European. Liberal. Insufferable green. History graduate. I never downvote opinions and I do not engage with people who downvote mine. Comments with vulgarity, or snark, or other low-effort content, will also be ignored.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Leonardo DiCaprio. I get huge, cringy ‘imposter syndrome’ vibes from him

    Exact opposite feelings here, and I generally have a hard time suspending disbelief. I remember seeing The Basketball Diaries (this was before Titanic) and being blown away by his acting. I’d say this is a rare example of an actor being held back by good looks. A lot of folks have just not wanted to admit that this particular heartthrob has genuine talent. To contrast with, for example, Keanu, or Clooney.






  • I’ll try a different tack. Because after all, we seem to want the same result.

    In my analysis (which, as someone who follows this pretty closely, I maintain is much better supported by the evidence than yours), I have to suck it up and talk to people I don’t like and maybe even accept policies I don’t like.

    In yours, you get to feel great about being in the right, with no need to question any of your prejudices much less make any compromises.

    If you were a neutral observer watching this conversation, who would you believe?


  • Your theory is just a theory, and a weak one. The evidence suggests that the election was mainly just a backlash against inflation and immigration, as has happened across the world to parties of all stripes. Not much could have been done to avert the outcome. But it is also clear that a bunch of voters were pissed off by what they perceived as Democrat excesses on cultural issues, and apparently many of those people were in swing states.

    More generally: “just turn out the base” is usually a losing strategy in democratic politics. For a simple reason: the cost of turning out your own base is that you will fire up the opposing base and turn them out too. To be sure of winning an election in democracy, you will need to get your hands dirty and persuade people. In practice that will mean tacking towards the center and making compromises.


  • Terrible, no-good take. It’s because of this attitude, totally ungrounded in the political science, that outside the USA we now have to put up with your bad decisions, once again.

    Sorry to be so crude but this really p*sses me off. Your side is now losing in almost every single demographic group, the trend is as clear as day. If it were to follow your terrible advice (which fortunately it won’t) the Democrats would be permanently out of power and the USA would become a de-facto one-party state. You can’t pretend that these people don’t exist or that they’re subhuman. You have to sully your virtue and talk to them and find some compromises. If not for yourself then for the sake of the rest of us.


  • Pet peeve. Whatever three-quarters of the world seems to believe, any sewerage system can handle TP. That is: real TP has almost zero fiber integrity, it literally turns to goop on contact with water. Goop that has no more structural consistency than an average pile of sh*t. If still in any doubt then just make sure to flush it in single sheets, each one will be a pea-sized ball of goop. This misunderstanding seems to be purely cultural. I’ve been to a ton of developing countries, all with the usual dodgy sewerage systems and narrow-bore pipes. Yet only some of them, notably Latin America, have the disgusting cultural norm of TP bins. The rest understand that there is a difference between TP and paper towels designed for the kitchen and your face. TP is always flushable, by design.