COMPLETE PARDON. 100%. For the Hacking and for the everything else. Like I gave to Sheriff Joe. Like I'm going to give to so many of our fantastic Florida Felons. To the ones that will vote for me in 2020. All agree that I have complete power to pardon. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Monday November 05 2018, @07:40PM
Yeah, you'd think there would be a stopping point somewhere but apparently there isn't.
At my local Walmart I saw a full display of Christmas trees in the lawn+garden department on the 2nd week of October, and an inflatable one put up outside on the day before Halloween.
I bet a century from now the "holiday season" will officially begin in July or some such shit.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday October 23 2018, @01:30PM (5 children)
The biggest monster is the rampant cynical commercial exploitation of a date in the Church of Rome's liturgical calender for the purpose of reverencing the Saints and praying for the souls of the recently deceased. It ritualises and make begging with menaces culturally acceptable.
Bah. Humbug.
Get off my lawn.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 23 2018, @06:40PM
Sir, may I have a cändy?
10 seconds later...
GIVE ME ALL YOUR FUCKING
CÄNDYMONEY.[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:10PM (3 children)
The verb form of "reverence" is "revere." I really hope some descriptivist idiots haven't started "reverencing" being an actual thing.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @05:05PM
Reverencingism is a well known subject at least since 2018! A web search engine will find at least 100 results (this one included), if you search at least 100 times!
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
Revere is when you are sincere. Reverencing is when you are faking it. (In English English).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2, Funny) by redneckmother on Friday November 02 2018, @01:38AM
I thought Revere referred to counting lamps...
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday October 27 2018, @03:57PM (3 children)
The idea that has brought more people out of poverty that anything else in human history!
Damned lefties: however beautiful your ideals, real people are selfish. Capitalism leverages selfishness to make people productive.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Sunday October 28 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
Funny that. I thought it was the Welfare State and the National Health service. "Capitalism" is just a label.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:45PM
> Funny that. I thought it was the Welfare State and the National Health service. "Capitalism" is just a label.
Both the Welfare state and the NHS exist because they can leech off the capitalist economy in a parasitical fashion. On their own they are unsustainable, so arguably, capitalism did bring people out of poverty, even if it was done by siphoning a portion of that generated income out of the system and into welfare projects.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:33PM
And like most liberators, it sticks around too long and becomes just the new warlord.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:33PM (2 children)
Best images.google.com search so far as been "sexy handmaidens tale" so I voted for that. The one thats little more than a bikini, cape, and plain white bonnet looks pretty good. I feel like a very elite, politically woke, and smart media consumer after viewing that, although maybe its just my CPU overheating.
There's a marketing problem with Halloween where my kids don't participate because they're way too grown up for "cute little mermaid costume" designed for toddlers shorter than 2 feet tall, but mom and dad have too much control to permit the purchase of "slutty little mermaid costume" designed to use less than 3 square inches of cloth. So costume mfgrs are kinda leaving money on the table... In practice, costumes seem to sell to two age groups, toddlers begging for candy with their parents, or college girls underage drinking at keggers until the police shut the party down, and not much else, so I'm not sure what my kids would do with a costume other than help me hand out candy, which might not be a bad idea anyway.
Something that bugs me as a guy who makes stuff is there isn't much creativity in Halloween anymore. When I was a kid I wore a cardboard box and crayoned the hell out of it to decorate it robot style, kind of a square R2D2 theme, didn't look half bad and it kept me busy for a couple hours. Now a days lazy as hell people buy "sexy little mermaid costume" in a plastic bag for like $50 and its merely a bi-color bikini with two sea shells hot glued on the man magnets, which is kinda lame no matter how good it looks.
Personally I think the vote should have included the now stereotypical NPC meme mask. Or what would be funny is "pick VLM's Halloween costume" as a poll. Should I wear the "Make Zimbabwe Rhodesia again" tee shirt like its just any other day, or my "Orange man bad" tee shirt with laser printed NPC meme mask, or should I go as something very abstract like 6502 assembly language or should I take a big ass amazon shipping box and some crayons and color like its 1970s again and go dressed as an Altair 8800 ... Given the climate in my northern recreational state its always cold so I can't do anything incompatible with a winter coat...
I'm tempted to turn a giant cardboard shipping box and some crayons into a costume of a cassette tape and wear a sign reading something like "If you don't know what this costume is, then fuck you no candy"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 29 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)
Here's the context. [soylentnews.org]
I would have to check the dates, but I think I made the poll before that meme blew up. The meme lifespan is very compact these days. You blink, you might miss it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:57PM
True, todays memes seem to be Bolsonaro related, but by the end of the week he will be forgotten down to the level of DU30.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Monday October 29 2018, @10:46PM (1 child)
The "Democrats" and the "Republicans"
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Thursday November 01 2018, @05:00PM
Good observation.
Their pervasive control [freworld.info] is so insidious that they actually have many people believing that "bipartisan" (R and D taking turns sticking it to you and high-fiving each other) and "nonpartisan" (R and D not able to stick it to you) are synonyms.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday November 15 2018, @08:26AM
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday November 15 2018, @05:57PM
The biggest monster is the gruesome, neverchanging, zombie poll. Where all can discuss monsters through thanksgiving, crapmas, and newyears.