Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post on the "Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here" thread - put them here

slippery slope huh

^watch-list!

Oh wrong thread again FFS, can we just lock this one

HIIIIIII-YA!

"I'm afraid that I was very, very drunk"? ;)

LJ hie thee to the cluiche cheannais thread btw

Can't even post it itt tbh

Can't believe an ilxor knows any of those obv

I never hied to the GAA thread

Became a Flann O'Brien fan instead, hope that'll do

The gaa is actually one of the pillars it's ok not to have grasped in order to fully get FOB I think.

But you really should his thee for other reasons

I was going to post something like 'I was going to post something like "I wonder what musicians have to do to get a good review on AMG" on the Weinstein thread but it's no joking matter' on the second thought about thread, but it's all too serious and I don't know what offends people anymore.

Otm

EASY NOW TYSON EASY NOW

We know of no spectacle as ridiculous

That age tbf

()

why can you say "they should be blinded" but not "they should be deafed"

deafened?

Soundly defeated

probably shd've said "they should be visually impaired"

Blound?

emblindened

blindicated

i

deocularized?

depercussionated

"shown the wonder"

Oh good you two have met

c3p0, r2d2 and bb8 are bad and you should all feel bad

otm

Can’t believe we had three whole weeks of respite. Truly a Christmas miracle.

not raving but droning (Noodle Vague)
Posted: January 7, 2018 at 7:31:23 AM
findeed.

bad and self-hateful hangover.

Take it to the Sunday thread dude

Guys can we

Like we did have

bad form

I laughed tbh

praying for a trump towering inferno

for sale: nice shoes, never complimented

379. Jhonny Cahs - Hrut
378. Daivd Bwoie - Balck Tsar
377. Lneorad Choen - U Wanitt Draker
376. Wrraen Zveon - Ejnoy Ervey Snadiwch

lil peep - save that shit

Have we a fourth one of these threads yet

seems a bit extravagant for people wanting to learn Mandarin

Your patience is testes but you must honore de balzac.

I bless Claude Rains down in Africa

https://i.imgur.com/D5r5LET.gif

all for the best in the best of all possible worlds

my way was funnier obviously

this is funny bcz the date is literally today and that proves that dril AND seth abramson (a) read the borad (b) post to it

would that it were so

I don't really think anyone on ILX thinks of politics in terms of "moral certainties or condemnations". There's just disagreement on what strategies work and where energies should be applied, and it sometimes seems like anything but conventional electoralism is viewed as throwing in the towel by some posters.

Can't speak for anyone else but I don't think there's an either/or. A lot — most! — of the most effective political action is non-electoral. Both in terms of organizing and lobbying around issues and in direct actions like mutual aid that exist outside the political system entirely. Something I say a lot so I'm sure I've said it here is that elections for the most part aren't where you solve problems or make progress. Because even the best/most moral/most effective politician even if they get elected is still operating within certain constraints. The outside action is where you can affect those constraints — so that, e.g., by the time LBJ is president in 1964, the window of possibility and the popular support for the Civil Rights Act becomes possible. LBJ didn't make the Civil Rights Act happen — but at the same time, if Nixon had won the 1960 election the odds of him being willing to sign it into law is lower than they were for LBJ, because of the ways the political ground had shifted.

At the same time, electoral politics remains important in the U.S. and will for as long as we have some form of representative government. I understand the constant frustration with being presented with mostly imperfect (at best) choices, but to me it's just one tool among many that we are given to work with, and I've seen first-hand so many times how much difference it actually does make who occupies a particular office at a particular time — both in positive and negative ways. (Case in point, the moderate Republican chair of our local school board lost a primary race to MAGA book banning religious zealot. If that zealot gets elected in the general, that will significantly alter the dynamics of our school board, even though it's just swapping one Republican for another. And that race was decided by fewer than 100 votes. These things do actually matter.)

Yeah, I'm not the person to go to for a full throated rejection of electoralism in general - other posters here are both more hardline and more knowledgeable on it. So my point here wasn't to convince anyone electoralism is bad or unecessary, it was to suggest sometimes what are viewed as purely moral arguments actually come from different viewpoints on how, when and to what extent electoral politics matter, and so to equate that with "refusing to engage" with politics or pure moral posturing is missing the point a bit.

#onethread strikes again

you've got no right to take your place in an online space

"But if he is the nominee, it's not "pragmatic" to want him to beat Collins, it is actually imo the right moral and ethical outcome given everything at stake."

Let's open that dictionary again.

lol sure. I just don't buy that there's a distinction between "pragmatism" and "idealism" in that situation (of Platner vs. Collins). The ideal thing under those circumstances is that Collins does not win. The pragmatic solution under those same circumstances is to vote for the only person on the ballot who could beat her.

A semantic debate is probably unwelcome, but I think the multiple meanings of "ideal" and "idealism" are confusing or even misleading here. IMO what you're arguing tipsy is that Platner beating Collins is the optimal outcome out of the range of currently foreseeable outcomes, not the ideal. This, I think, reflects a presumption that a utilitarian calculation is the best rubric for determining preferred moral and ethical decisions or actions, at least in this specific case (I'm open to pushback on this, of course!). But I believe that is why your perspective is seen as "pragmatic" by others. I don't have a specific moral/ethical philosophy that I personally adhere to, so tbc this isn't a criticism as such; there might also be a better term than "utilitarian" ("consequentialist"? I'm not actually all that read on this).

Nonetheless, I don't think there's any way to describe Platner becoming a senator as "ideal." His election to a position of power would contribute to a broad and significant social problem: the destigmatization and normalization of domestic abuse, far-right imagery, gun violence, etc. That is difficult to prove—even putting aside the impossibility of "proving" something in the future—but I think Platner's apparently still viable candidacy is a reflection of and continuation of societal changes for the worse. And I don't mean coarsening mores (his clothes or w/e), I mean the mainstreaming of far-right ideology and antisemitism, the strengthening of patriarchal domination, and the lack of accountability for and exceptionalism of straight white men. Making the calculation that all those things are even worse if Collins wins is fine, probably correct, but I don't think we're talking about what's "ideal" at that point.

Again, maybe this is just semantics or academic hair-splitting and there's no substantive difference here, but I think this is all part of why I find the conversation frustrating and maybe also what I was trying to say yesterday about the morality of wanting Platner to win (which was def unclear). We can assert that that desire is contained within the rubric of a fight for control over one chamber of Congress, but imo the desire slips out of that all too easily and has effects beyond it. jaymc is right to wonder why this one race has captured so much of the (online) public's imagination. I think one answer to that is it touches on this much larger problem and can't simply be contained within an electoral politics frame.

good morning!

rob otm

I think Platner's apparently still viable candidacy is a reflection of and continuation of societal changes for the worse.

I agree. I have said many times that we don't live in the same country we lived in 10 years ago (pre-Trump). This second Trump term has made that impossible to ignore. Things are really, really bad. But I am heartened by Platner, as I am heartened by the massive protests and the resistance efforts across the country, because they are all signs that people are aware of what's happening and are angry about it. And if people are angry enough, for long enough, in enough places, things may change for the better. But no matter what happens, the country we thought we lived in pre-Trump is never coming back. We have to make the new country better than the old one.

Fair points Rob. I shouldn't use the word "ideal" at all in talking about politics because by its nature politics tends to rule out the ideal as an option (because few populations of any size can ever fully agree on what the ideal is, and politics is the means by which those kinds of differences get negotiated). Which I know is what some people — most of us, at some point — find so frustrating about it.

But there can still be better and worse outcomes. A lot of politics is best seen as harm reduction, imo. And my point about Platner vs. Collins is that I think you can make moral arguments on either side of that equation, depending on how broadly you want to think about the outcome and its impacts. I do not question that people who could never bring themselves to vote for Platner are motivated by strong moral concerns and convictions. But it is also a moral (and not merely "pragmatic") position to argue that it is better for Collins to lose. These are both moral cases, and ought to be seen as such.

(which I guess is just a plea for more "I get where you're coming from, but I disagree on the approach," and less "o so u love nazis huh.")

is this still about a primary in a state none of you live in?

Is there something you'd rather see discussed on this particular thread? I hate America too, but I'm genuinely not sure why it's so bothersome for people to talk about this. Maybe take it up with whoever posted about it on this thread in the first place ;)

xp to tipsy: I need to get off ilx, but I didn't want to ignore your response, which is appreciated. I think I agree with you that they are both moral cases. I think I object to the kind of moral accounting required to pit the two outcomes against each other, though that would require a much longer post to articulate and I don't have it in me right now (take it as read that I don't expect anyone to agree with that position at any rate).

It'd make more sense in the politics thread than this one, tbh

I don't want anyone to do anything ftr

You know, on second thought I’ll concede that lecturing Americans for opining on an election they can’t participate is actually a good bit

It'd make more sense in the politics thread than this one, tbh

Sure but the premise of this thread is bad and nothing good could ever come of it, so anyone to distract from that is a positive.

xp

the point is, it impacts us whether we get to vote in it or not

we're all just sifting through the social wreckage looking for the least-damaged items of value to salvage

I think I object to the kind of moral accounting required to pit the two outcomes against each other

Understood, and I don't mean that it's some kind of see-saw where you pile things up on either side until one prevails.

ok i have the worst possible take

i like talking about politics but my take on politics just doesn't mesh well with what i'm just gonna call the "sabermetric" approach; i'm much more of a "the political is personal" person. i honestly don't know if there's enough people into that to sustain a thread, and i _know_ there's no shortage of people who are gonna be like "oh seriously is kate saying there should be _another_ politics thread"

probably there shouldn't be. i mean i take forever to put together a post about anything. i meant to post this yesterday, and time got away from me...

lol I had that thought when I was writing about politics as politics, “This is the kind of talk Kate hates!” And I get it. It IS personal. It is for everyone, and especially for people most directly at the end of the sword. I don’t think there’s any single best or right way to respond to politics. My career has been to a large degree about watching it and learning it and trying to explain it to other people trying to understand it, plus also some years working in it, so my perspective on it kind of defaults to analytical and diagnostic. Why is thing happening or not, what would it take to make it happen or not, who’s fighting that fight, what resources do they have, who are they working with, where is the money coming from, etc etc etc.

sabermetric approach could be somebody's way of being able to be disengaged enough from something that affects them directly to be able to discuss it

I don't think considering why things happen and how to achieve an outcome means you are not feeling emotions or don't have a personal reaction. Far from it. The more I learn the more I feel.

I say that as someone who works in civil service. There is a imo a constant need for more people who are determined to measure stuff and do things based on evidence. That evidence can be numerical, like how many people do xyz thing, or how many people fail to complete xyz task after trying to do it, or deeper stuff than that. Just because it's numerical doesn't mean it's not about real, personal situations. Numbers can make you see and feel things. And show those things to other people. But evidence can also be user research. In my current role I've watched about 110 user research sessions where people talk about a really personal, difficult part of their lives. It can be upsetting sometimes, but I use that feeling to fuel the anger which drives me. I don't get angry or lash out at people but in order to create the environment where we are given space to measure things, and time and money to talk to people and find out what they need, as well as do technical research with them, I need energy and enthusiasm, and that emotion and feeling is a good motivator. Other people may do it differently. There's one particular session I watched where a person described being humiliated in a court situation because they decided to represent themselves. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen in 13 years doing this job. I think of it constantly anytime anything gets stuck or somebody tries to block us doing a good thing, or I am feeling less enthusiastic. Sounds a bit cheesy perhaps but it's how it is.

Moving away from my own situation as I know it's a bit specific/potentially annoying, I just think it's wrong to say that an outcome-based view of the world or politics is somehow divorced from the personal or the emotional. If we weren't living in such a shitty time we might have more opportunity for more outcome-based discussions of politics at a macro level, though we still should fight for those discussions. I think maybe macro versus micro is a more fair way to think about it. I know there are wonks who hand-wave every issue and sort of hide behind numbers but it doesn't have to be that way.

Emotion and the personal is a part of the picture imo. Going back to the micro-world, I sometimes will have bosses or others trying to argue that user research or involving the people who need to interact with public services is time consuming, or takes longer. I always argue that it speeds us up because it gives us incontrovertible evidence for what we are doing, and is the most powerful way of bringing people along with us. It's rocket fuel.

We just need to rewire the state at the top echelons that way now, should be easy, lol.

Can’t believe MY TAXES go to paying for this FILTH

(But seriously, great post)

lol

Yes totally agree LG. My political engagement tends to take the form of analysis and description, but it’s fueled by a lot of simmering rage punctuated by glimmers of hope and inspiration.

sabermetric approach could be somebody's way of being able to be disengaged enough from something that affects them directly to be able to discuss it

― scanner darkly, Tuesday, June 9, 2026 9:52 PM (yesterday)

yeah i mean thinking about it i'm not opposed to the sabermetric approach. i think it's important, i think it's valuable, and if i had, like, the ability to look at things in those terms, i probably would start looking at it in those terms again. we all got our ways of coping, and i'm not saying... i mean i do look at things in abstract terms. i absolutely do. i also recognize that it's, uh, not something most people do. it is a hobby, like fantasy football. for me, part of my sort of "sabermetrics" - part of my beliefs about effective political engagement is... like i've read "democracy in america" and i do think it's a valuable political study of a country that's fundamentally different from any america i've known. the way ordinary people are invested, committed to politics on a local level! i think that's good. and i understand why people are invested in a senate race in maine or whatever. particularly on the internet, where we aren't local. sure, none of us live in maine, but none of us live _anywhere_ specifically. it affects us. we got a common interest. if i lived in maine i'd be salty about it, cuz i got more of it, i got a direct interest, and some people looking at a battle for the future of my state like it's a fucking chariot race feels kind of personally disrespectful. but god, i think it's important for _some people_ to look at things from that perspective, an abstracted perspective.

i also think it's important for literally _everyone_ to be out there doing politics, and that's NOT always going to be "pokemon go to the polls". i think it's important to give people an incentive to go to the polls. i think we can have a world where people are as excited about going to the polls as people were about buying dragon quest iii on launch day, though hopefully with fewer logistical issues. (i know that's a weird analogy, that's where my head went). i mean i guess doing politics like that _isn't_ something that's gonna happen on a 25-year-old internet message board.

ah, idk. it's fine. sometimes i'll just start talking politics somewhere that's not the politics thread, and i do it because the politics thread is actually not a very good place for _me in particular_ to talk politics. probably that's gonna piss people off, and i mean, yeah, i get that.