You clearly know literally nothing … The fact you even suggested it in the first place shows you lack even a bare minimum understanding

You’ve written so much abuse, without explaining a darn thing.

whatever spaghetti-at-the-wall trash you’re doing

Yeah, an anonymous internet message board is a pretty irresponsible place to throw spaghetti at the wall, I guess. Seeing as how the entire APA board is refreshing this very thread feverishly. I guess I better find a mop, huh?

You cherrypicked “sensationalized”, somehow offered something more sensationalized anyway,

No no, I did it the other way around. I started with the spaghetti-at-the-wall trash, and then I discovered the resources you so kindly provided supported my point pretty much exactly.

I think the psychology community is probably mistaken, outdated, or out of touch on the “stigmatizing” point. The TESCREAL assholes love to think of themselves as “dark triad” or “dark personality,” they fantasize about bringing about a “dark enlightenment.” “Dark” isn’t stigmatizing, it’s cool. It’s sensational. For that reason, I think it would be great to have a different term. One that wasn’t cool.

(A little aside here: You think the psychologists should be trusted to choose the most appropriate terms, yes? Where did the current “dark” terminology, which is apparently so problematic, come from? I don’t actually know the answer. Do you?)

So my suggestion was specifically to find a term that wasn’t cool like “dark” is. My focus wasn’t on avoiding stigma, because I don’t care if the sorts of people who would be happy to put me and my family in a concentration camp felt stigmatized. But hey, if you want to stick up for their feelings and dignity, you go ahead. You’re still free to do that. You will always be free to stick up for them.

So you don’t like “defective.” Okay. Maybe “antagonistic” would work.

I am very smart, and frankly, anyone who says my idea is obviously fucking stupid is contradicting the psychology community

The contrast you think you see is there because you’re not absorbing my point. Maybe that’s partly my fault. I think it’s partly your fault, though. You’ve charged into this with a chip on your shoulder.

whose opinions on this I’m literally just now glancing at

Yup! Is that a scientific argument, though? Should it matter if I’m an expert or not?

If you seriously think “defective personalities” is a less sensationalist alternative, then boy, whatever’s left of your brain must be dripping out of your ear like melted candlewax.

Is there a name for the kind of personality that hurls uncalled for insults as a first resort?

I honestly don’t understand how you think that’s any kind of parallel.

I think “dark” is a problematic word, it’s sensational and attractive to exactly the wrong people, I think we should use another term.

As you point out, the psychology community has been contemplating a similar conclusion. Starting before me, I wager.

Somehow, this makes me a moron, though.

Okay but it says:

It is past time to abandon the term “dark” as a descriptor of antagonistic traits

And this is exactly what I’m suggesting, even if I’m approaching from another angle.

Maybe we should talk about “defective personalities” or “weak personalities” or “malformed personalities” or something else that sounds less cool to some people than “dark personalities.”

That apology stinks of LLM to me.

Or perhaps living in this second-rate Temu timeline is driving me mad.

The way I see it, the Supreme Court isn’t working for or against the current president, rather, they’re working to turn the presidency into something more like a kingship. They’re focused on what comes after him. That does look like working in the president’s interest pretty often, but when the president is looking for something that’s specifically about him (and not the presidency in general), they’re less interested.

Biff Tannen vibes on that Dear Leader picture.

Dear Leader’s first term saw a lot of new flagpoles installed in the suburbs. Spindly, short, ultra-cheap poles, placed way too close to the street or sidewalk. With flags so large that they nearly touch the ground. Flag in your face, flag as a confrontation, as a challenge. Those flags are red flags for sure.

Also a bad sign: households who feel that one flag is good, but a dozen miniature flags are better, and both is best of all.

Look at everything we’ve lost

Look at what cruel fate has bestowed

It’s easy to get mad about this, everyone would prefer the fancy ceiling. But a lot of old plaster work like this was cheaply and hastily made, a lot of what survives is in bad shape. There may have been good reason to add a barrier between the plaster and the people below. This may even have been the best choice for preserving the plaster until an owner with greater resources could restore it.

This picture invites you to tell yourself a story about what happened, but it doesn’t give you enough information to know what happened.

Traininisation

I don’t “do drugs” anymore. From now on, I’m “initiating a single-person study.”

Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has dominated international perceptions of the country since 2022, does not appear to be a decisive factor for many of those making the move.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that those Westerners moving to Russia aren’t terribly reflective, imaginative, or as plugged-in to world events as they might think they are.

An online ecosystem of relocation agencies and influencers promote Russia as a place where family values remain strong and everyday life feels safer … Within weeks of arriving, Leo says they were defrauded of 5 million roubles – about £52,000 ($66,000) – by a contact they trusted, leaving them homeless.

I was explaining to a young person today that totalitarian societies have always portrayed themselves as safe, orderly, and free of crime, supposedly because of the iron grip their law enforcement has on the public. That has never been true, though. Totalitarian societies have always been full of corruption and grift, and have used the image of draconian, ruthless, theatrical, arbitrarily-arrived-at punishments as a cover story to distract the people from that reality.

I believe this photo was an illustration for an article that’s worth checking out:

I Went to Trump’s Great American State Fair. It Was Bleaker Than I Expected

I used to do this but I got burned once or twice, wound up with cracked eggs that hadn’t leaked enough to stick or hadn’t stuck, for whatever reason.

Chernobyl painted a vivid picture of a time and place, but it was fictionalized, sensationalized, too. Pripyat didn’t really exist under an oppressive green fog, and the Soviet Union of the day wasn’t the Stalinesque nightmare the show suggests.

By all means, enjoy the show, it’s awfully well-done. But I beg you to bear in mind that:

1. It’s not a documentary, because
2. none of those based-on-a-true-story shows are documentaries.

These are some of the lamest insults I’ve ever heard. You can’t even explain to someone how dumb they are, because you’ve already forgotten what they were.

Maybe ChatGPT should take Cheung’s job.

I’m sympathetic, I think media that can be borrowed, lent, sold and otherwise transferred is better. But I’ve given up on video games being that way years ago. I don’t have a “collection” of video games any more than I’d have a collection of used chewing gum.

The other side of that coin, though, is that I never pay more than $20 for a game. Almost everything I buy is even under $10. (I think the Orange Box was the last time I paid anything like a retail price for a game. And that was three games.) The games are ephemeral, they could stop working at any moment for any of a million different reasons, and I’d have no recourse. So I’m not going to pay crazy archival prices.