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[Eschar]

No no no. I was referring to Wilbur Mercer from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

[scriver]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

[wierd]

You might be surprised.

[Il Palazzo]

Imagine Batty starting to deliver his dying speech: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

but Deckard is played by famous method actor Kirk Lazarus in blackface, who angrily interrupts: What do you mean 'you people'?

Then Gaff jumps out of his patrol cruiser, only he's Alpa Chino: What do YOU mean 'you people'?

And as Batty fades away in sad bewilderment, Deckard rants on how he shouldn't have gone full retard.

[ChairmanPoo]

Well, the realtor for the supposed house that  was possibly available has gone awol once I emphasized that I would attend no viewing because I needed to do everything remotedly (which btw I already said in my original email which he apparently did not read). So I'm still in limbo.

According to a friend I might or might not get a job offer in Co Kerry, which might be slightly better accomodation wise. Given the way this year is going I'll believe it when I'm sitting in my office at the place.

I'm only mildly upset because time is proving that I  was lucky I ended up not travelling this year so far. For instance, I rejected an offer for a post in Aranda two months ago and now the place is locked up due to a covid rebound

[MCreeper]

A fucken paradontite, or something. A day and a half of ceaseless "it freaking HURTS!" (hence no sleep). Seemingly subsided after doctor poked around my tooth with bore and needles for 40 minutes straight. Tomorrow he's going to (mostly) finish the job by doing the same thing for 2 hours. 

[kaenneth]

Imagine Batty starting to deliver his dying speech: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

but Deckard is played by famous method actor Kirk Lazarus in blackface, who angrily interrupts: What do you mean 'you people'?

Then Gaff jumps out of his patrol cruiser, only he's Alpa Chino: What do YOU mean 'you people'?

And as Batty fades away in sad bewilderment, Deckard rants on how he shouldn't have gone full retard.

"Ooo, oh boy, I-I don't think you're allowed to say that word. Ya know?"

[Frumple]

Bleh. Just found out a grand uncle died within the last day or two

Wasn't particularly close or anything, personally, but I live with one of their siblings, so... still kinda' rough. Plus the whole incoming funeral w/plague backdrop thing. Fairly shitty way to end a day.

[Iduno]

Yeah. Yeah....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

These days I'm starting to suspect that the world is pretty much pure corruption. The problem isn't with the governments, the problem is just normal people. All sorts of horrid crimes and abuses hidden under a veneer of respectability doesn't describe particularly corrupt people, it's the average.

What I know about history seems to suggest this behavior is somewhat reformable - if it wasn't, they never would have made marital rape illegal, for example. It still happens all the time, but by metric it seems to happen less at least in certain countries? But then, how would we even know, since successful marital rapists abuse their victims such that they rarely end up reported.

It seems like common sense that going from a world where people brag about committing rape and get high-fives from the boys to one in which it is at least somewhat shameful and illegal would constitute a successful reform, but at the same time we constantly get exposures of all these closed groups where there are people still bragging in that way and accepted within that group's culture for it.

It's like what I said about the Trudeau blackface scandal(s) - it proves that the average member of the Canadian political class has either done blackface or doesn't object to it. The Conservatives in Canada didn't even think to use the knowledge they surely had of Trudeau's blackface habits until decades had passed, and then Trudeau and the Liberals won reelection pretty handily anyway. That sort of thing is why it's always laughable to me to hear rightists complaining about #cancelculture or shit like that - you can't get canceled if you don't choose to be. Trump certainly never got cancelled using that strategy.

And that's what represents the Canadian """""""""""""left""""""""""""'s limits on standards. Shit is so much worse here. People want to hear a tape of Trump using slurs, and sure it probably exists, but so what? Do you need the tape? Of course Trump uses slurs. If Trump hasn't done blackface it's only because he's too vain to put paint on his face. And everybody acts like they would if the tape were released already, supporter or opponent, so the tape is immaterial.

Does anything mean anything? Our subjective judgements of good and evil are the only valid ones possible, and even from this view moral nihilism seems illegitimate, but those judgements sure seem to suggest to me that we're all just getting the suffering we deserve whether we honestly believe in those judgements or not. From even a purely mechanistic standpoint we seem to need some decency to survive as a civilization, but I don't think we really have any to go around.

[wierd]

You don't need decency. Just agreement.  (in fact, what is considered 'decent' is just a byproduct of mass-ageement. See also, "glimpse of stocking was something shocking.")

That's the cold reality.

[Eschar]

(ah, this is the high-quality futility and apathy (though there's a more accurate word) I need. The good stuff.)

Ninja'd by wierd. I was responding to MSH post.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, mass agreement isn't enough. Because without an "actual decency", whether that's a real thing or not, mass agreement is built from rotting beams as individual actors betray agreement and trust over and over again. It's created to collapse, and collapsing it is.

Take relationship fidelity, for example. If there's not an inborn commitment to fidelity, a societal value of it isn't enough. Individuals will casually betray it, as they actually do. But then that annihilates the concept of fidelity on the individual level, and just waits for conditions where the wider societal shell will collapse.

And then I guess we all kill each other? Or perhaps we just live in misery and distrust perpetually.

[wierd]

Institutions like religion play a role there.

But still, it is ultimately mass agreement as the standard. It's why for the longest time, black people were considered subhumans. The very fact that mass agreement is a rotting beam, is why they no longer are.

There is no unassailable bastion of ideal morality.  It does not exist.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But we're not arguing over an ideal morality. We're arguing over the basic ability of human beings to not betray each other. It's more along the lines of: "trying to forge a collective agreement to treat black people as human, universally betraying that agreement to all practical limits as defined by the political and material power of black people, and then getting mad at black people for being mad that they were betrayed in order to fuel further future betrayals".