riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 20/11/2025I see this as vaguely creepy. Does it have a close similarity to a specific thing from mass media, or some such? 100
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 07/11/2025If you're amazed, then consider the profit motive. Columns like this inspire responses. Every response, and every counter-argument, is a page view. Advertisers pay for page views. Ross Douthat is very good at going JUST far enough to provoke outrage. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 02/11/2025We can study our end of a relationship, whether there's anything of substance on the other end, or not. When you say "man's relationship", is that more gender-specific than "humanity's relationship"? 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 01/11/2025Indeed. Southern slavery relied on the "Curse of Ham" dogma as a justification, and thus denied evolution; tobacco companies denied a link to lung cancer; oil industry still denies climate change today. We need a consistent universal practice of questioning ALL those narratives, across the board. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 01/11/2025When and where has Swift denied moon landings, or otherwise promoted disinformation? Swift advised fans to take covid seriously. Her song "Epiphany" is an homage to healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you make claims about her, please support those claims with evidence! 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 25/10/2025I hope that you got good answers. Answers might include his call for the execution of the Central Park Five, regardless of their actual innocence. Ever since he did that, anyone who platforms him, or does business with him, is clearly okay with his overtly homocidal racism. 110
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 25/10/2025How does she feel about this voyage? Is she hoping for more while worrying about getting slut-shamed? Or is she hating it, but enduring it silently because she's afraid that he'll push her off the boat if she resists? Does he care whether she likes it or hates it? 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025Odysseus: Yes, he had some affairs along the way, but for every day of those ten years, he was trying his best to get home to Penelope. Achilles: Whether his relationship with Patrocles was sexual is no one's business but theirs. The public should focus on honoring Patrocles at the funeral games. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025Thanks for the link. Also, I parsed the guy's race differently, when I saw the photo in that article; and now I'm not sure about how I parsed race in the picture which I posted. So thanks for inadvertently motivating self-questioning! 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025I once sawed some wood. Am I a carpenter? I don't introduce myself as "Hi, I'm Riley, I'm a carpenter". Nor as a cook, though I once scrambled some eggs. I've once been paid by a magazine which published my work. I am, nominally, a paid published writer. That's still not how I introduce myself. 200
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025No, that's the _second_ most unfunny joke. The comparison was the #1 top unfunny joke. Unless the comparison was with Hitler! In that case "insult to Hitler" is a valid argument, to be evaluated by objective criteria, rather than a joke. - But seriously, do the comparisons serve a useful purpose? 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025"But if you meet / A friendly horse / Will you communicate by mo-o-o-o-orse? How will you speak to that ho-o-o-o-orse? What does the fox say?" - Ylvis 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025I would tell a grim joke, but the punch line is too long. - Organizations with altruistic principles (including Bluesky) tend to have a gap between walk and talk, between stated goals and actual practice. The width of that gap varies from group to group, and can change over time. Mind the gap! 170
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025I strongly believe that some of the media corporations prioritize keeping their owners and investors happy, FAR higher than they prioritize a well-informed public. 110
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025These guys are ICE targets twice over, once because of their melanin and twice because they CAN find the clitoris. 090
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025Since he hasn't been charged and found guilty, then he should not be executed, imprisoned, or even fined. - But what's the threshold for ducal titles? Is there a dangerous precent here, in which others (others who didn't lie about contact with Epstein) might also get stripped of ducal titles? 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 24/10/2025I'd bet my left thumb that he has motives which he'd rather not admit to you. Maybe he doesn't admit those motives to himself; maybe he's fooling himself with that irrational pretext? Wouldn't surprise me. I've heard Klan members deny that the Klan is racist. 100
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 22/10/2025Also they are deep into cognitive distortion. Their assertion doesn't hold up to logical examination. If that word dropped out of current usage, then it would still be dictionaries. It would still be in literary canon, such as the works of Kipling and Twain. His argument is a dishonest pretext. 100
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 22/10/2025I'd guess that they live in the world of white privilege and Whites Only socialization. Apparently they've never had a deep friendship with anyone who gets called that term in a hostile, dismissive, punching-down way; not a friendship deep enough, that they felt that friend's pain. 100
Reposted by @riley37.bsky.socialInternet Dad @whatahellofawaytodad.com · 21/10/2025Reminder that Violent J of Insane Clown Posse has the correct response to a lot of the shitty things he said in the early days. 137177974670
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 22/10/2025Do you have any factual evidence, historical or otherwise, to support this bold, sweeping assertion? Are you any more grounded in objective cause and effect, than your namesake? 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 22/10/2025Winston Churchill said something similar, in the memoirs he wrote after WW2. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 21/10/2025Patriarchy accepts a white man marrying a darker-skinned woman, such as JR and Usha Vance, because under patriarchy, the man has more power and thus the darker-skinned person is still kept "in her place". But for men, here's the Family Guy color chart: 030
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 20/10/2025As a policy question, asked and answered, thanks. - That said, were the protesters on private property, or were they endangering anyone, or what other event - on that day, in that location - made it necessary and appropriate for police to hit civilians with batons? 110
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 18/10/2025That was before J6. Things have changed since J6. You can stick your head down a hole in the sand all you want, ostrich style, but things have changed since J6. 100
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 18/10/2025Which rules, exactly, are state police enforcing here? Under what statute? 110
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 18/10/2025Proposal for a commercial service: - they issue you a celphone, pre-loaded with social media content such as a Truth Social account, praising current POTUS - if you travel to or from the US, then you leave your usual phone at home, and bring that phone, to placate the authoritiarian border guards 140
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 17/10/2025If someone started a "Hang Curtis Silwa" parade, would he defend its right to exist? 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 17/10/2025Vice units punish women. I imagine that they also punish men whom they see as feminized, or female-equivalent, and thus "degraded". Misogyny and homophobia go hand in hand. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 11/10/2025Beatniks, hippies, punks: three generations! 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 10/10/2025I wish that were true. Alas, it's happened many times before. Read up on J. Edgar Hoover's career, and on the Red Scare. 020
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 10/10/2025May you bring out the best in each other. Have you met Antifa's mother yet? 020
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 09/10/2025Sometimes I set a sequence, with increasingly aggressive tones. First signal to my future self: (gentle melody) hey, it's getting near Time to Do the Thing, so whatever you're up to right now, start setting it aside. Three minutes later: (buzz) Yo. You set aside what you were doing, right? RIGHT? 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 08/10/2025I set reminders for myself, for various tasks. Choosing a non-harsh alarm shifts whether that practice feels like "ugh, my phone is nagging me AGAIN, how annoying" vs. feels like "my phone is helping me with self-care". Where "phone" is an extention of "my past self, my previous volition". 110
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 07/10/2025"Gulf Of Flaming SpaceX Debris" was merely a transient. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 07/10/2025IYKYK, "if you know, you know" can come across elitist, hipster, cooler-than-thou and shitty. The more people get in on a joke, the better. A good joke has value from its cleverness, regardless of scarcity. - IYDKJA: If You Don't Know, Just Ask! We'll welcome you into the circle of those who know! 030
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 06/10/2025Agreed. For starters, "call for backup" is a basic principle. When you can't accomplish a goal alone, then you bring in a team. Not that I want this guy to succeed, because his goal was horrible, but he's a bad agent both in the sense of "evil" and also in the sense of "incompetent". 010
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 06/10/2025I kinda hoped that one of them would sacrifice his career, and possibly risk the rest of his life, by standing up and declaring opposition, accepting the challenge, calling out the many illegal orders already given and followed, breaking the consensus of silence. 100
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 06/10/2025This is the USA version of the German "back stab myth" in the 1920s and 1930s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in...en.wikipedia.orgStab-in-the-back myth - Wikipedia 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 06/10/2025There are a few words which, as keyword searches, prompt exactly one result. TIL one of those words is "ihctacuoyllatubgnihsifemosodotpotsuoy". Unless, of course, posting this here, means that a search for that word finds this also as a result; but I think that Google doesn't find Bluesky posts. 020
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 03/10/2025Autism before modern screening might be like Pluto before 1930: it was there all along, just not known and named. 000
riley37.bsky.social @riley37.bsky.social · 02/10/2025Kublacon Fall has given thumbs-up to my repeat of a workshop on "Queer-Friendly Gaming". This workshop will engage maybe ten to twenty people, for 80 minutes; it's not a large-scale operation; but it's the difference between zero and more-than-zero LGBTQ+ visibility in the convention program. 010
