The Gaming Den

Apparently while advising our Department of Homeland Defense Larry Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

Yes, that would probably work. But only insane people suggest such ignorant, racist tripe.

-Crissa

That's horrible, would likely almost completely work, and almost par for the course of this country's worst propaganda. And I like it for, i think, probably all those reasons...


then again, I'm also the person who toys with the notion of world domination through convoluted xanatos gambits, and assigning followers of abrahamic religions as police in the ensuing Satanic Empire, because they're supposed to follow rules and seem pretty keen on enforcing them, even if they individually don't follow them, so I'm probably not the person to say shit about that...

Effed up, in my opinion.

That makes me a little sick.

Also: why the fuck are your tax dollars going into that? I know Bush only feels truly alive when setting money on fire, but still, bloody hell...

I'd say there is worse pork out there that tax dollars get spent on

Surgo wrote:I'd say there is worse pork out there that tax dollars get spent on

Such as what, if I may ask?

Note that: Crissa, the link's repeatedly failing to load (in Firefox, if that might be relevant) with otherwise working Internet access.

Most of us Americans don't know where the tax money goes. Maybe it helps pay for the schools, police, fire departments, roads, healthcare, defense, offense (hoo boy, there's a lot of that), grease palming third world countries, and of course to the paychecks of mysterious Assistant Project Supervisors of The Redundancy Department of Redundancy.
This country works well most of the time so I guess we haven't made too much of a ruckus concerning the billions lost every year to wasted funding. This looks like one of those leaks.

But since when did writers advise the U.S. government?

And if you think that's racist, imagine what kind of advice H. P. Lovecraft would have dispensed. yech.

sigma999 wrote:Most of us Americans don't know where the tax money goes. Maybe it helps pay for the schools, police, fire departments, roads, healthcare, defense, offense (hoo boy, there's a lot of that), grease palming third world countries, and of course to the paychecks of mysterious Assistant Project Supervisors of The Redundancy Department of Redundancy.
This country works well most of the time so I guess we haven't made too much of a ruckus concerning the billions lost every year to wasted funding. This looks like one of those leaks.

But since when did writers advise the U.S. government?

And if you think that's racist, imagine what kind of advice H. P. Lovecraft would have dispensed. yech.

Most of what you mention is just pretty standard government stealing, while Surgo seemed to imply there's much morally worse stuff going on - of course, he might just mean the money on military investment, which's already morally bad enough.

Of all human evils, the kind that places a human head beneath another's foot (literally, politically, or financially) is the worst.

It works fine for me, and I'm using Firefox. Maybe you should switch to Ubuntu.

sigma999 wrote: And if you think that's racist, imagine what kind of advice H. P. Lovecraft would have dispensed. yech.

Let's be fair, Lovecraft existed in a time when racism was rampant (moreso than currently, that is) and the norm. He was raised to believe the various things he wrote about black people, and it was considered acceptable at the time.

Were he born and raised today, I doubt he'd display that (as much?)

It's effed up if the article is legit.

The magazine seems on the legit side but the writing is really sub-par.

The anonymous writer just seems to not have an editor at all.

Well the sentiment expressed is still effed up whether true or not.

Koumei wrote:

sigma999 wrote: And if you think that's racist, imagine what kind of advice H. P. Lovecraft would have dispensed. yech.

Let's be fair, Lovecraft existed in a time when racism was rampant (moreso than currently, that is) and the norm. He was raised to believe the various things he wrote about black people, and it was considered acceptable at the time.

Were he born and raised today, I doubt he'd display that (as much?)

Pssh. Come to Baltimore, one of the most segregated racially tense cities in the East Coast, maybe America.
It's hidden to casual visitors and tourists, after generations of suppression, but it's here, everywhere.
But you can choose how to respond to external influences.
I'm open to many social approaches (in person; the internet is ... difficult) but there are many assumptions people carry with them. Certain subcultures determined by race which is common, yes, but here it's like a series of campy stereotypes lived out by tired, repetitive actors.

Whites here are sneaky. But that's a gross generalization... many whites here are sneaky. I wouldn't give a cent to any white panhandler in Baltimore because it probably goes to their crack habit. Joke as much as you want about poor blacks, but at least many of the black panhandlers are actually poor.
When a black community is bought out (rampant foreclosures right now) whole city blocks are plowed under and expensive apartments are installed within weeks. So you have slums, neglected by the government since Dr. King's death, across the street from shining metal towers that would make east Asian metropolitans jealous.
And all the expensive buildings are inhabited by at least 80%-90% whites.
That... unsettles me.
It can't end well.

The tension is evident when common arguments with blacks of many ages will end with "Oh I see how it is. It's because I'm black." even though it's simply because it's some kind of conditioned behavior act like presumptive, hostile jerks at you for not being black. I feel sorry for their situation but, being young white male, I'm apparently part of the problem. Somehow.
As if every white person in Baltimore descended from plantation owners.
And don't ever say "you people" in any context for any reason.

Latino immigrants here are nice up front, usually, but once out of earshot they will crack sexist/racist/culturist jokes about you to their friends. It goes both ways between immigrants and natives, really.
The largest proportion you'll see of Latinos are young male construction workers in large groups in most entry level physical labor. Immigration deporters have a fuckin ball when they pay visits.
Personally, I find it a welcome sight to see Latino families because it means the money isn't all being shipped home, but they mostly stay in their own section of the city (northeast of the Inner Harbor) where muggers can't stalk workers walking home with pockets full of cash from their under-the-table job.
And the cops look the other way because, well, the residents are 'illegal aliens'.
That's not right, but that's how it is.

One day the tension will build up to a point very similar to the riots in April 1968.
But by then I hope to be far, far away from this dirty, crowded, racially segregated city.

Now, I'm not pretending to be Spider Jerusalem here, but maybe this is my nerd rage trigger. I need to inform non-Americans and maybe even fellow Americans that the 'era of racial segregation' has yet to end. We're still living in it very strongly because there are many that would prefer to live the grudges of their ancestors rather than wake up and smell the Cheseapeake to realize that the whole city stinks of racism. Together.


Lovecraft would be racist yet still, I guarantee. But if he lived here in Baltimore, he'd probably either spam Stormfront with hateful vitriol, spraying paint swastikas every now and then (yes, it happens, we have neo-nazis), or live a quiet, creepy life on the internet. Probably on 4chon.
Video games would suck out his productivity.
Medication would cease the imagination.
Maybe he would get disability services for his autisms and give up writing for a tech job?

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:It works fine for me, and I'm using Firefox. Maybe you should switch to Ubuntu.

I'd really like if it LAN houses did.

Well, maybe the reason I have such a negative opinion about cities is because most of my experience with them stems from Baltimore.

Have your read Niven's Inferno? His hero is Mussolini

Caliborn wrote:Well, maybe the reason I have such a negative opinion about cities is because most of my experience with them stems from Baltimore.

You wouldn't be much better in Porto Alegre. Remember guys, there are a lot of places worse than the U.S.A. - and I'm not actually trying to put Brazil as one of the worst.

Caliborn wrote:Well, maybe the reason I have such a negative opinion about cities is because most of my experience with them stems from Baltimore.

In contrast I always have a longing to sample other cities.
New York, for instance, blew me away. It's godsbedamned CLEAN in comparison.
And fun. And full of interesting places and people.

sigma999 wrote:

Maybe he would get disability services for his autisms and give up writing for a tech job?

Huh? There's no evidence at all to suggest Lovecraft was autistic, other than the mistaken notion that he was some sort of recluse who communicated only by mail (propagated because we still have most of his letters). He had a number of friends and traveled frequently.

Man, I'm so glad that Toronto, Mississauga and Hamilton are my nearest cities.

The Hammer is a steel town, but it's got a pretty wide mix of recent immigrants in there as well; 'Ssauga is full of a lot of different people from a lot of different places; and T.O. is, well T.O.; name a country and you'll probably find people from there.

Now, Toronto has it's share of really dumb things, like far too many condo buildings going up, a shitty waterfront and a transit system that could use more work (but, it's Canada, the country of drivers, so it's hard to break that habit).

On the other hand, I don't live there, so I don't have a really solid impression of the city; just regular visits or taking the transit to school which is on the Missisauga/Toronto border.

There's a lot of Urban/Suburban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA); that's a big problem that not a lot of people talk about. We're a big country, so people build low and outwards; but it's not really smart in terms of thinking about the ecological costs of having so much traffic or a transit system that gets stretched thin.

Try living in Alabama. *grumble*

If you travel out-of-state and tell people where you live, they have...questions.

"Do you live on a farm?"

"Do people in Alabama really marry their sisters?"

And then the people who live in NYC and LA get all fucking condenscending and ask what it's like living in a small town. The bit of personal experience that sticks in my mind is, "You live in a town of what, 20 people? And you're related to 17 of them?" . To which the proper response is, "500,000 people. International seaport and shipyard. Not a small town."

It's gotten to the I get a little surge of vindication when I see someone who's living here, but wasn't born here, and loves it. My math professor hails from Philadelphia, and she said it took her exactly one winter to learn to appreciate the sub-tropical climate of southern Alabama.

And then the very interesting lady in one of my geology classes. Born in west Africa, and lived about half her life in Paris and then London before going to New Jersey with her husband for his teaching position. (Her accent was all over the place.) And when her husband's work was going to bring them here, her New Jersey friends tried to dissuade them because "they don't like black people in Alabama".

Of course, the joke's on them. She said she was enormously impressed when a young teenager held the door for her on the way into the grocery store, and when the cashier, while checking out stuff, asked if she had any plans for that evening and volunteered that she and her boyfriend were going to the movies, and her farewell was, "Y'all have a nice weekend!" with a cheery wave.

Anyway.

If my experiences in NY and Chicago were any indication of what 'real' cities were like, I think I'll pass on that and stay around here. Once I get my degree, I can help look for oil out in the Gulf in exchange for obscene amounts of cash and amazing job security, and, what's more, I can get real sweet tea at restaurants.

Ah yes, the South, where people have at least heard of the word "manners". Unfortunately I would probably die of heat stroke during the winter down there. I'm planning to move to the same general area as former Viking rule eventually, mostly for the weather.

Caliborn wrote:Ah yes, the South, where people have at least heard of the word "manners". Unfortunately I would probably die of heat stroke during the winter down there. I'm planning to move to the same general area as former Viking rule eventually, mostly for the weather.

It got up to the low 90's today. Usual humidity. That is to say, ~80%.

Winters here get...

Well, according to the climate stuff, the average low in January, the coldest month, is 40 degrees. But it can get down below freezing every now and then, too.

On a related note, I haven't seen snowfall in person since 1996.

Yeah it was in the 80s here today, with high humidity. I was miserable.

I'm the kind of guy that can go out and shovel snow in the freezing rain with nothing but a pair of shorts and some snow boots and not really get cold, but everything above 60 or so degrees fahrenheit makes me unhappy. There might be something wrong with my thyroid, once my health insurance kicks in I think I'll go get that checked out.

Caliborn wrote:once my health insurance kicks in I think I'll go get that checked out.

As someone from a "communist socialist" country, I wish to laugh.

Anyway, my dad is like that - apparently, when he was in Scotland, he went about in shorts and a T-shirt while the locals - big tough Scottish men (you have to be tough in a land with waist-high thistles and no underpants) - were rugged up in blankets next to the fire in the pub.

I, on the other hand, am your classic girl/serpent: I need heat, and will support global warming if only it means the temperature can warm the fuck up. I also have plans to plunge the planet into the Sun just to make sure I get the heat I need.