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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts

10
Comments

3511
Joined

3 yr. ago

5m ago

"5'6? Good lad, we'll teach you the rest by beatings"
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merc @sh.itjust.works 5m ago
"I do pilates anymore" would be saying that I didn't do pilates before, but I am now
If you say so. To me that sentence makes no sense.

4h ago

"5'6? Good lad, we'll teach you the rest by beatings"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 4h ago

My rule of thumb is that anybody who talks about having a high IQ doesn't.

4h ago

"5'6? Good lad, we'll teach you the rest by beatings"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 4h ago

Long list of automatic DQs anymore.

Using "anymore" with a positive statement is a weird regionalism. In most of the world, it only goes with a negative.

I don't do pilates anymore [<- works because of the 'not' in don't]
I do pilates anymore [<- doesn't work, you want "still do pilates" or "still do pilates these days" or something]
It hardly snows in the winter anymore [<- works because it's describing something rare]
It always rains in the winter anymore [<- doesn't work because it's describing something common]

4h ago

wonder what the peace committee will say

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merc @sh.itjust.works 4h ago

Bored of Peace

4h ago

4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein's death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 4h ago

Maybe... but not being able to find 30 seconds to post this major news for over 90 minutes? It seems more likely to me that whoever posted it found out about it closer to 8:30.

15h ago

US Democrats are not leftists

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merc @sh.itjust.works 15h ago

Bernie isn't far left by international standards, but I wouldn't put him in the centre. Nobody in the centre is trying to make radical changes to things. What Bernie is proposing is pretty radical compared to where the US currently is. And, I think if those reforms actually passed, he'd still be trying to move things even more to the left.

And Biden as "far right"? It has lost all meaning if you're applying that label to him.

16h ago

4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein's death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 16h ago

I wonder how he found out. I'm guessing the person who leaked it on 4Chan is probably a political staffer, or something. Initially I thought it was a prison guard or a paramedic. But, I'd have expected them to leak it sooner. Say you're a 4Chan user and you're a prison guard. Would you really discover his body, call an ambulance... and then wait over an hour and a half before posting on 4Chan?

16h ago

The script is mysterious and important.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 16h ago

It has been a while since I saw it, but you're right. I mostly remember it as drama, not comedy.

1d ago

The script is mysterious and important.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

Point Break? I think Keanu was a heart throb who could do action, but who had started in comedy. Will Smith was more a comedic actor who could do action, but was mostly doing action-comedy.

1d ago

The script is mysterious and important.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

Yeah, he was huge. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were bigger names for purely action movies. But, Keanu and Tom Cruise were the action stars who the teenage girls wanted to watch.

I think it's all the years of Fresh Prince of Bel Air that makes me think of Will Smith as primarily a comedic actor at that point. Because, he and Keanu really had a similar path. They started with comedy and then proved they could do action. I guess Will Smith's action movies were a bit more action comedy. Men in Black is definitely a sci fi action comedy. Bad Boys was an action comedy. Independence Day wasn't really a sci fi action comedy, but he did punch out an alien. But, Will Smith did do Enemy of the State, and I don't remember much comedy in that. For Keanu, Speed isn't an action comedy, but there's some light-hearted stuff in it. But, Point Break (from what I remember) was a more serious tone.

But, I think by 1999 if you were hiring Keanu Reeves for a purely serious action role, that wouldn't be seen as strange. And, if you were hiring Will Smith for a purely serious role, it would probably be seen as wasting his talent.

1d ago

The script is mysterious and important.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

It would have been a very different movie. So, maybe people couldn't picture Keanu in that forgettable action comedy called The Matrix. But, Keanu did show he could do comedy. His first big movie was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. He'd also done Parenthood. In addition, he'd shown he could do action movies / thrillers with a bit of comedy when he did Speed, and fairly serious action movies with Point Break.

Will Smith has done plenty of action movies, but all of them are at least somewhat comedic. He's shown he can do serious roles too, like Happyness, 7 Pounds, etc. But, I don't think you'd hire him for a science fiction action movie without having him do some comedy. I'm sure Will Smith could do a straight dramatic science fiction action movie with no comedy, but AFAIK he's never done it.

IMO Keanu is a much more limited actor than Will Smith. But, The Matrix played to his strengths.

1d ago

Such bullshit

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

You clean yourself with the shower. You clean the shower with a rag. Now you enter a terminal state of cleaning:

You clean the rag with a washing machine
You clean the washing machine with the rag
You clean the rag with a washing machine
You clean the washing machine with the rag
You clean the rag with a washing machine
You clean the washing machine with the rag
...

1d ago

Dadboats rule

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

I guess you could also give it a Gen Alpha slang name that someone old enough to be a dad is too old to understand.

Like, call the boat "Low Key Salty". Simultaneously a play on words and Gen Alpha slang. Best if used for an ocean-going boat docked in the Florida keys.

1d ago

Dadboats rule

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

If these are dad jokes, what would a funny name that isn't a "dad joke" be like?

1d ago

4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein's death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

At 8:16 a.m. on August 10, 2019, an anonymous 4Chan user posted...

It beat ABC News journalist Aaron Katersky's post about Epstein's death on Twitter, now known as X, by 38 minutes

Is that in any way surprising? Someone with insider knowledge posted about it before a journalist was informed?

In the Wikipedia article about his death they said that he was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead at 6:39 AM. More than 90 minutes before even this post on 4Chan, he'd already been taken out of his cell, rushed to an ambulance, driven across NY, taken to a hospital, rushed into the emergency room, and pronounced dead. There were so many opportunities for someone to notice that and post it somewhere.

In a sense, this means you pretty much clear the jail guards, ambulance drivers and emergency room doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc. of suspicion. Can you imagine that they saw a dead Epstein, but sat on that for 90 minutes before posting it to 4Chan?

What's surprising here isn't that it was posted first to some forum used by random Internet chuds. That's what you'd expect. What's surprising is that they were competent enough to keep the news quiet for nearly 2 hours.

1d ago

4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein's death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how.

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

On the other hand, we all know he did not commit suicide and got killed by the Pedoresident following the playbook of his BFF putin to try to save his fat orange pedo ass

No, we don't. That's a dumb conspiracy theory.

2d ago

Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

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merc @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

Yeah, it's more: "Oh, you want to renounce? Guess we better audit your last 5 years of tax returns with a fine-toothed comb." In addition, you have to do two separate interviews with US officials, plus pay a $2.5k USD fee. Plus, you might be hit with an exit tax if you have any wealth -- and that includes retirees who are counting on using that wealth for their retirement.

2d ago

Conspiracy theorists were wrong

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merc @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

Also, some conspiracies are always going to be right, but the details matter.

"There's a cabal of rich people who run the world!" I mean, yes. Obviously. But, the method matters here.

"Rich people make blood sacrifices in cult meetings, then replace the president with an android and the prime minister with a clone" is not the same as "rich people buy up newspapers and throw lavish fundraising dinners."

As for the main conspiracy, IMO it's not credible that everybody in Epstein's circle was a pedophile. It's not even credible that everyone in his circle knew he was one. I'm sure you don't become a billionaire without already being the kind of person who has a problem with empathy. But, Epstein's circle wasn't just billionaires. It was also intellectuals, politicians, artists, etc. Even if 99% of them were either pedophiles or perfectly OK with pedophilia (which seems unlikely) that remaining 1% could ruin his life.

What's believable is that he had an enormous circle of rich and powerful people, and that a small subset of them were in an inner circle where the child rape happened. In that case, it isn't that every rich and powerful person is part of a pedophile ring. It's that rich and powerful people were meeting and conspiring, and also some of them were pedophiles.

Having said that, I'm perfectly happy if the popular story is that everybody who was buddies with Epstein is a pedophile and should be removed from society, if not removed from the realm of the living. Those people deserve that kind of punishment, but not because they're pedophiles. But, it's too exhausting to try to convince people that someone like Bill Gates deserves to have his life ruined, even if he isn't a pedophile.

2d ago

Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

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merc @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

You have to file taxes with the US, most people with US citizenship living outside the US don't actually have to pay anything.

As for why to keep filing:

renouncing your citizenship is difficult and expensive
it's hard to avoid the US

Let's say you have no plans to ever live in the US again. Does that mean you never want to visit friends or family you left behind? Does that mean you'll never go to a sporting event, concert or professional conference in the US ever again? If you're flying internationally, will you always be willing to pay extra and do extra work to avoid being on a plane that makes a stopover in the US?

For most people it's a few hours of work, and/or a hundred bucks or so once per year to keep their options open and avoid major headaches.

2d ago

Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

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merc @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

The 40% that didn't vote would probably have also broke 50/50 for Trump vs. Harris if they'd bothered to vote. But, most of them probably live in states like Massachusetts or Wyoming where one party's lead is so huge that their vote really wouldn't have had any effect.