Headlines that reinforce your love of life

I guess this article goes here?

https://www.twincities.com/2018/02/14/minnesota-farmer-finds-love-on-swedish-reality-tv-show-allt-for-sverige/

The People of Wauconda, Illinois, Would Like You to Stop Asking If They Have Black Panther's Vibranium

Definitely a few times I came across Wakanda out of context I assumed people were talking about a small town in Wisonsin.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/03/27/596517792/keiji-haino-dark-wizard-of-the-avant-garde-enjoys-a-good-snack-cake

I saw him play once and it was excruciatingly loud. I was dumb and didn't know to bring ear protection either. It was a severely painful experience, but he was cool.

In some vague way this feels like we all won.

Steve Albini Wins Major Prize at 2018 World Series of Poker

https://pitchfork.com/news/steve-albini-wins-major-prize-at-2018-world-series-of-poker/?mbid=social_twitter

https://pitchfork.com/news/mount-eeries-phil-elverum-and-actress-michelle-williams-have-secretly-married/

i saw Phil Elverum play a show at a high school auditorium in San Francisco in 2007. his opener was a satirical PowerPoint presentation and i've never seen one man abuse a smoke machine more in my life.

that's all.

John McCain, senator and former presidential candidate, dies at 81

I pozz’d the above post there are apparently people on the board sensitive to pointing out that despite being a war hero, John McCain spent the bulk of his career as Senator being a war mongering shit bag.

I negged the post because celebrating someone's painful death is to put it mildly unkind. The world is dealing with much worse right now than John McCain.

Yeah, I don't know about this one guys. My Aunt just recovered from brain cancer and it was super scary and fucked up. To be clear, John McCain was a willing contributor to a lot of really toxic shit in this country's political life and I don't think his reputation will hold up to historical assessment very well. Nonetheless, celebrating his death doesn't seem appropriate to me. Especially considering where we have all found ourselves right now.

You're allowed to be wrong. No worries.

I'm really glad that your aunt is okay, though, in that she is not (to my knowledge) both directly and indirectly responsible for the murders of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of innocent people.  My family, like yours and probably most of all of our families, has been touched by cancer, too, and I certainly don't celebrate that...for many of the same reasons, actually, that I don't mourn (and sometimes do cheer, yes) the loss of bloodthirsty, self-serving, hypocritical warmongers.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkkanenLauri/status/1033712950501167106

I’m certainly not celebrating a man dying from cancer. Maybe my reaction is equally over the top as much of the media and general public but in the opposite direction.

This is a guy who beat the drum as loud as anyone for Iraq. He introduced us to Sarah Palin and if you can’t draw a line from that moment to Donald Trump well then I don’t know what to tell you.

There are other instances where The Mav’s integrity can be questioned. But I suppose he’s getting a break because he’s admitted after the fact how wrong he’s been.

I don't begrudge a little eye-rolling over the outpouring going on right now but the glee I'm seeing from some people over this is just really ugly.

Duff... wrote:I don't begrudge a little eye-rolling over the outpouring going on right now but the glee I'm seeing from some people over this is just really ugly.

This is exactly my thought as well. Again, John McCain never did anything that provoked the sort of visceral reactions and seething hatred that I have for someone like Donald Trump or Mike Pence. Perhaps that is because he was not elected in 2008 and I am not a resident of Arizona, but he just felt like a mostly peripheral figure within the American political landscape to me and that has become especially pronounced over the last several years.

Call me when Henry Kissinger finally croaks, I guess.

Every few months, it blows my mind that he's somehow not yet dead.

Duff... wrote:I negged the post because celebrating someone's painful death is to put it mildly unkind.

who fucking cares.

"celebrating death" (which i think is weird phraseology in general) is mean spirited i suppose, but so is fucking everything about the way our popular culture functions today. being mean spirited is hardly a big deal.

life is not sacred and who gives a shit as a society when people die. people mourn their friends and family, we don't need to mourn people we don't care about.

Duff... wrote:but the glee I'm seeing from some people over this is just really ugly.

why? please take the time to consider why you care about this.

people on the internet express mild positivity that someone they disagree with can no longer advocate for shit they disagree with. you may bristle at the tone, but that's all anyone is really doing.

sure, its extreme to think that everyone you disagree with should die, but people don't really think that. they're just letting off some emotional steam.

I understand how hilarious it is to quote Modest Mouse for any reason let alone for political discourse in 2018 but the line "We've all agreed the whole world stinks so no one's taking showers anymore" is a line that pops in my head a lot these days.

Our colleague posted about McCain's death in the "Headlines that reinforce your love of life" with an emoticon called "victory" which pictures a young man smoking a cigar several times and didn't correct my language. Some people are celebrating this and are not being mild about it. We mourn public figures too, and people are genuinely sad by this, so if it's simply policy diffences, don't muddy the water by making it about something else.

Children are dying fleeing war zones and being taken from their parents at the border and a large portion of the country says "Who cares." Mean-spiritedness absolutely looms large in our discourse today, and that very much is a big deal. I don't pretend insufficient reverence toward a senator's passing is remotely on the same moral scale as those things, but "Who cares about some old dead congressman?" isn't really too different approach than "Who cares about some foreign kids?"

Duff... wrote:Our colleague posted about McCain's death in the "Headlines that reinforce your love of life" with an emoticon called "victory" which pictures a young man smoking a cigar several times and didn't correct my language. Some people are celebrating this and are not being mild about it. We mourn public figures too, and people are genuinely sad by this, so if it's simply policy diffences, don't muddy the water by making it about something else.

It feels tongue-in-cheek in a mean-spirited way that I'm fine with. We've been having this same debate on this board about the proper way to talk about dead public figures for years and I don't think it matters in literally any way.

Duff... wrote:I don't pretend insufficient reverence toward a senator's passing is remotely on the same moral scale as those things, but "Who cares about some old dead congressman?" isn't really too different approach than "Who cares about some foreign kids?"

I respect your views, but the false equivalency here is so striking (even though you're trying to underplay it) that I can't take it seriously. This is respectability politics, pure and simple, and I'm having none of it. This is "trying to show respect to the other side so they show respect to us", which is a losing fight. One does not need to apply empathy consistency across humanity to be a strongly moral person.

The notion that "I don't care as much about the life of people I don't know and/or disagree with morally" is extremely human and natural, and I think hiding from that under the guise of respectability in order to self-aggrandize "our side's" superior morality is fucking dumb.

I totally see where your impulses are coming from and think it's fine. I just want to move in a different direction.

The reason I am very actively and earnestly (no irony, I assure you) celebrating McCain's death is, in large part, because he himself is no small part of the reason that children are fleeing various warzones around the world. The fact that degrees of evil exist does not mean that an evil lesser than others isn't evil. Rest assured, I will cheer even harder when Kissinger and Bush Jr. die; but that doesn't mean that other, arguably less reprehensible people suddenly deserve my respect. Or any of y'all's. They deserved to die a long time ago, and I'm glad that this one finally did.