Post a controversial opinion

I mean, I agree in principle, but Houston is working on it.

of eligible voters, in a state with voter id laws that have been shot down in court recently iirc, about 23% of texans voted for trump.

harris county - where houston is - voted for clinton

Dougie > Cooper

you won't regret. also, when i went, server literally took our orders, walked into kitchen, and emerged not 1 minute later w two arms full of dishes

― flopson, Sunday, August 27, 2017 3:16 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol that's usually not a good sign

tbf I was eating w vegetarians and the 1 meat dish we ordered came after a reasonable (but speedy) wait

dictators are very boring

No nation should exceed a total area size of two million km².

doctors are almost always wrong. the i ching is the best doctor.

Airbnb is good it's a good thing

known multiple people who have been illegally evicted so their landlord can airbnb so I'm def not down with calling it good

landlord down the street evicted some acquaintances (a family with two young kids!) from a duplex so he could tear it down and build a multiuse building, possibly for AirBNB purposes. he'd been illegally airbnb-ing out the other half of the duplex before he tore it down.

it's a good thing if you're a landlord trying to make as much short-term cash as possible. sucks shit for p much everybody else.

y'all know some of the people who AirBnb are just regular homeowners right

one of my friends makes a killer amount of supplemental income off of doing it

Always been landlords iirc we may even have had our own issues with them historically

Can't believe the contropinions thread now not a safe space btw obv

xxpost also, when you are going to an event and want a crash pad near the venue and don't want to pay $100+ for one night or pay $60 for a shithole, AirBnb is dope. I stayed in some nice old fashioned homes for like $25 a night in GA and NC

like the illegal eviction scenario above, like, not sure I trust that a landlord who would resort to illegal evictions wouldn't find some other way to dick his tenants over illegally if AirBnb didn't exist.

my landlord illegally murdered me with a gun purchased using airbnb profits. man, fuck airbnb.

all i'm saying is that airbnb people are evil and should be stopped. word on the street is there was an ilxor murdered by a gun bought with airbnb money, which should give pause to anyone.

landords are good

tenants are bad

sufjan was a terrible tenant btw

y'all know some of the people who AirBnb are just regular homeowners right

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:12 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have a neighbour who does gig economy jobs and cat sits while airbnbing her apartment to make ends meet. I've stayed in airbnbs a couple of times. it's not the devil, it's not only used evilly. but it's absolutely contributing to the housing crisis which is making cities hard places to live for anyone that isn't rich.

especially because you can make soooooo much more money airbnbing than renting a place to a tenant monthly.

one of my friends makes a killer amount of supplemental income off of doing it

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:12 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post seems insensitive now. FP'd you.

certain thing's goodness = (first order term that is large and good) + (second order term that is bad and not insignificant) + (many other higher order terms to consider)

or

certain thing's badness = (first order term that is large and not bad) + (second order term that is good and not insignificant) + (many other higher order terms to consider)

or

other permutations

controversial opinion: We will pick one of the above and fixate on that second order term to justify our opinion on certain thing's goodness or badness according to our own limited experience. We will feel satisfied that we've thought deeply about the subject because we've got that one higher order talking point to display to ourselves and others.

Click Here to Watch Sufjan Grafton EVISCERATE the Gigconomy Debate

yes, i am currently paid to do just that on a part-time basis and with no benefits.

Gary Cooper was plainer than five miles of a dirt road and his "strong silent" (i.e., deer in headlights) mode gets very boring very fast.

i don't want to sleep in some stranger's home

I care way less about (mass-)shootings and the victims in the USA, than those in any other country in the world.

I hate that I feel this way, but I do. With every new mass-shooting in the USA I find myself caring less, and complete indifference is nigh. It's numbing to the point where it's just seen as a tradition. "Something Americans do". It should be at pages 23-25 in the daily news over here, not the front page. USA is as USA does. Part of gun culture, 2nd amendment bullshit etc. Put famine and starvation and torture back on the front pages, cull it from 23-25, and replace it with USA shootings. For a country that is basically going out of its way to do the exact opposite of what could even in the slightest possibly prevent these tragedies, just wants them to happen over and over again. Pushing the biggest, hungriest cat among a legion of helpless pigeons. Only to say prayers afterwards, change nothing, and hey it's an opportunity for a complete idiot of a president to look "presidential" for once... Score!

Obviously this does not come from "not caring" about it. I feel strongly for all the fine USA ilxors and the friends I have over there who have to suffer through this every bloody time. But at the end of the day because of all of this I do, truly, care less about mass-shootings in the USA than nearly everywhere else. Which is frightening. Can only imagine what it must be like to live there. Sympathies to you good people. But your country can get the fuck.

honestly I don't begrudge anybody who feels these events in their bones because lots of people are empaths - I just never have been and usually all I feel is flat. they affect me, in that these events impact the fear I feel being in public, but when it comes to overwhelming sadness, it just almost never happens. won't even use the oft-repeated excuse of 'numbness', because inconsistent detachment is just who I am, and not even as a means of coping. I can never figure out why some things make me emotional and some don't. suspect the anti-anxiety meds have a lot to do with it because prior to going on them, I tended to be a lot more emotional about things.

Pulse was different last year, I have a lot of LGBTQ friends and it was one-two miles from where I live today. part of it might be because I've given up on any real gun reform happening, and that I've given up on this country as a whole.

the spree shooting culture is completely and utterly fucked and nauseating but idk lately I just swallow it all.

I'm with you on that for most of the way. Well, with you right now, but maybe our beginning was different. I might be deluded but I do think I once felt this stuff trembling within me. In this particular care it's gone now, though.

Can totally see why Pulse was different completely for you, though. Sad exception to a sad rule.

arms dealer to the fucking world

I'm torn, LBI, between co-signing your empathy-fatigue and between ripping you a new one for a lack of comprehension of the daily tragedy of the situation. I know you're a good n' valued poster and person, and I've been digging your posts for years so I'm gonna go w/ the fact that I'm probably (like most 'Mericans) a little sensitive about this.

But... look, I get that you're annoyed with the constant coverage of US shootings. Me too. So are most Americans. No – wait – so are FUCKING ALL decent Americans, for nearly any value of 'decent.' This shit is terrible, obviously, and avoidable, and on a scale we (global we) can't even fathom. And we (reasonable Americans) are fucking powerless in our frustration. No political protest, letter writing, protest, or any of the usual channels of political action works against the assholes who propagate shitball gun culture. The ubiquity of these attacks is just more evidence of the oppression of a disenfranchised majority by violent, gun-totin' extremists who openly advocate against the principles of peace, liberty, and reasonable personal assurance against harm. Whatever you assert about caring for US ilxors -– and I know you do -- you are basically buying into a blame-the-victim mindset when you say "pipe down with this shit."

Generally, I don't really begrudge anyone for having some arbitrary limitations on what remote news they grieve over, there's only so much grieving each of us can do. I don't know that I countenance LBI's opinion on this, but, you know, controversial opinions thread, safe space.

I feel like these things *used* to get to me, as I remember the day Columbine happened and I was distraught by that as a high school kid.

Pronouncing "controversy" by putting the emphasis on the second syllable (as in: con-TRA-ver-see) is weird and inexcusable.

I'm torn, LBI, between co-signing your empathy-fatigue and between ripping you a new one for a lack of comprehension of the daily tragedy of the situation. I know you're a good n' valued poster and person, and I've been digging your posts for years so I'm gonna go w/ the fact that I'm probably (like most 'Mericans) a little sensitive about this.

But... look, I get that you're annoyed with the constant coverage of US shootings. Me too. So are most Americans. No – wait – so are FUCKING ALL decent Americans, for nearly any value of 'decent.' This shit is terrible, obviously, and avoidable, and on a scale we (global we) can't even fathom. And we (reasonable Americans) are fucking powerless in our frustration. No political protest, letter writing, protest, or any of the usual channels of political action works against the assholes who propagate shitball gun culture. The ubiquity of these attacks is just more evidence of the oppression of a disenfranchised majority by violent, gun-totin' extremists who openly advocate against the principles of peace, liberty, and reasonable personal assurance against harm. Whatever you assert about caring for US ilxors -– and I know you do -- you are basically buying into a blame-the-victim mindset when you say "pipe down with this shit."

― remy bean, Monday, October 2, 2017 10:00 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can take you ripping me one, it'd be wholly justified. Was thinking back on my post and I realized how selfish, or "privileged" (ugh) it must have come across. Easy for me being sick of these shootings in the USA when I am not in fact a US citizen nor live there. That only makes me realize how godawful it must be for youse. Did not mean to take anything away from that (my 'feel for u usa ilxors' obv not sufficient an expression of that). I think my frustration (again, it is not the most important here, but yeah, controversial opinion thread safe-space wise) is the same as yours. I *do* think this shit should be on the front pages, all the time, to show the affront that it is. But it's hard to sustain that when... No-one is able to do anything about it. You call it "avoidable". In theory, maybe, but I don't see it happening. Every big shooting, whether during the Bush era, Obama or now with dumbass Trump, gets blanketed under consoling words. Of prayer, of hope, of light after dark, of trusting in a deity: everything *but* the people (in power) of the USA ever doing anything to change anything about it. It's cynical.

I do not want this shit to be "piped down". But it's wearing like groundhog day to go through the same dead, meaningless ritual every single time you know? I know from France, Germany, Holland: after shootings, boring ass reports and investigations were made, and laws were changed. Did they improve things? Not fundamentally. For no law will change a crazy man shooting other people if he wants to. And it becomes politics, and then it becomes a public issue, and everyone has their say, and never a compromise is reached. But.... But, there was a reaction. People tried to change things. However flawed (and believe me, most of it is symbolism, luring in voters, whatever). But *something* happened. In the USA there just never seems to happen, let alone change, *anything* after an event like this. Not in the highest echelons, not with those who hold power.

It's ok if you question me personally as a poster; you give me way too much credit tbh. Hope you can see where I come from, here in this controversial safe space. It's the relentless unchanging everthesame that beats me into numbness. But, again, and sincerely, I know and fully realize this is infinitely weighing heavier on you than on me.

The Greek myths are boring and there's nothing special about them.

The story of Philomel was the source for a cool Babbitt piece.

I mean they have all these inevitable cultural resonances because they've been so integrated into our culture -- Achilles heel, fly to close to the sun, Sisyphean task, etc but it's only the references that makes them resonate, the stories themselves are dumb.

Out of curiosity, are there any myths you don't think are dumb? because, if not, you could have broadened your controversial opinion considerably, and if so, I would be curious to hear what you think their superiorities consist of.

If we were in 30's Berlin we'd all be Nazi's.
― Sylvestre, Wednesday, November 20, 2002 8:58 AM (fourteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find man alive's greek myth diss to be O_o but have to admit that it's a great controversial opinion

Yeah I mean it kind of popped into my head and without thinking too much I was like "yeah, seems like there's something to this, I'm just gonna run with it."

boring i could see. it depends on whose translation of the myth you're reading, because it's not like there are any direct authors we can refer to. but it's all subjective, regardless. but "nothing special" seems like a reach. there aren't too many stories that have survived from the ancient world to today! that insane story i told at the bar last week? no one remembers that. i don't even remember it. it takes a pretty special story to survive thousands of years! oh, this dude flies so close to the sun that he loses the special trait that allowed him to get there in the first place? laaaaaaame

Eris rules wtf

the greek gods are prob the weakest or at least the weirdest part of the greek myths, come to think of it -- it's like you've got this tacky reality show superimposed on the genuine pathos and tragedy going on w/ the human characters.