Kaikoura, Te Wai Pounamu, Aotearoa (Kia Kaha, Aroha to all) Superthread

[Axver]

Apparently it's not when I'm drunk that I go and buy heaps of shit online, but when I'm sober. Just picked up a heap of music.

 

[Axver]

Auckland Transport are using Google to advertise to me.

This would be all fine, even though I already use a Hop card. But advertising Birkdale to City? Okay. But.

Where the fuck is Birkdale?

I missed this before, but even I know the answer! It's right by Birkenhead, funnily enough.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Part of me is almost surprised today's strict anti-promotion of smoking laws haven't caused them problems with a name like that.

Yes, they might have been better off picking something less controversial, like The Pricks.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I can't believe infomercials are still a thing. Sure, it made sense in the 1990s, before everybody had the Internet. Now?!

Remember when "as seen on TV" was some sort of endorsement?

Donald Trump. 'As Seen On TV!'

 

[coolian2]

I missed this before, but even I know the answer! It's right by Birkenhead, funnily enough.

Funnily enough as well, I already knew the answer too! We had a collective "where is that?" moment at work a few years back and I plugged it into Google maps.

 

[Axver]

Donald Trump. 'As Seen On TV!'

Well that's scarily true.

 

[coolian2]

I wonder how long I can keep posting a spanner in FYM before someone clicks on to it.

 

[Kieran McConville]

a long time, I think.

 

[Axver]

I literally have come into work today just for the air conditioning.

Fuck summer and everybody who thinks a smelly, sweaty, sunburny time of year is a good season.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Oh yeah, I remember a while back I was complaining about how it was still cold all the time (incidentally, as recently as three weeks ago this was still true); but I'm not looking foward to real summer, which in these parts is mainly January.

I remember last summer walking into a bottleshop and just standing there for a few minutes and telling the cashier, just, just let me enjoy this...

 

[Axver]

The cruel part is that the air con here isn't even working very well.

On the upside, the folks on the other side of my corridor have actual heat coming out of their vents, so it could be worse.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Sounds like some dystopian government complex from 'Brazil'.

Do your emails come out of long pipes as well, in little cannisters?

 

[Axver]

Alas, that would make the place a whole lot more interesting.

Instead I just have no natural light because whoever designed this building was a moron.

 

[Axver]

Also, Ian, looks like you've pushed your luck a bit too far on FYM...?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Ian is dead.

Diemen killed him.

 

[Axver]

RIP Ian, the first victim of Trump-era FYM.

Our canary in the coalmine.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Did he seriously get banned?

 

[Kieran McConville]

Alas, that would make the place a whole lot more interesting.

Instead I just have no natural light because whoever designed this building was a moron.

You know you're fucked when you can't tell what time of day it is without a clock.

 

[Axver]

Did he seriously get banned?

I hope only from FYM and not the whole forum...

 

[Kieran McConville]

Considering that pieces of shit like Saget get to post, I'd hope so too.

 

[Axver]

You know you're fucked when you can't tell what time of day it is without a clock.

It was maddening for the first month or so in here. Some dumbfuck built a ramp - a massive concrete ramp - past our window. If you strain you can see a tiny glimpse of sky out one window. Otherwise I feel like I'm in eternal night-time.

It's surprising just how much natural light means to you.

(The upside is that we are literally as far as possible from any officious people and most people don't want to be in this office so I get to spread out.)

 

[Axver]

Considering that pieces of shit like Saget get to post, I'd hope so too.

The dude's basically just a fanboy for Orange Groper.

It amazes me that opinions that would have got you banned a few short years ago are now mainstream opinions of people who voted for the US president-elect.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The dude's basically just a fanboy for Orange Groper.

It amazes me that opinions that would have got you banned a few short years ago are now mainstream opinions of people who voted for the US president-elect.

Eh, I dunno, I remember as bad or worse from the likes of Indy2000, or going back further, Lemonite or a few others. And I don't think any of them got banned, just lost interest.

 

[Kieran McConville]

It was maddening for the first month or so in here. Some dumbfuck built a ramp - a massive concrete ramp - past our window. If you strain you can see a tiny glimpse of sky out one window. Otherwise I feel like I'm in eternal night-time.

It's surprising just how much natural light means to you.

(The upside is that we are literally as far as possible from any officious people and most people don't want to be in this office so I get to spread out.)

If I didn't have my view out the kitchen window to a big wall of trees at the back of the lawn, I'd be an unhappy camper.

If I was basically Leonardo Di Caprio in Catch Me If You Can, post-catching, I'd probably take up drinking on the job.

 

[Axver]

Eh, I dunno, I remember as bad or worse from the likes of Indy2000, or going back further, Lemonite or a few others. And I don't think any of them got banned, just lost interest.

Oh I remember some pretty vile stuff a decade or so ago, especially homophobic posts. But FYM had seemed to have slightly raised its tone since then, and it's a shame to see it slip back. Plus it was never fellow-travelling with fascism and white nationalism as best as I recall.

I do remember wondering what Sting2 had to do to get banned back then. It was almost unbelievable when he finally got done.

And somehow deep remains with us. 2 deep 4 u.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Deep's schtick used to be that he was the 'liberal one' (ie. in contrast to Brother Diamond). I'm now convinced that he has no discernible ethos.

It's true that a lot of the nastier crew back in the day were mainly cheerleaders for the PNAC, and 'let's roll' in the wake of 9/11.

Even still, a lot of the offense is calculated. It's the whole alt-right thing; troll the 'liberal left'. And they fall for it every time. It's a fine line being trod between deniable performance-art acting-out, and accidentally telling the truth. But it's mostly calculated to engender pearl clutching. I'd submit that a more bare-knuckled approach is called for, but that would actually get shut down by the same high-minded 'liberal' centrists who police the discussion. They're welcome to it.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Eh, I dunno, I remember as bad or worse from the likes of Indy2000, or going back further, Lemonite or a few others. And I don't think any of them got banned, just lost interest.

INDY was vile, but for a while he was the only conservative FYM regular for a time though. Relatively manageable.

Now it definitely feels like the mainstream has shifted to the right.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Even still, a lot of the offense is calculated. It's the whole alt-right thing; troll the 'liberal left'. And they fall for it every time. It's a fine line being trod between deniable performance-art acting-out, and accidentally telling the truth. But it's mostly calculated to engender pearl clutching. I'd submit that a more bare-knuckled approach is called for, but that would actually get shut down by the same high-minded 'liberal' centrists who police the discussion. They're welcome to it.

Have to love the centrist liberal, boasting about how 'moderate' they are and how left/right are 'two sides of the same coin', when they themselves are perpetually drifting to the right. We have PLENTY of them on this site.

 

[Axver]

Deep's schtick used to be that he was the 'liberal one' (ie. in contrast to Brother Diamond). I'm now convinced that he has no discernible ethos.

He seems to try to make a show of being non-partisan, a show that is poorly scripted and entirely see-through, especially in the way he fell for the Crooked Hillary narrative while caring little for Trump's multitudinous flaws.

I'm honestly irked by people who are self-conscious "non-partisans" or "swing voters". I don't direct this at people whose ideology really does place them between two major parties, or whose vote has shifted over time, but those people who essentially declare there is no ideological continuity from one vote to another because they just wait for one candidate to impress them (read as: sell them the most pork). I have no respect for that. Hold a position, stand by it, and modify it as necessary.

 

[Axver]

The mainstream has been drifting right since, oh I don't know, the seventies or so!

Have to love the centrist liberal, boasting about how 'moderate' they are and how left/right are 'two sides of the same coin', when they themselves are perpetually drifting to the right. We have PLENTY of them on this site.

I wonder how much of this comes down to the current supremacy of identity politics over economic politics, and a general disinclination to get into the nitty-gritty of foreign policy.

What is especially fascinating is that economic grievances are now couched heavily in the language of identity politics. Until recently we seemed to treat the current incarnation of identity politics as a phenomenon of the left, but what 2016 has shown us is that it is more effective at mass mobilisation in the hands of the right. The explanation for that is pretty simple though, since the right-wing and fascistic formulation relies on that easy political trick of fearmongering.