It is difficult to consider a greater rube than one who interprets open mockery as lavish praise.

It’s a practice at least as old as type itself. It seems the attention Trump garnered, and the highlighting of his stereotypical Boomer typing, have merged the two in some people’s minds.

We’re at a unique crossroad where Gen X and Y grew up with their grandparents mostly refusing to use cell phones and their parents mostly fumbling with them. Now Gen Z and “Alpha” are growing up with grandparents who have mostly been shamed into acceptable text etiquette, and parents who are mostly as tech savvy as the next parent and who were there when the deep magic was written (so to speak).

Mango Mussolini’s narcissism is as pervasive as his parasitism so it’s no wonder the lecherous rapist’s sins against modern digital convention survived along with him. Some spin that as brilliant tactics but I’m not so sure. I’d wager it’s a coincidence he leaned into because it garnered attention.

Most of those now driving online discourse hadn’t had the same exposure to that style of texting prior to the 2016 US Presidential election cycle as preceding generations. So it seems novel to them. It’s history and perspective bring formed in real time.

Weird flex but… Ok.

That makes more sense. Thanks for the response! I’m not sure if can agree with your conclusions. It may be that I’m still missing context you’re working within. My best guess is you’re assuming some axioms that I am not. That doesn’t necessarily mean I think you’re incorrect. We might just be operating with different frameworks.

I agree that strong emergence and weak emergence seem different by your definitions. I’m not convinced strong emergence is a thing. Is there a compelling argument that the perception of strong emergence is actually a more complex weak emergence that the observers have not fully understood?

Something something Occam’s Razor / god of the gaps something. I find these sorts of discussions quite compelling. Thanks again for engaging. :)

Your comment reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2RXoqB1LjA

A recent ~2 minute video from the ever-excellent Dr. Dan McClellen. The opening sentence is: “Every last attempt to identify divine commands in the Bible that are relevant to anyone today requires negotiating with the text.”

I don’t see how either sentence follows. Rephrasing your comment and supplementing it with context to explain your reasoning may better communicate your point.

“Every accusation is a confession” is not a new trend. Right-wing hysteria has always been the Regressivist response to their own fascist fantasies. They scream about the perceived, feared, and fabricated sins of the Left because they’re terrified of being exposed as the evil people they are. Always have been. Always will be.

They obsess over “family values” because their values are empty shells animated by dogma, delusion, and psychopathy.

They obsess over purity culture because they are sexually monstrous (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, aren’t but have been convinced they are).

They obsess over race and minority success because they fear the inevitable: becoming the minority.

All covered in veneers of affluence meant to echo Aristocracy and stuffed with petty but insatiable greed for control over every perceived threat. That fear and insecurity manifests as an obsession with power and admiration for those who wield power selfishly without punishment.

They willed their own nightmare into existence because their worst nightmare and their wettest dream spawn from the same putrid muck. The only difference those broken self-dehumanizing narcissists see between Heaven and Hell is who cracks the whip.

Ublock origin is the only way to fly these days. I’ve walked a few family members through using the Element Zapper and explained how the plugin identifies which domain is loading the content and why websites do that now. They’ve all taken to it pretty well.

Having a default backup browser for sites that give too much grief when they can’t get all of their spyware to work correctly definitely keeps me sane and made adoption less stressful for the uninitiated. I give myself three or four tries to make a shitty site work before either abandoning the site and trying an alternative or, if it’s important and necessary, loading it raw in the backup browser.

+1 for LibreWolf too. Dope project.

Well, two, actually.

Illegally! Amendment 13, Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

No such vote was held. The disability was not removed. Allowing the tried and convicted impeached and indicted insurrectionist Donald Trump to appear on any ballot for any public position, State or Federal, after he was convicted impeached and indicted of for insurrection against the United States was the beginning of the Constitutional crisis we are now mired in and all of Congress is complicit.

Edited: a word. I don’t give a flying fuck what the corrupted kangaroo circus in DC voted reality was. Anyone able to tie their own shoes who lived through that event knows what the truth is.