BF2S Forums DAST Chat

If you're a left-wing activist at a rally and a lone MAGA approaches you with what sound like honest questions, it might be a good time to be your best self and give measured, polite answers. But maybe over there where angry people won't spot your hat.

Weren't some of you guys on about how I should disengage and stuff? I understand why people would refer people to a website. I've done it. It can be exhausting explaining yourself all the time to people who aren't interested in being convinced, but rather want to ply you with the latest regurgitated counter they picked up from their preferred social media. I've seen the articles, "how to argue with liberals point-by-point." I might even have a pamphlet from the 90s still along with that "Grandpa Jack" gun guy comic book.

Reasonable responses: "put a pin in that, I have tasks to accomplish?" or "check out this long form article that can explain CRT in good specificity" or "*checks phone* no, Obama, Mrs. Gates, and Fauci didn't visit Wuhan in 2015; that was Obama, Fauci, and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell visiting Dr. Nancy Sullivan at the NIH in Maryland. In 2014. Because ebola. Wait, stop digging your heels in even more!"

Here's a link to the Wuhan tweet, or one of them? Suspended account (curse you liberal twitter!), but some of the replies are good stuff:
https://twitter.com/hispeedtim2876/stat … 8556884993

Not necessarily to your post alone, but you did refer to BLM stuff, which can be characterized a lot by left-wingers and MAGA peeps. I guess a recent example of explaining-exhaustion are the memes of those store signs that say they'll charge you extra for not wearing a mask and more on top if they have to explain why you're supposed to.

Now to wander a bit. As a complete aside since "allies" were mentioned, I think the flag is ugly:



Black and white for straight people seems highly reductive. It reads to me like there's only one kind of straight man or one kind of straight woman. Dreary grayscale, dull and no variety. Gross prison stripes. Stripped of the rainbow chevron, it becomes the much maligned "straight pride" flag, which really has no reason to exist out side of being redundant, reactionary, or misunderstanding the whole point of these things.

Ex:

Man behind straight-pride flag in New Brunswick says removal is discrimination
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/201 … ation.html

At face value I think it (but redesign ffs) should be flown side by side with whatever the heck kind of sexuality flags at pride events, without anyone having an issue. The design is even part of the "ally" flag. Coexist! Flying it alone is a little weird though. Is there a great need to make people aware of straight issues? I dunno, it just looks combative. Fishing around to make some kind of point.

Put them on a rotation and see what happens?

Alt:

An article was criticizing the bottom right for "stealing trans colors." lmao

irt: people thinking "allies" should argue more, I do agree that could get a little touchy. A straight person can want the best for people even if they don't know the most about the topic. You shouldn't need to be an expert to think that a gay couple should be able to marry even if just to avoid family drama and intervention if one gets sick or dies.

It is a horrid flag all around, isn't it. Straight ally or straight. IMO if you're a straight ally at a pride event and want a flag, button or shirt, just use one of the rainbows. Is coming out as straight even a thing?

People on the right will talk your ear off about their feelings on a matter, but will balk or generalize when asked for sources on their info.


0:20

about as many times as someone with a background in history or politics has had to explain to you that, actually, your two-bit understanding glossed from an airport thriller isn’t how History works. only for you to then ignore it and talk about ‘hipsters’.

remember when 'debates' were about bringing argument, rhetoric and information to bear upon a topic? using research and something amounting to objective fact?

nowadays you declare your position way in advance, normally based on shallow identitarian grounds (or some emotional-psychological grudge), and then proceed to ignore everything to the contrary. 'why should i read their stuff' indeed.

no, it's really not. historians don't publish 'opinions'. when they do opinionate, extemporize, or venture their own view, it's clearly sign-posted.

you'd know this if you bothered to read much. but, predictably, you sound a lot more like the people you complain about above.

uziq wrote:

remember when 'debates' were about bringing argument, rhetoric and information to bear upon a topic? using research

I think the far right agrees up to about there

Elsewhere on social media.

McSkeevely via Android wrote:

My libertarian coworker argued that people got sick of pollution and collectively decided to pollute less and that's why smog decreased.

Definitely not alone, lol.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I would like to hear thoughts from bf2s card collectors (baseball, mtg) on stores having to stop selling a thing because scalpers are mugging people. I haven't collected cards since I was a kid, so am entirely out of the loop here.

Target pulls Pokémon cards, sports trading cards after fight
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/sh … 089767001/

Target said it will pause sales of Pokémon cards and sports trading cards, citing safety concerns for shoppers and employees.

In a statement emailed to USA TODAY, the retailing giant said the cards will still be available to purchase on its website.

Effective May 14, Target will suspend sales of MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokémon trading cards in stores, the retailer said.

Last week, police in Brookfield, Wisconsin, said a fight broke out at a Target store after a disagreement over cards, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network. Police said the altercation ended after a man who had been attacked by four others pulled out his gun.

also on vice



Here's a series of posts on imgur claiming to be a target source:

MCdaGrinder via Android37 pts3 hr
Hey, Target Lead here - we tried so very hard (at my store) to keep the product and distribute it fairly to our guests. 1/2

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MCdaGrinder via Android36 pts3 hr
We instituted a check in system because people were actually harrassing and taking cards out of the vendor's hands as he would stock shelves

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MCdaGrinder via Android36 pts3 hr
. Things were going relatively smoothly until the gun incident that happened at another store. I just wanted to let imgur know Target tried.

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MCdaGrinder via Android21 pts3 hr
Oh! And we are still paying vendors for the product and immediately shipping it back. Target is losing way more money to keep guests safe.

Imagine murdering someone for a holographic pichu.

A few things going on.

First, a complex secondary market exist for trading cards. Like warehouses exist where people open up packs of cards all day to sell and ship specific cards. In early 2020 when COVID hit, a lot of collectors panic sold their collections. When the government started dropping stimulus on everyone and it turned out that COVID wasn't the T-virus, the prices of everything on the secondary market started to inflate (along with everything else). Pokemon and baseball cards did the same thing. So it is possible to get a single $150 card from a $4 pack. I have done so before.

The second part of the issue is the distribution model for trading cards is problematic. Independent comic book stores buy from the distributors and then price their stuff at whatever they want. This creates a situation where you have comic book store owners selling products for 2 or 3 times MSRP. This is one reason I was so salty at the comic book store. He charged me $140 for something that was available on Amazon for $90. What does that have to do with Target? Target, WalMart, etc. sell their products at MSRP. They aren't SmAlL bUsSiNeSsEs trying to keep the lights on. So they are actually more fair than comic book stores that will police your language while scamming you. Collectors went nuts at these big stores to sidestep the issue of having to buy price inflated products from the local comic book place.

Why didn't they yank MTG from shelves at these stores? Sometime in 2019, the company that makes MTG changed their model. Instead of selling to distributors who then sell to stores, they started listing stuff on Amazon. They got rid of MSRP in order to throw the comic book stores a lifeline I guess. But if you want something close to what used to be MSRP, you didn't have to go to Target but could order it from Amazon with free shipping. That is why you can see MTG stuff still on shelves that used to hold Pokemon and baseball cards too.

I don't know what you will take away from this story. Personally, I hope GameStop makes a come back and gets involved in trading cards and comics just to spite the comic book stores that price gouge.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

That was an interesting read.

A note while I digest: If Gamestop makes that comeback and starts selling trading cards and comic books, you likely won't be able to buy anything that hasn't been previously opened by employees and haphazardly stashed in their counter drawers, leaving you to wonder if you really got everything you're paying for. I sometimes had to press for my pre-order stuff in the past before I began doing all that online.

Once I found my "lost" bonus MacGuffin on their shelf with a price tag on it, and was finally able to claim it with my receipt. It's not something I blame the employees or managers for. It's just the way all those stores worked, and they were still more honest about it than other brick & mortar video game shops I've been to (I've probably already relayed that story at least twice over the years).

In recent months, I had a more interesting short conversation about games as a hobby with a drug store employee than any time I recall at a Gamestop. I don't even remember what brought it up. Maybe product placement on a drink.

People who go to their local comic book stores can probably tell you many consumer horror stories too. In GameStop's defense, I expect them to be more willing to follow through with their promises than I expect the local comic book store.

Well that was a big day

The Met was ‘institutionally corrupt’ because it failed to properly investigate the case and covered up repeated mistakes thereafter

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 … s-in-focus

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati … nel-report

In short, Britain's largest and most prestigious Police force has been institutionally corrupt from the lowest PC right up to multiple Police commissioners, including the current one, from 1987 to 2021.
Cressida Dick is a stinking sack of garbage, I sincerely hope she is fired.

My family has been in contact with Alastair Morgan for the last 20 years, since we have some things in common.
Well done to him, what a slog.

I'm very glad Hampshire Police and the Police Complaints Authority got a thorough flaying also, although I've barely skimmed whats there. Two utterly and provably corrupt organisations.
This might give us an angle to get something done, if we've got the energy. Our issues aren't directly comparable, but the level of corruption is and the Police were about as vicious, maybe more so.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkm5ayhB-4M

Phew.

These guys plod on and on, and when someone cuts in that's when the commentators pounce and are all like "can't get a word in edgewise!"

Banning CRT in schools is going to backfire. I don't think many people even knew about it before the right wing started making a big deal out of it. The ban on CRT concepts reminds me of bans on teaching LGBT back in the early 2000's. 16 years after Bush won reflection running against gay marriage now schools are required by law to teach LGBT stuff.

Something that is also perplexing to me is how right wingers think fighting CRT in schools is going to help them long-term. The country is becoming increasingly not white. For every almost in the grave boomer banning CRT makes happy, there are many young people going to stick around who will remember and resent the whole situation.

Finally, I like to think I am fairly moderate about this stuff but I can't tell you how uninterested I am in hearing right wingers talk about race even if they are parroting my own beliefs back at me. This reminds me a CPAC seminar being given by a black conservative on how to talk about race. His suggestion was: just don't talk about race. Like ignore it and focus on issues. One of the people in the crowd who was a local neo-Nazi then asked "why don't we talk about the positives of slavery" or something like that. A decent amount of CPAC people in the crowd were mortified so at least that is a good sign.

uziq wrote:

dilbert: BLM don’t have a point, only vandals want to defund the police, dangerous radicals and lesbian stormtroopers.

also dilbert: look! look! the met were mean to my family!

black londoners have been deeply suspicious of the met police for years. that’s what’s the london riots we’re about. amazingly ironic.

wow, so when anything happens these days your first reaction is "how will blacks and gays feel about this"

Sensible members of the community would want police reform, not elimination.
We all saw how the CHAZ worked out, and thats still their endgame.