Superabound posted:

you are one of the absolute least moronic peoples that i know. on the internet

thank you.

getfiscal posted:

i was thinking about whether like liberal policy types are dumb or smart. my conclusion is that they are smart but morons. this is possible in my mind because a moron is someone who lacks basic self-awareness and critical skills. like they are good at learning things that are taught to them but they can't come to conclusions that aren't spoon-fed to them by their environments. they can be smart insofar as they master the material, are articulate about their borrowed opinions, plan for contingencies and so on. they might have a good feel for political currents. but their worldview is schematic and they can't question parts of it that don't seem consistent, so they never really learn anything that could actually change society, and they see people who do criticize society as basically being jaded idiots who won't play along. anyway i think that's the personality that populates most liberal institutions.

imo it's a lot more conscious than that, at least at the start, most of them have encountered many taboo opinions during their education, but the prerequisite for their fame or financial success is to train themselves to wince and shrink from ideas that would place them outside the acceptable "disruptive", "innovative" realm at the border of the mainstream, to react with vocal revulsion each time they encounter them to preserve their own image, and there are a lot of people who will never be successful or famous but want to make sure, just in case. crow had some things to say about how NGO troops are probably well aware of anti-colonial literature and that seems valid to me.

tpaine posted:

a good 20% of the people i see every day are people who shouldn't even be alive, who would stare at you dead-eyed if you tried to explain the inner workings of a fucking helium balloon, let alone something so complex as political theory, and who couldn't even take care of themselves in an equitable society. another 20% are vicious and selfish criminals who are a little more intelligent than the previous group but are still too stupid to understand how harmful their naked self-interest is. the third fifth are the middle-aged and older, who are already set in their ways and think their longevity makes them survivors and purveyors of the obvious truth and who will never listen to anyone about anything, but they'll be dead sooner or later which is their only redeeming factor. the next 20% is people of the sort who post here, who are superficially intelligent and have been given the chance to really open their eyes and see the world for what it is, but they're ruined by one soupy idiotic theory or another (religion is a big one) and they'll eventually give up, not that they ever actually DID anything anyway. The last 20% of humanity is made up of various kinds of clowny ponce, and there are too many subsets to go into right now but they are each jack of them worthless in startlingly unique ways, it's a really a panoply of failure. i wish there was an alien species who could stumble upon our little remains sometime in the near future because if they have even a rudimentary sense of humor they'd be able to have a decades-long renaissance of humor and art just going through our artifacts and histories and riffing on our little self-important fucking useless civilizaiton

religion is not a delusion, it is a coping mechanism

as for your alien species

ilmdge posted:

That's Deinocheirus mirificus (DY'-noh'-KY-ruhs mur-IHF'-ee-kuhs), which means "terrible hands that look peculiar."

Lee figures the tilted wide hips and massive feet show that Deinocheirus was a slow mover and probably grew so big to escape from being regularly feasted on by bigger dinosaurs.

It had a beak that could eat plants, but it also had a massive tongue that created suction for vacuuming up food from the bottoms of streams, lakes and ponds, Lee wrote.

the most rhizzone dino

Lessons posted:

getfiscal posted:

i was thinking about whether like liberal policy types are dumb or smart. my conclusion is that they are smart but morons. this is possible in my mind because a moron is someone who lacks basic self-awareness and critical skills. like they are good at learning things that are taught to them but they can't come to conclusions that aren't spoon-fed to them by their environments. they can be smart insofar as they master the material, are articulate about their borrowed opinions, plan for contingencies and so on. they might have a good feel for political currents. but their worldview is schematic and they can't question parts of it that don't seem consistent, so they never really learn anything that could actually change society, and they see people who do criticize society as basically being jaded idiots who won't play along. anyway i think that's the personality that populates most liberal institutions.

You're just equivocating and all this really says is that liberals don't "question their worldview", which is true of everyone.

mayvbe the problem is having a persistent worldview or identity in the first place *dissociates backwards into the holographic bushes of hyperreality like Homer*

Prospero posted:

i still dont get what truscum is. is it ppl who arent binary so they spill genderfluid everywhere? i guess its better than 'gender isnt real but nevertheless im a woman because i have a wig and a pink thingy'

i think truscum are people who deny that there are nonbinary gender descriptors. like a trans woman might say you are either a man or a woman, and that people who call themselves agender or like 75% women 25% gender chaos or something are liars. some trans people care about this because they think tumblr nonbinary people make them look crazy.