CloutAtlas

It's a few different things combined:

• Competent host: Sean Evans seems like a perfectly normal guy with above average charisma that isn't as manufactured as Fake Laugh Fallon or Waitstaff Abuser Cordon. The team also seems to do their research in terms of guests and tend to ask questions they didn't already just answer in another interview

• Novel premise: Instead of the host asking raunchy or off cuff questions, the host asks mundane albeit obscure questions regarding the celebrity in question loses composure due to increasing spice. A part of the spectacle is seeing someone famous lose composure in a way that isn't in a public mental breakdown or substance induced rampage.

• Generally wholesome: Or at the very least not mean spirited. Despite some dramatic sound effects added after the fact, the show is actually extremely benign and doesn't antagonize anyone. Fairly accommodating, if the interviewee is vegan they'll have vegan wings, if they don't eat processed food they get like fried cauliflower.

I get the appeal and have seen like 4 or 5 episodes.

The "Who's your favorite kid?" "I'm gonna have to say Bart" line got a quick exhale out of me.

Talking to John Brown:

Please ignore the fact that I was too hasty making this post I initially forgot to include the photo

Doing a whiteface minstrel show.

There's no rules in the Chapo.chat user agreement that says Owls can't play basketball

How else do you keep track of kills to call in a killstreak? Hezbollah should be able to call in a tactical nuke at 25

Y'all be good

We have no information leading to the arrest of Hillary Clinton

See, I grew up amongst normal atheists. I spent half my time with retired revolutionaries in a communist retirement community in Wuhan, China. The last of the elves to see the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor. So a lot more Maoist than the general Chinese population. Some comrades who were stationed in Shaanxi throughout the war(s), even some who participated in the long march.

After all, as l'internationale goes, 从来就没有什么救世主，也不靠神仙皇帝/Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun.

Some still held cultural beliefs that could be seen as a religious practice but it was not to serve any religion. Some who had seen the worst of the second war were more adamant that there are no powers above. I suppose if you witnessed Nanking during/immediately after WWII, you'd be angry at the gods for standing by and doing nothing. How good can the gods be if they stood by and watched when even the literal Nazi John Rabe had enough humanity to try and stop the slaughter? But understanding that the people have their beliefs was also a part of it. The most toxic and harmful parts were purged in the Cultural Revolution, who's to stop someone from joining the monks or having a statue of 观音 and lighting incense? The very people we fight for, the people who sheltered us during the Long March, the people who took up arms with us in the name of liberation. If the anti science, anti feminist and counter revolutionary aspects were purged, what harm is there in people observing holidays, praying and restricting their diets? To fast during Ramadan, to walk the path of the Buddha, to honour ones ancestors, to light fireworks to scare off the Nian, etc. Those things don't have to be toxic.

But upon moving to the west, atheism became Atheism, it was an identity. It was commodified and used to sell laptop stickers and books. It was a brand. To be Atheist is to debate Christians and buy Richard Dawkins books and share Hitchens' quotes and feel holier than thou. "In this moment, I am euphoric" sort of thing. To be Atheist is to be insufferable. Worse, they seem to just abandon the Christian part of Christian Chauvinism and just become Chauvinists. In some aspects, it's not only feeling smugly superior to the brown people believing in primitive gods or the "Moslems", it's to also feel smugly superior to Evangelicals, too. It's the next evolution of being a chauvinist. Critical support for their opposition of Young Earth Creationists and anti abortion dickheads, yes, but you cannot excuse their support for Western imperialism, literal and cultural, in the global south.

I guess in the end, atheism is a land of contrasts.

Seriously, it's plain as day with a material analysis. The material conditions for the working class aren't improving either way, but the party with red hats have a (wrong) solution, to blame immigrants and the gays. People falling for fascist rhetoric are miseducated (yay American education system), disillusioned and desperate. A competent and well meaning political party could turn that anguish and contempt for the status quo into results, but Dems are neither of those things. In the end, they also serve capital.

To meaningfully reform healthcare is to make workers less desperate, it will allow disgruntled and abused workers to leave their workplace and therefore dilute the power of the employers and to take away from the pharmaceutical companies. To meaningfully push through higher wages is to take away from capitalists at large. To meaningfully reform housing is to take away from landlords. To meaningfully reform prisons is to take away from the private prison industry. To meaningfully stop the genocide in Gaza is to take away from the Military Industrial Complex. They'll promise and pay lip service to those things but will never meaningfully change them.

They are not well meaning. One of the few aspects in which they are better is abortion and they fumbled that so hard, because they're also incompetent.

But no, to the diehard libs, it's because half the country are mentally ill. That's the only explanation.

This is the immediate aftermath of the sun finally setting on the British empire. Co-incidence?

Conker refers to the seed of a British chestnut, and is also the name of a game where you carefully drill a hole through the seed, feed a string through it, tie it so it becomes a tiny, organic wrecking ball. Your goal is to swing your conker at another child's conker until one of them breaks.

It's one of those old timey children's games like chasing a hoop with a stick or playing marbles or smoking cigarettes at the age of 9.