The CrabCake Bureau of Funny Post Archival

[Oakvale]

Have sex with a woman

[Oakvale]

If you want to overcome social awkwardness all you need to do is start conversations with random people. I used to be pretty introverted (and still am at heart) but your social confidence will increase over time if you simply initiate interactions (no matter how small) with random people.

If there is honestly nothing interesting you can talk about that is a problem in itself. You seem to be well traveled...surely you have some exciting stories? I bet you've had some experiences in Ethiopia that people would find interesting. Or just join a club of some sort. That should give you something to talk about (plus meeting new people through the club will improve social confidence).

As far as appearance, females are far less selective in that regard than us men. Even if you aren't great looking there are girls who don't care that much and some may be intrigued by your "exoticness" (assuming you're clearly African rather than a native black...even better if you have an accent). If you're indistinguishable from a homegrown brotha....let's just say there are plenty of girls who are into that too. As for your physique you're the only one stopping you on that front. Just hit the gym and eat right (ideally fresh fruits and vegetables, plenty of meat, and eggs...no junk or grains).

Since you say you're a bad conversationalist, I highly recommend this book. You may feel silly reading a book about how to talk to girls if you put in the effort I guarantee you this guys advice will help.

Finally, you should be irrationally self-confident. Don't try to delude yourself about your faults (though that certainly isn't your problem), and don't necessarily be a douchebag, just don't apologize or feel the need to make excuses. Act like the African pride male you are. Better to be too confident than too timid. Being confident in yourself will make you much more attractive to women, which is a positive feedback loop since their positive reactions to your confidence will in turn make you more confident in interacting with them, etc.

I feel like I'm going overboard with this lol but seriously bro, your utter lack of confidence and sexual accomplishments pains me. You are in college...for most Western males college is a time of sexual conquest before a lifetime of sexual stagnation and starvation. Unless you plan on returning to your homeland and marrying an old-fashioned Ethiopian gal, you really need to make the most of the present.

[Oakvale]

The problem is, among high information citizens Hillary's favorability is low. These are the people who both know a lot about politics and have made up their mind in a very fixed way. As the campaign heats up, and the low information citizens currently propping Hillary up in the polls start to engage and pay more attention, they are going to encounter the former high information group. And in that clash, the high information citizen with the more firm opinion will tend to win out. It's more like an irresistible force encountering a movable object, than the reverse. And at that point, Hillary collapses. Again. Just like Martha Coakley. Hillary must certainly be personally and psychologically prepared for such an outcome, should she decide to run. I'm also thinking that the danger to her life and limb is unusually high, perhaps even higher than Obama, due to the large number of extremely deranged haters out there. I still think the best option for her would be to forgo the race.

e: I see I've been beaten. Worth posting twice.

[Oakvale]

Has this been submitted yet? Just noticed it.

[Oakvale]

The bolded parts were especially good, but I enjoyed all of this hilarious gurgling outrage:

I'm sure that afleitch and Marokai are thrilled to hear that they're homophobic "prudes" now.  And of course let's not forget fact that one of our proudest "anti-pruders", Grumps, was beating the ban drumbeat loudest, whereas Madeleine, who with the possible exception of Simfan is the only poster here who can actually be described in any honest way as "prudish", was in Libertas's corner.  It totally all fits that explanation, duh!

"Very limited exception" my eye.  I don't know why you feel the need to default to this explanation, but repeating it over and over (obviously there are many folks beside you who are doing so, and this post is a response to them as well) doesn't make it any less ludicrous. 

TBH I would argue that the very term "prude" is something without a meaningful and consistent definition except as a term of vague abuse anyway, and thus needs to stop being used so much. But such an argument isn't a necessary part of my point.

The one thing I will agree with here is your last sentence.  The Mods have an obligation to do a better job communicating limits and providing warnings; doing so won't silence every sh*t-stirrer but it's the right thing to do and will certainly help matters.

If you see my first post in this topic, you'd see that moral disapproval was only part of my complaint (the other being personal dislike). Only one of the posters you mentioned was of those I was talking about. I have nothing but the utmost respect for afleitch and I am unaware of any of any his postings about this matter. As for Grumps, I do like and respect him as a poster, though I also respectfully disagree with his thoughts on this. I was indeed pleasantly surprised to read Madeleine's response, which was most certainly a surprise based on her posting history (and username, for that matter).

If anything, your post has only hardened my position that this ban was completely ridiculous and nonsensical. There is nothing banworthy in his posting history by any objective measure. I still maintain that some posters here that wanted him banned from the start are indeed prudish and quite homophobic, whether or not they hid behind the label of social liberalism. (I really do believe some members here are quite homophobic, despite their proclaimed political leanings.) Those that continued their endless provocation should be punished. I fail to see how defending oneself against said provocation warrants a ban. There is nothing that points to a ban in this case. If there is, almost any current member is fair game.

As you mention those who are sh-t-stirrers, my dad almost literally just told me that "those who stir the sh-t pot should have to lick the spoon". That is a reference to those that have caused this banned and continue to dance around in their apparent victory. To those (not to the above poster): I say screw you and enjoy your pathetic victory while it lasts. It won't be one that lasts.

HB.

Banning should only be done in extreme circumstances.  This forum bans way too indiscriminately.  Libertas did nothing to deserve this, and I'm guessing he wasn't warned that a ban was imminent if he did not change his ways (as was opebo).

^This x1000!

I cannot say how much I agree with this post. As I was saying before, it seems as though mere moral disapproval and personal dislike is enough to warrant a ban at this point. That is absurd and completely ridiculous. If that is the case, this forum needs radically new leadership. Libertas was not a destructive presence on this forum. Other than responding to the provocations of others (to his apparent detriment), I found him to be a quite good poster. He did nothing wrong, unless defending oneself has become a banworthy offense. I'll be one of the first to sign the petition for his reinstatement.

I'm sorry, but this is the functional equivalent of social conservatives running this place, which is disturbing to me. This forum is devolving into a place where mere personal dislike is enough to result in a ban. I've been to forums where excessive rules and regulations override all else and where ban petitions are commonplace. It does not have good results for the overall quality of posters.

[Oakvale]

My god, pure Atlas!

As someone who actually has Asperger's, f**k these morons.

[Oakvale]

Well I'm glad a random 20some dude on the internet can tell my mental condition better than a professional neurologist.

No no no, I just meant the fact that three people empty quoted it within the space of a few minutes.

[Oakvale]

One thing that rarely gets discussed is that the TPP would be really terrible for stuff like manga, video games, tentacle porn, and other great cultural stuff produced in Japan, as well as other material like software and technology. The copyright provisions would ban parallel importation - the transport of copyrighted material across national borders - and would prosecute any and all copyright infringement regardless of whether the copyright-holder actually objected. This crap is reason to reject the treaty.

[Oakvale]

Socialism is Kaldor-Hicks

[Oakvale]

Probably a nice and well meaning guy IRL, who is knowledgable and articulate, but his support for genocide, regicide and massacres makes him a HP.

Precisely. Being ok with mass murder is a deal breaker.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Foster

[Oakvale]

I don't know about you guys, but I think that co-pilot who deliberately crashed the plane was a real jerk.

[Oakvale]

Hillary is extremely intelligent and accomplished.

This talking point is getting extremely annoying. Hillary's actual resume is actually quite unremarkable.

On the contrary, these throwaway superlatives do not do her justice.

She was the elected president of the Wellesley College Graduate Association, where she "organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty" and was "instrumental in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges," and a "number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first female President of the United States". She was the first student commencement speaker in Wellesley's history, and gave a speech which received a 7-minute standing ovation and was featured in Life Magazine.

She entered Yale Law School only the second year after it began to admit women, the first class having only 7 women. There, she researched childhood development to contribute to a then cutting-edge work, wrote a frequently-cited article in the Harvard Education Review on the children's' rights movement, and worked as a congressional aide for Walter Mondale. After law school, she served on the Watergate impeachment committee researching the historical grounds for impeachment, sitting to the left of inquiry leader John Doar.

By then, her star was considered so bright that Democratic consultant Betsey Wright moved to Washington from Texas in part to help her political career, and "thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president". When Bill Clinton decided to run for congress in Arkansas, she was "on the phone with him, sometimes four times a day, giving him advice, mentoring him". When a friend discovered a letter from her to Bill around this period, it "talked of thier future plans... politicial plans that is the best way tot put it... the letter had everything to do with their careers, so unusual in that there was no talk of home, family and marriage."

Would Bill have been elected president without her?

She joined the Rose Law firm, the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi, as its first woman partner, and continued to publish scholarly articles. An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades." She was campaign director of field operations in Indiana for Jimmy Carter, on the board of directors for the Legal Services Corporation, and was chair of the board for two years during which funding increased threefold.

This is just until 1980!

If I go on any longer, no one will read it (if you made it this far).

All of the above is reduced to "a mere political spouse"?

The woman had accomplishments in spades. I mean look, I don't think you're a sexist or anything, but it stinks how when a woman is married to a man whose career is more high flying than hers, her own accomplishments, no matter how great, get somehow erased and dissolved and folded into his identity.

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But she does have a career of her own. That's the thing. No one says that Obama doesn't have a career of his own because he wouldn't be where he is without Michelle (who helped him sell himself as authentic to black community) or David Axelrod (who helped him sell himself to whites) or wealthy Chicago donors like Penny Pritzker (who bankrolled his early career). He wouldn't be where he is without any of those people. None of us would be where we are without our parents, at the very least.

Why is Hillary held to a higher standard then? No one says Ted Kennedy never had a career of his own because he wouldn't have been Senator had he not been a Kennedy.

When she put on that wedding ring she didn't stop becoming a person. She didn't give up her right to a career. Nor did she when her husband was elected. She ran for Senate, putting together a campaign, visiting every county in New York, staking out positions, participating in debates, making ads, just the same as everyone else who runs a Senate campaign. Her race was competitive.

She got as much legislation passed as one could expect of a junior Senator in the minority who was given no special favors. Does she have a seminal law in her name from her time in the Senate? No. Neither does Obama or any other Senator running for president this year. Neither did Jack Kennedy. Everything she has, she's accomplished out of her own efforts.

She did great in her 2008 campaign. She was only favored by a relatively small margin throughout most of the campaign. She was running against a phenomenon-- a guy who could get 20,000 people to show up at my alma mater to see him (Howard Dean only 3,700; Gore only got 800). A guy who could get 20,000 people in blood red states like Idaho and North Dakota and Kansas to show up and see him. A guy who received incredibly positive news coverage -- Chris Matthews even got a tingle up his leg! -- and endorsements from most major newspapers, as well as the party's previous presidential nominee, and its most famous senior Senator. A guy who could rack up 95% of the vote in a demographic that made up 20% of the primary electorate, leaving her with the option of winning the rest by a landslide if she wanted to win by the narrowest of margins.

And yet she still pulled even -- winning roughly the same amount of votes, and winning the last primary in South Dakota even as the media was calling the nomination for Obama.

And yet she endorsed Obama immediately, campaigned for him, and served as his Secretary of State without drama, and led her State Department for 4 years, during which time she initiated talks with Iran on its nuclear deal that now look likely to bear fruit.

And that's still not enough?

[Oakvale]

An apt term directed against our Hedonistic Whiggish elite who thinks the current brand of secular humanistic atomistic individualism and neoliberal economics is the cutting edge wave of human history.

[Oakvale]

At least Netanyahu isn't a criminal.

[Oakvale]

ShadowOfTheWave's easy transformation from dullard Romney obsessive to dullard Hillary obsessive is actually far more entertaining than the regrettable content of most of his posts.

[Oakvale]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=210670.msg4560237#msg4560237

Both the OP and the last post deserve a mention.

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I thought that was Sergio's job?

[Oakvale]

Official currency of Greece: Bitcoin?

[Oakvale]

cc: Sulfur Mine

I'm with Ben Franklin on this:

”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”

thats deep. i never thought of it that way